It was back in 2019 that producer body Vinpro asked us at WhyFive, a consumer insight consultancy, what we thought middle-class-and-up wine drinkers looked like. (NB: When I say ‘adults’ or make any other collective reference in what follows, that’s who we’re speaking about, not ‘everyone’). It’s our area of expertise: the 13 million adults out of 43 million total who live in households earning more than R10K per month. Surprised there are so few? Welcome to the real world.
The starting point was to understand the wine landscape not as a consumer, but rather from an industry perspective, and just like the end-product, the more we swirled and sniffed, the more interesting things got.
A deskful of research later, I was armed with a multitude of vinous facts that would truly test the patience of my close friends for the foreseeable future. ‘Do you know that only 30% of all still wine is sold in 750ml glass bottles?’ Etc. But one stood out above all others: according to SAWIS, ‘high priced wine’ was anything over R33 a bottle (at wholesale). That category represented only 17% of all wine consumed, but 35% of the total industry value. Seriously? No wonder Vinpro was interested in what we had to say.
The story we ended up telling probably hasn’t changed much and like all good data-driven narratives, it’s like solving a crime: you connect discrete pins on a map (data points) with string (common sense) and hope it leads you somewhere. Let’s go…
To begin, alcohol is one of many ’75:25’ consumer categories we measure. 25% of all adults don’t do any exercise, 25% never go to the movies. You get the idea. And 25% of adults don’t drink alcohol or, rather, 75% of them do. That’s a lot of customers. So far so good.
We’re also able to identify segments clearly. Crystal clearly. When you sell wine into the Top End of the SA market, for example (that’s the 2.5 million people living in the top million households by income), you might want to know that 40% of your potential drinkers are under the age of 40, 50% identify as Black adults and 45% are in Gauteng. That’s just the highest earners in the country: as you get into the thick of the middle class, the youth portion increases significantly, as do the ethnic percentages. So what?
15 years ago, I witnessed an advertising pitch to a wannabe short-term insurer aiming squarely at the emerging middle-class: consumers with ‘practical assets’. To illustrate their prowess, the agency pasted up magazine images into a montage on white board (a classic old-school approach) and labelled it ‘your target customer’. All I remember was a caravan, a double-cab bakkie, a Springbok rugby jersey, a pack of Salusa 45, two golden retrievers and a bottle of Chateau Libertas.
Even back then, we suggested the assumptions may have been, er, somewhat dubious. The agency disagreed. The client has never been heard of again. Lesson #1: if you’re marketing premium wine in 2023, you do need to understand how dramatically the size and shape and behaviour of the SA middle-market has shifted in the 21st century.
As has been the case for the past decade, more middle-class consumers drink wine than any other alcoholic beverage. 42% of them are cork-poppers. It’s a one-horse race with beer coming in second at 28% and gin close on its heels on 25%. Why so dominant? All sorts of reasons from accessibility to ‘occasion appropriate’ come to mind, but on a practical level, wine has a 55:45 female/male skew, so it’s appealing to the entire market. Beer on the other hand is 80% male-skewed. And one of the reasons gin’s had a revolution is that it is the most gender-agnostic alcohol category of all.
What about price? The last time we measured it (post-lockdown) 70% of mid-market wine drinkers typically spent more than R75 on a bottle of red wine (50% when it comes to white wine). Also, there’s a direct correlation with income: the more you earn, the more you’ll spend on a bottle of wine. That may seem obvious, but it’s an important insight. It indicates that wine drinking and enjoyment (and ultimately spend) is a continuum. It’s a journey, not a destination. One that begins in the middle-class carriage.
Which brings us to the next point because that carriage is filling up in a fascinating way. Our socio-economic landscape is like a reverse Slinky spring with increasing numbers of unemployed being countered by an ever-expanding group of relatively wealthy, relatively young adults on the other end. Example: when Covid-19 hit, there were 2.1 million individuals earning R30K or more a month. Now there are 2.5 million. And we’ve added 50 000 million-a-year-or-more earners to the tax base in a calendar year. Imagine the broader effect of this process across the total potential premium-wine market.
We’re getting to the crunch. In a growing market, if you just hold your head (percentage-wise), you’ll see an increase in volume. We’re selling more new passenger cars now than we were before the 2018 global financial collapse. Grocery retailers are showing double-digit increases every year. More people = more consumers.
