Arrogance is a terrible trait to behold, but sometimes, just every so often, a little bit of arrogance, self-belief and confidence is what is needed in order to push ahead in the world of business. Wine is just that – a business. Although we all love to talk about frolicking in vineyards (just me?) and how the wine magically makes itself, most of us still require an income from our ventures and rely heavily on marketing, product placement and social media to make sure our wines are in the forefront of the public’s mind.

The business of wine is a funny thing – I was shocked to walk down Franschhoek high street, arguably one of the country’s best region for sparkling wine production only to find that one of the main wine shops (of the two…) has an outside display of Moët & Chandon, Bollinger and Veuve Clicquot on the sidewalk. I stopped to double-take, first of all excited and I couldn’t help myself but squel (in my head) going “oh I love Champagne!” but then suddenly the realisation hit me. I am not in France. I am not even in an airport duty free. I am in South Africa – in a wine producing region of South Africa. Given the amount of foreign wine I drink this may come across as hypocritical – I harp on about Côte Rôtie to anyone who will listen, but equally so about South African Syrah, for example. And well, I drink foreign wines in South Africa to learn, benchmark and expand my palate. But why, in a main tourist region are we trying to encourage visitors of our beautiful country that makes fantastic, world class sparkling wine, to buy French Champagne?

I posted about my disbelief via my social media channels and received some obvious answers, first and foremost: money. These Champagnes almost cease to be wine but a commodity, sure to lure in the tourists with Veuve’s internationally recognised sunshine-yellow packaging (don’t try to steal that unless you have a billion dollars to spend on a law suit) and Moët’s pretty-ribbon crown. If these recognisable brands are attracting the tourists into the shop and then they are buying South African sparkling wines, then great. But otherwise – I don’t see how placing South African brands such as Graham Beck, Colmant and Haute Cabriere (which is over 300 years old) on the sidewalk would be such a terrible thing? I’m no economist, but I fail to see how French Champagne would make the shop more profit than a wine that was sourced from 5km down the road? The exchange rate is terrible. Getting the wine into South Africa is expensive. Where is the profit in this? South African sparkling wines, and well most of our wines, are extremely good value – I am sure at an exchange rate of 13 euro to the Rand tourists would love to buy a bottle of Graham Beck Brut for R110 ie. 8 euro a bottle.

This is where I feel South Africans – producers, retailers, consumers – tend to put our wines down and still bow down to international examples rather than feel confident and sure that what we produce is in fact world class. Granted our prices are much more “affordable” than Champagne or other wine making regions of the world, but quality wise we are up at the top with the best of the best. Recently Tim Atkin MW rated Graham Beck Cuvee Clive 2007 94 points and all of Silverthorn’s MCCs 90 points plus. Do we need someone with a megaphone on the high streets of South Africa yelling out these scores to all the passersby? Well, of course not but I do believe that pride, confidence and a little bit of arrogance needs to trickle down from the producers to the retailers and eventually to the consumers, who in turn become our own global ambassadors. We are wasting such a fantastic opportunity to promote South African wines to visitors of our wine making regions when there is something special in the fact that the grapes were harvested “down the road” or the cellar is “around the corner”. It makes it so much more personal for a visitor to taste something from the region they are standing in and in turn, serves as a visual memory for them to take away from their trip. I believe drinking a wine in the regions where the grapes are farmed, crushed and bottled is something to be valued – what happened to “local is lekker”?

If I were a sparkling wine producer in Franschhoek I must say I would be heart-broken to walk past a shop in my own town only to see French Champagne in the prime retail spot rather than my own and my peers, fantastic MCC and sparkling wines which rightly deserve their place to shine. How otherwise, would visitors know what wonderful wines we produce if we continue to promote intentional examples? I am sure, we would be just as upset to see New Zealand lamb in the supermarkets rather than our very own local Karoo Lamb… why should wine be any different?

[Category: Articles, Champagne, MCC, Retail, South African Wine, Sparkling]