Wine trends for 2012
Tuesday, 10 January, 2012
Neil Pendock
Neil Pendock dons his Clicks-made-in-China R99 1.5 magnification brils
and gives the spittoon a good poking. Some interesting patterns form in
the floating crumbs of expectorated cracker and Neil makes some
predictions for 2012.
1. Content is King. Jancis Robinson shines her laser beams on an SA brand via the Financial Times and unleashes a blizzard of tweets, blog posts and hastily packaged press releases from the Cape’s PR mouthpieces on R20K/month retainers. Her single comment gets repeated ad nauseum. Retweeting is out of control as producers hire hacks and their spouses to tweet on their behalf, which leads to much hilarity when you quiz the person behind the persona about a tweet they have no idea they tweeted. As Bob Dylan sang it, this is an idiot wind that further emphasises the importance of the 17 people with something original to say about SA wine. Some hacks already divert all incoming PR e-mails straight to the trash folder.
2. Producers increasingly do their own foreign marketing. Stellenbosch producer Jean Engelbrecht (Rust en Vrede, Guardian Peak, Stellenbosch Ridge) has established a wildly successful wine bar and bistro in Windhoek that acts as a de facto hub for SA wine in Namibia. With neighbouring countries largely ignored by a seriously under-resourced WOSA, Jean’s model is an attractive alternative for producers wishing to complete Cecil John Rhodes’ colonial dream of painting the map of Africa red from Cape to Cairo.
3. SA supermarkets embrace foreign wine. SA producers will increasingly compete against keenly priced imports from Europe (Spain and Italy) and South America as supermarket chains snap up foreign deals at under €1 a litre.
4. Demise of the flying foreign wine hack. Dead tree wine columns, parasitic on moribund hosts, are doomed. As producers seek to shrink their carbon footprints like Chinese maidens of the Song Dynasty with their feet bound tightly, the penny will finally drop that social media is international. Electrons know no boundaries, except in the case of Spotify, the internet perpetual jukebox that is not yet available in the land of Juluka. So why import a blogger who doesn’t even pitch at your tasting, as organizers of the Swartland Revolution, found out last year?
5. Demise of local wine columnists. Washington über-blogger, David White, who opened the Nederburg Auction last year, sends out a free weekly wine column to 42 subscribing newspapers in the USA. And as publishers know, nothing beats free.
6. Franschhoek entrenches itself as ground zero for gastronomy. Hats off to Maison, across the road from Liam Tomlin’s cooking school in the Leopard’s Leap tasting room at Franschhoek Station. Maison, a mini version of Koos Bekker’s Babel – which will no doubt also start locating itself in the great Franschhoek as its within spitting distance of Rupert and Rothschild – has seized the Sunday afternoon gap in the market and closes two hours later than Liam, who shuts up shop at a ridiculous 3pm. This may be how they do things in Sydney, but hedonistic hipsters in Higgovale only start thinking of Sunday lunch at 3pm. Although Maison missed a marketing opportunity when they called their black Vietnamese pot belly pig Porcini instead of Pancetta.
7. China confirmed as hedonism’s Holy Grail. When Johann Rupert drops €70 bar building the world’s largest luxury watch shop near Printemps and Galeries Lafayette in Paris, with La Tribune citing “Chinese tourists who now spend more than 600 million euros annually in France” as target market, why is SA’s marketing focus so relentlessly occidental?
8. MW a mark of Cain? The 300 member Institute of Masters of Wine, headed by South African Lynne Sherriff MW, is investigating the questionable commercial activities of one of its members – Pancho Campo. Pancho was discussed as a possible speaker at the Nederburg Auction last year and in November he organized the controversial WineFutures jamboree in Hong Kong. MWs exert considerable influence at the top end of fine wine and producers will be watching closely.
9. Value for money rules. While Johann Krige can laugh with impunity at reports of financial calamity at Kanonkop in the Weekend Argus, restaurants and consumers continue to buy down and while stellar producers like Steenberg launch their 2011 Sauvignon Blanc while discounting their excellent 2010 at GetWine, price increases will be as rare as two star Platter sighted ratings on the Helderberg.
10. Commercial wine fights back. The insidious idea, punted by estate owners that single vineyards are the only route to vinous perfection, is challenged by wines like Nederburg Ingenuity White, a blend of eight varietals that sets anorak toggles twirling, yet comes from multiple appellations. KWV are in the vanguard of terroir by truck as they celebrate the legacy of Charlie Niehaus, the inventor of Roodeberg, in the shape of an eponymous top tier 2010 red blend from Darling, Somerset West and Stellenbosch. How long before Distell gives us a Gunter Brözel sticky to shoot out the show lights?