Now connect the pins. When it comes to wine, what we see over the past five years is a slight, but steady, downward trend. Yes, it’s still the top dog but it’s losing ground at a percent a year. Beer on the other hand has flatlined (so it’s selling more by volume than ever) and spirits as a total category is actually going up. It’s a story that’s validated by SAWIS et al and I can’t help thinking it’s all about unrealised potential.
Put bluntly, the data shows an ever-increasing number of aspirational people who can afford to buy and try premium wine – and really want to. If the needle isn’t shifting, it almost certainly has more to do with misguided (or ineffective) marketing than anything inside the bottle or shopper sentiment. New-to-category consumers need new-to-category messaging. Yes, it’s only my opinion, but I really hope we all do a better job as time goes on than the aforementioned short-term insurer!
The easy answer to that question must be “a helluva lot of people”. In 2021 well over 13 million litres of it were sold varietally on the domestic market – that’s more than the combined total of chardonnay, chenin and other named white varieties (excluding blends, but of course much less than the generic categories of “dry white”, “natural sweet”, etc, which totally dominate things and is where most of the chenin, for example, goes). Platter’s list hundreds and hundreds of sauvignon bottlings, with many dozens – wooded and unwooded – rating over 90 points.
However, when I look at what’s available at the smarter sort of shops that local Winemag.co.za readers would largely frequent, the listings are rather pitiable. Wine Cellar has about 18 on offer (with a small handful of blends with sauvignon), Caroline’s Fine Wines about 23 – neither of these outlets carrying anything under R100. Norman Goodfellows has 60-odd and a much wider range of prices, while Makro inevitably has a whole lot, at all price levels.
I’ve been thinking about sauvignon (something I tend to do infrequently, and not with a whole lot of alacrity, frankly), because La Motte this last week kindly sent me a bottle of their prestige Pierneef Collection 2022. Guiltily I remembered that I still had the 2021 they sent me a year back, and also three other top-level sauvignons given to me last year – all cowering together, awaiting attention, and if possible love. So, I thought it would be interesting to try them all together with that added year in bottle (I suspected they will all be the better for it), and comparing the two La Mottes. It’s worth noting, in fact, that most top-end sauvignon producers now hold on to their wines for at least 6-12 months, while a decade back it was only the current-year vintage that found a place on the retail shelves. Most, I’m sure, deserve a few more years to bring out their best.
My bottles come from Constantia (Klein Constantia), Elgin (Iona), Stellenbosch (Jordan Timepiece) and Elim/Napier (La Motte) – all famous areas for sauvignon. I’d guess that, probably, these are the areas that most people (people like us, that is, who enjoy linking wines with areas!) would most associate with Cape sauvignon, plus Durbanville, of course.
But here’s another clutch of statistics to ponder. There are 9878 hectares of sauvignon in the country. Add together the sauvignon vineyard areas of Elgin, Agulhas, Constantia and Durbanville, and you get 1117 ha, about 12% of the total – a smaller area than found in the Swartland, which most serious winelovers would consider a ludicrous place to grow the grape. Stellenbosch’s production is large (and certainly not all anything like cool), however, probably over 2000 ha, though it’s difficult and laborious to work out the actual figure, as Sawis irritatingly insists on including the Cape-Town area within Stellenbosch in its stats. However, add that into the other cooler-climate areas already mentioned, and the grand total still comes to less than is found in the hot, irrigated vineyards of the Breede River Valley.
But that’s a typical picture of South African wine production for you, I’m afraid.
Anyway, back to my little clutch of fancy wines, which ranged from good to excellent. I was a little disappointed with the Jordan Timepiece, the only 2020 wine (its maiden vintage). From a 1983-planted vineyard, mostly vinified in a clay pot, the rest in oak, it revealed some oxidative winemaking, both in flavour and its creamy breadth. Subtle in fairly developed figgy flavour and aromatics, and with a decent acidity, but not quite convincingly focused enough for a top example.
Iona Elgin Highlands 2021 is totally convincing, as expected. The most “typically” aromatic of the lot, with tropicality obvious, along with citrus and floral notes. Lusciously fruit-filled and intense, though not without precision and delicacy; well-balanaced and succulently gripping. No doubt the bit of oaked semillon is doing its broadening duty. A really lingering finish.
