There’s no business like wine show business – and we’re in prime showtime season. Wine competitions in South Africa seem to grow at an inverse rate to domestic wine sales. Rarely a week passes without the announcement of a new batch of awards – followed by a cluster of press releases from show organisers and public relations agencies heralding every individual cellar’s haul of gold, silver and bronze.
Will the South African wine industry reach saturation point with all of its wine shows, wine challenges and wine competitions? A quick head-count suggests the tally has hit the thirty mark – more than every fortnight on average. There’s winemaker of the year, the winemaker’s own awards, woman winemaker of the year, retailer winemaker of the year; Chenin, Shiraz, Cap Classique and Pinotage challenges; top ten Pinotage awards, best Bordeaux and Cape blends; airline awards, wine club, wine guide and best value awards; domestic and foreign wine press awards; young wine, dessert wine and port wine awards; taste-offs, tests and lastly, regional, national and international shows.
Trying to make sense out of all those awards is confusing. One man’s meaty Pinotage is another panel’s poison. Wines which win a trophy one month are rated as mediocre with three-stars or worse by another panel the next – or wines which perform well locally fail to impress foreign judges abroad. With wine bottles decorated with more medals than a Mexican general fighting it out on the shelf, pity the poor consumer in search of a reliable benchmark. It’s difficult enough for wine writers to decide which wine awards to convey to readers as an indicator of consistency and quality.
Who profits most from wine shows – the organisers, the commercial sponsors, the fly-in judges, the wine industry, the brand builders or individual producers? For the cellars, particularly the smaller producers, entering wine shows is a costly business, with high fees per entry (especially on international shows). Do wine competitions improve quality, blockbuster show wines or an evolution of orthodox global styles? Talking to winemakers at some of the recent shows, they appear to be more circumspect in terms of which competitions they elect to participate in – and how many wines they enter.
Gyles Webb, winemaker at Thelema is a well-known spokesperson for the no-show club. Apart from entering Diner’s Club Winemaker of the Year – and winning it twice in 1994 and 1996 – he didn’t enter any shows between his first release in1988 and 2005. What made him do an about-turn and enter the International Wine Challenge and the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show in 2006 after two decades out in the cold?
Webb comments, 'After studying wine marketing in Australia, my son persuaded me to enter a few shows this year. Frankly, it’s been a complete waste of time. We entered the same wines in both competitions. We won two golds, two silvers and a bronze at the International Wine Challenge in London and only a bronze at the Old Mutual Show. Vergelegen won all the awards at the Old Mutual Show – and won absolutely nothing at the International Wine Challenge with the same wines. Wine competitions are like a lucky dip. Once we’ve established loyal customers, we sell out our wines every year. So what’s the point? Our customers say it’s not necessary.'
After years of no-shows, Neil Ellis has selectively entered wine competitions over the last five years. He comments, 'Shows are not high on my list of priorities. We enter the Old Mutual Show and Veritas – that’s it. There are more wine shows in South Africa than anywhere else in the world. I’m a winemaker not a show-monger. Entering shows with credibility adds value – as long as you’ve got the supplies to meet consumer demand. Are we running a business or a show supply chain? Wines that win all the gongs and medals at shows are often technically flawed.'
'The show is only as good as the judges. A magazine panel has five or six judges one month, and a completely new panel the next. Where’s the consistency? Everyone has their judging criteria and favours a particular style. No responsible producer can chop or change his approach to wine styles to suit the show judges. It makes more sense to listen to one person’s point of view – consumers need to decide whether they trust a Jancis Robinson or a Parker.'
Abrie Bruwer, the outspoken owner-winemaker of Springfield, has never participated in principle in any wine competition since entering his first two vintages in Veritas in 1995 and 1996. Occasional wine panels which feature his wines have to go out and buy them – and he says he can’t stop them from doing that. He concludes, 'I don’t trust any palate which spends thirty seconds on a wine, spits it out – then hangs a medal on its neck. The Springfield name carries more credibility than those shows.'
'What message do you send out to a consumer? I doubt whether retail buyers worry too much about wine awards – but some consumers run after the badges. There’s a whole industry jumping up around the wine industry. There are probably more people living off wine than making it. We stand behind the wine in the bottle – we don’t hide behind the badges like a general. We look at everything in the long term at Springfield – no short-cuts. I don’t judge at any competitions either – that would be hypocritical.'