Is local lekker enough?

Wednesday, 10 November, 2004
Cyril Selby
If local is so lekker, how come South Africans are such slack wine drinkers? I mean, a per capita consumption of just on eight litres per person per year is nothing to croak about, especially as we are – and want to be seen – as a wine country. Struth, even the Aussies are clocking up close to 20 litres of wine per person per year. This when their wine industry and culture is far younger than ours.

I am not even going to embarrass myself by quoting the volumes put-away by European countries. Put it this way, comparing our consumption to those in countries like Italy, Spain, France and even England is enough to make a wine farmer resort to wearing long pants.

This situation is, as all problems are, being addressed. Not so much through want, however, as through necessity. The exchange rate, oversupply and cut-throat prices in international markets have eventually caused local producers to remember the local market. Yes, the very same market that was the last thing on producers' minds when sanctions were lifted in the early nineties and anyone that could stomp a grape and cork a bottle went looking for a gap in the export market.

Now we are seeing a proliferation of cheap and cheerful new labels entering the local landscape on a dime a dozen. Bigger liquor players are buying-up wine lists in restaurants to ensure the customer's choice is limited to aforementioned players' gain. Certain restaurateurs are being offered R5000 just to attend a meeting with one of these larger liquor companies.

There is feverish talk of a generic marketing campaign for South African wine in its country of origin. Hoping to sway tastes away from beer and coolers and whisky, to wine.

But hang-on? Is this not the same old story all over again?

Back in the 1970s and 1980s the industry was schmoozing the local market, the black market, to be specific. In the dingy days of apartheid representatives from the KWV, SFW and Distillers were hanging-out in Soweto shebeens until the early hours, doing wine promotions, hosting wine-tastings. Hussling. Shebeen Maestro Lucky Michaels from Pelican fame was, with other shebeen dudes, a popular guest at the Nederburg Auction and other glamorous events. Wined and dined, and motivated to buy wine and to spread its gospel amongst their consumer-base.

But then we were free. Mandela was released. The international markets opened-up and the black market was no longer a necessity. Wine marketing in the townships ground to a halt.

The rest is, as they say in Soweto over their pints of Hansa and drams of Johnny Walker, history. History which repeats itself as the wine industry is now strumming the same guitar as 20 years ago, and singing a tune with the question: "How are we going to get the black market to drink wine?"

By getting off your butts, that's how. Having been privy to a few private wine-tastings in the Western Cape and Soweto, I can safely say that this market is virgin territory. I have never encountered this raw, energetic and enthusiastic curiosity on wine as I have in the black market.

The main question asked by this market is: how do we get our hands on anything else besides Nederburg Baronne and KWV 10 year old? How do we find the blockbusters? We know: drive to Sandton or the Cape Town Waterfront....but guess what - we don't want to. We want good wine in our taverns, the places where our customers are. Why can't we have the same service from the wine cellars and wine companies that restaurants and hotels enjoy in the formal sectors?

This is what is asked. And if the industry is serious about the local market, it better get some market surveying done about the potential in the black market.

Most important is to change the image of wine. Take it out of the stoep and the Cape Dutch Boland farmhouse. Make it as representative of the South African culture as oil can guitars, brandy and coke and the penny whistle.

Only when wine crosses over into being a national asset, displayed from Bela-Bela to Brackenfell will we begin to unleash our industry's true potential.

We have the balls for this. The brains, that seems to be another story.