As a subjective character preference, I’d go for the Klein Constantia 2021 estate wine: less forthrightly aromatic and assertive, with some deeper, complex notes, thanks to rather more oxidative winemaking than Iona, I think; richly textured but a lovely fresh, firm acidity. I wrote appreciatively about this wine a year ago, in fact, when it was released, along with some older KC sauvignons going back to 1997, which had aged extremely (and to me surprisingly) and beneficially well, so I reckon this wine also has a fine future if kept properly.
As to the two very good La Motte Pierneefs from the Cape South Coast, it didn’t seem to me that a year had made much difference – though perhaps the 2022 was a little more aggressive and bright than the 21. A touch more guava in the tropicality of these wines, which also have more green notes matching the bright acidity – they’re a bit lower in alcohol than the others (the KC is the ripest by that measure). The younger (and lighter) wine seemed to me the finer of the pair, in terms of flavour intensity and overall balance – but that’s probably a vintage thing.
Boschendal in Franschhoek has announced Eric Bulpitt as its new executive chef. Bulpitt has previously worked at Pierneef à La Motte, FABER at Avondale and The Restaurant at Newton Johnson. Boschendal’s The Werf Restaurant was awarded an Eat Out star at the 2022 Eat Out Woolworths Restaurant Awards.
Pieter Walser, winner of the Grand Prix at the Wine Label Design Awards 2015 for his BLANKbottle range of wine, continues on his nonconformist way. Makstokkie 2021 is from Swartland Verdelho – ungrafted, echela trellised vines planted on schist soils on a steep slope outside Riebeek Kasteel, to be precise.
Spontaneously fermented and matured for 10 months in older oak, the nose shows subtle and elusive notes of pear, peach and dried herbs while the palate is taut and precise – great concentration and driving acidity before a saline, uncompromisingly dry finish. Price: R295 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Malie McGregor started as winemaker at Stellenbosch property Cavalli in December 2021 after a previous stint at Rust en Vrede, her first wines from the 2022 harvest now released. Tasting notes and ratings as follows:
Cavalli Reserve Chenin Blanc 2022
Price: R185
This replaces the wine previously known as Filly, the 2020 vintage of which was not just best in category but also best white wine overall in the Prescient Reports of 2021. The greater part of this vintage was matured for six months in barrel, 16% new (includes an unoaked portion of approximately 15%).
The nose shows top notes of flowers and herbs before pear, peach and lemon while the palate has a dense core of fruit to go with an arresting line of acidity and a saline finish. Focused and tense.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Cavalli Reserve Chardonnay 2022
Price: R200
New. Matured for 10 months in barrel, 27% new. Lime, lemon and vanilla on the nose while the palate shows dense fruit and zippy acidity before a suitably dry finish. Clean and correct but lacking some detail which may still emerge with time in bottle.
CE’s rating: 90/100.
Cavalli Cremello 2022
Price: R235
43% Chenin Blanc, 25% Chardonnay, 21% Verdelho and 11% Viognier. The nose is complex with some flinty reduction preceding pear, peach, citrus, floral perfume, a hint of vanilla and spice while the palate has great fruit concentration matched by zippy acidity, the finish long and savoury. Full without sacrificing nuance.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
I have a nagging worry about the ability of South Africa’s best examples of Chenin Blanc to age with benefit but a wine that seems to be tracking well is the 2019 from Stellenbosch biodynamic producer Reyneke – I found it primary to the point of inchoate (although still good enough to rate 91) in June 2020 while a bottle enjoyed a few days ago was just outstanding.
This prompted me to track down a bottle of 2020 still available in the trade (price: R255 a bottle). Grapes from two blocks planted in 1974 and 1976 respectively, winemaking involved spontaneous fermentation in second-fill French barrique as well as 2500-litre foudrés before 10 months of maturation.
Complex aromas of peach, tangerine, hay, wet wool and some flintiness while the palate has great depth of fruit, well integrated acidity and a savoury finish – not as punchy as some of its counterparts but certainly possessing layers of flavour to go with nice weight and texture. The farm is already selling 2022 which I suspect should not be broached until at least 2025.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Cape Town specialist wine retailer Caroline Rillema and husband Ray Kilian own a 3.5ha property near Cape South Coast village of Baardskeerdersbos, the resulting wines designated as W.O. Cape Agulhas.
