Pendock Unfiltered
Wine competitions – an overtraded market?
Friday, 3 February, 2006
Neil Pendock
Neil Pendock takes a swing at 'the show circus' and professes to not caring much for medals anyway.
One medium-size Sellenbosch producer reckons that Veritas stickers cost 80c each – 2c for the sticker and 78c for competition entry costs, tasting samples, promotional bottles and administrative overhead – a sizeable amount for a wine which retails at R40 a bottle, as theirs do. In the case of Veritas an entry is almost guaranteed a medal, so in practice 80c is the cost of a sticker, while for other competitions the chances of recognition are far smaller, in effect increasing sticker costs by a factor proportional to the chances of getting one.
Given that there are now two dozen local wine competitions, the show circus consumes a sizeable amount of producer resources. Including overseas beauty contests like the Decanter World Wine Awards can raise the marketing stakes to a significant proportion of the retail price. With several competitions receiving large sponsorships from banking groups, hotels, airlines and supermarket chains, competitions comprise a significant proportion of production and marketing spend.
Producers obviously think the game is worth the candle as submissions (unlike sales) are buoyant with each year producing ‘record number of entries.’ A survey of producers last year by winemaker at the Fun Winery and GQ columnist, Alex Dale, produced the not too surprising result that show organizers were perceived as the main beneficiaries of shows with consumers placed last. A conclusion confirmed by a letter to the editor of WINE magazine in January that was selected for the coveted magnum of Dom Pérignon as best letter.
The writer, reflecting on 2005, noted ‘one thing the year finally taught me was to regard wine competitions as mere opinions and not as wine gospel. My biggest disappointment was how unconvincing the winners of the Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show were. No one will convince me that the winning red blend of Cabernet and Merlots are truly our best wines. In my (mere) opinion, they are undrinkable, heavy-footed and so tannin-laden that I wanted to give my mouth mouth-to-water resuscitation!’ Likewise Veritas gets some stick for overlooking Kevin Arnold’s excellent 2003 Shiraz.
Which is bad news indeed for the competition circus, as people who read WINE magazine are presumably the kind of consumers who would seek out show winners, especially those with enough energy to write letters to the editor. A widespread loss of confidence in show results would surely bring down the curtain at the circus.
So if not shows, then what?
In Manhattan in January I had lunch at Onera, a Greek restaurant on the Upper West Side (222 W 79th Street). The restaurant owner is a Sydneysider of Greek origin who recommended a Xinomavro to accompany the Meze platter. As full bodied, tannic and bold as Pinotage, it sold me on modern Greek reds – without a single show medal on the bottle.
Neil Pendock was a judge at the 2005 Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show.