The latest news from SAWIS, that not-for-profit company (like many wine producers at the current juncture) that handles the numbers, reported yesterday that domestic wine sales are up 3% while exports are down 5%. Since we export more than we drink, a lake must be forming somewhere inside SA, a bit like the acid mine water rising steadily in the East and West Rand and underneath Johannesburg. Yet SAWIS also expects cellar stocks to decrease from 338m litres to 314m litres by the end of this year – go figure. Since foreigners have given our vino the flick, domestic sales will have to head-off the flood.
The Aussies came up with a nice idea. “The All For One Wine pledge, to drink only Australian wine from January 1 to 26” (the 26th of Jan being Australia Day). Maybe WOSA (hilariously misnamed “Wines of South Africa export group” by Bloomberg) could launch a Drink SA Dry month for July, the month of Madiba’s birthday.
Oh sorry, they have no budget for local initiatives (except for training sommeliers and promoting braii boeke) so maybe Whitey Basson could swing Shoprite/Checkers behind it before he replaces his local wine listings with more competitive imports from Spain and Argentina (as he threatened to do yesterday to hold off Walmart, if you take his fighting comments to their logical conclusion).
Of course if WOSA have done their job properly, their 2010 sommeliers may derail a Drink SA drive for as Aussie wino Huon Hooke pointed out “sommeliers, who run the wine agendas in high-profile restaurants and wield strong influence, are besotted by European wines and seem to view Australian wines as boring and old-hat. When sommeliers get together, the conversation is all about the rarest, most obscure imported wines they’ve tasted lately. There’s a huge snob-value in knowing about wine no one else knows about.” Ring any bells?
Meanwhile brandy is in the doldrums and yesterday’s budget which increases the price of a bottle by almost R3, won’t help. Last year sales were down 7% and with the government re-looking at the structure of excise duty on alcohol, Marcel Golding should sell his newly acquired KWV brandy stocks sooner rather than later.
