Michael Fridjhon: The Tim Atkin Special Report and the question of independence

The news, announced recently by Wines of South Africa (WOSA) to its members, that henceforth producers would have to pay to have their wines rated by Tim Atkin MW for his annual South Africa report, has unsurprisingly elicited a certain amount of outrage (see, for instance, here). Atkin has been reviewing Cape wines for his report since 2013.

In clarifying that producers would have to contribute directly to the costs of their inclusion in future reports, WOSA has made it clear that over the years it has paid a substantial share of his travel and accommodation overheads. In other words, South African producers, through their export body, have borne the costs of generating the content for the report. This means that by their paying the expenses incurred in producing what goes into the report, the revenues which flow to Atkin (from the sale of the report, from the sale of stickers, and from hosting the tastings) are largely profit.

The report is a thorough document and sells in digital format for GBP 20. The 2025 edition runs to over 300 pages. 2,000 wines from 397 producers are reviewed. Atkin comments on the Cape wine scene, delivers a classification of the best 325 producers, adds a list of best restaurants, and much else besides. For those who are interested in South African wine and willing to consider his scores as a reliable guideline, the purchase price is not unreasonable.

However, there’s no evidence that the organisation which has picked up a substantial chunk of the costs in order to promote South African wine and some South African wineries via the text, has properly interrogated the value of its investment. How many copies are purchased every year, and in which countries? The location of the buyers is very important. WOSA’s brief has always been the promotion and sale of Cape wine abroad. That South African wineries and their local distributors might purchase a copy is good business for Atkin, but it’s irrelevant from the perspective of WOSA’s mandated responsibility. The mere fact that over the years the organisation has invested several million Rands of the budget destined for raising the profile of South African wine abroad without any attempt to quantify what it has obtained in exchange is deeply worrying. Now that we know as much, this cannot be ignored: WOSA’s directors have a fiduciary responsibility and the mere fact that they have allowed this to happen should be of real concern to the exporters whose levy payments may have been squandered. (We don’t know for certain because as of now no one has been able to report on the size, location and quality of the international audience.)

So much then for the governance failings at WOSA, but what now about the proposed User Pays arrangement that has really brought the whole sorry deal into the limelight? I cannot help thinking that the controversy around WOSA asking its members to foot the bill for their reviews from now on is nothing other than a long overdue epiphany. What we are witnessing is the anguish of the lover who was happy to accept the gifts and the high life as long as the relationship looked like a romance, but suddenly baulks when the blunt details of the trade-off are reduced to a contract. As long as WOSA (using funds collected from the producers) offered a fig-leaf for the transaction so that it didn’t look as if the wineries were paying directly for their reviews, the arrangement seemed perfectly acceptable. Now the mercenary nature of the transaction is in plain sight there’s a whole lot of uncomfortable squirming.

There are things which I have never liked about the report, and the business model. However, I avoided commenting about them (or at least in much detail) because since we are perceived to be competitors in the same space it would seem inappropriate coming from me. My concerns relate primarily to the sighted tastings (confirmation bias undermines any claim to objectivity), to the score inflation which now sees 212 wines collecting 95 points or more, and the cynicism with which Atkin has wielded his allocation of 100 point scores. However, from the moment I discovered that WOSA’s contributions to his travel and accommodation were not a once-off cost as they might have been for other influential writers, but were instead an ongoing subsidy, it became clear that the report lacked the independence essential for its credibility.

South African wine is not – and has not been for sometime – an object for him to review. It’s an employer which pays a large chunk of his expenses. If the reports don’t get brighter, shinier, glossier – and with more and more high-scoring wines appearing every year – the deal is at risk. He is a contractor and WOSA is the client. We all know how the dynamic in relationships like this plays out. All that has changed is that with the removal of the veil the crass nature of the engagement is there for all to see. What once appeared to be editorial is now plainly advertorial and has been devalued accordingly.

What should wineries do, confronted now with a suite of options (R2000 for a premium one-on-one, R1000 for a less exclusive encounter, R100 to present a couple of discovery bottles en masse)? They can elect to withdraw, to pay nothing and see what happens. If enough of the really influential players simply walk away from the Ponzi scheme, it must collapse: WOSA cannot step in for some but not for others. Alternatively wineries can grumble but stay on board “for the good of the industry”. This is Eben Sadie’s position: he admits that he feels deeply uncomfortable about any arrangement where the critic is indebted to those upon whom he sits in judgement. But he has also said that if the proposed set-up is a once-off solution while Atkin revises his funding model, it’s better than an abrupt end to the report. If his view prevails and only a few producers bail, the leaky barge can stay above the water line for another year.

What cannot change now is what cannot be unseen, that User Pays is a euphemism for an arrangement which is venal in nature, transactional in its execution, and irretrievably compromised. If the wines were tasted blind, the payment wouldn’t matter – but they’re not. If producers bought medal stickers for less-than-impressive scores, it might matter less. But it is clear now, in a way which is fundamentally different, that as an industry we are paying in hard currency and getting Zim dollars in exchange.

• Michael Fridjhon has over thirty-five years’ experience in the liquor industry. He is the founder of Winewizard.co.za and holds various positions including Visiting Professor of Wine Business at the University of Cape Town; founder and director of WineX – the largest consumer wine show in the Southern Hemisphere and chairman of The Trophy Wine Show.