In the case of the 2021, the wine was made at Black Oystercatcher in Elim, the blend made up of 60% Sauvignon Blanc and 40% Semillon, these crushed together before maturation lasting 10 months in older barrels.
The wine is a quintessential example of what this area produces with the nose showing lime, green apple, white peach, hay and fresh herbs while the palate has a dense core of fruit, arresting acidity and an intensely savoury finish. Striking in its purity and drive. Price: R195 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 91/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
The death of Dave Hughes a little over a week ago was hardly unexpected, but it brought with it a very clear sense of the gates swinging shut on an era. His was the last visible presence of a remarkable band of people who shaped the wine industry as we know it today. Mostly they shared a stint at Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery (SFW) in the days when the company (owned at the time by South African Breweries) transformed the consumption of wine from a regional – largely fortified – beverage to a drink that enjoyed middle class respectability.
They did so by making wines which could be enjoyed easily, without the hype and arcane bumpf that thrives today, and then by getting these new styles of unfortified wines into the national market. They could never have done that without the marketing power and consumer-facing skills of SAB. But SAB could never have done it without their vision, and their ability to take the best of whatever was planted in reasonable proximity to their Stellenbosch cellars and turn the fruit into quaffable but not inconsequential wine.
The heyday of the trade built by SFW was the first half of the 1960s. Its high-volume brands included many names which are still with us (some in a much attenuated form). Chateau Libertas, Tassenberg, Zonnebloem, Nederburg, but also Virginia, Oom Tas and Lieberstein, the latter three sold in returnable glass and in quantities which have never really been rivalled since. Ronnie Melck (who died in the 1990s) and Duimpie Bailey (who died in 2021) built the production side of the wine business. Dave Hughes, who arrived in the Cape from what was then Rhodesia, focussed on consumer engagement.
It was a time of great transition in the wine industry: legislation drafted in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and which became law in 1973, facilitated the development of independent wineries and the establishment of wine estates. Even before the concept was fully understood, the estate wine trade began to grow, led by a triumvirate of rebels (Delheim’s Spatz Sterling, Spier’s Niel Joubert and Simonsig’s Frans Malan). They launched the Stellenbosch Wine Route in competition with the brands with which SFW had built the wine market. Initially SFW tried to stifle them, boycotting their fruit in an endeavour to kill the threat posed by the estate wine trade. This was not SFW’s finest moment, and it was doomed to failure.
Suddenly the historic properties which hitherto had depended on the beneficence of SFW simply to survive had their own route to market. As they grew, SFW lost access to some of the Coastal Region’s finest vineyards. Its response was to industrialise the production of even its most prestigious wines: the dichotomy between perceived artisanal and perceived commercial dates from this quite recent moment in our modern wine history. Consider this: in 1973 Kanonkop bottled its first wines under its own label. As a consequence, and over time, this deprived SFW of the fruit it had used to make some of its best wines in the 1950s and 1960s.
Initially the change was slow, even tentative. The wholesale merchants focused on their growing bag-in-box business, the estates on their wine routes, their mail-and-rail. By the 1980s, as international markets began to close, the pressure cooker of isolation played its own crucial role. So did domestic wine tourism. Looking back, it all seems so obvious.
It’s easy to blame the clumsy protectionism of SFW and SAB as they tried to close down the independents before their offerings obtained traction in the market. It was how they did business, and it fitted well with the general kragdadigheid of the era. By 1979, when PW Botha overruled his own Minister of Trade and Industry and allowed the creation of Cape Wines and Distillers – a virtual monopoly in the wine and spirits production sector – there was no place left for nuanced engagement. The massive corporatised machine was always going to move across the battlefield like a tank, expecting to mow down whatever stood in its path. The best growers, on the best sites, became the guerillas, agile, fleet-of-foot, able to hide in the mountains and the impenetrable jungle where marketing departments and large advertising agencies never go. We all know how these war-games end.
The Ceres Plateau captures the imagination as a wine-growing area, the vineyards planted some 1000m above sea level in the Witzenberg, 40km north of the town of Ceres itself. The climate is continental and winter temperatures frequently dropping below zero. Could this appellation, for instance, lend itself to less ordinary Pinot Noir?
De Grendel have been working with Pinot from here for a while and the current-release 2021 (price: R275 a bottle) again fascinates. 70% whole-bunch fermented, the juice was inoculated, malolactic fermentation taking place in new barrels, before maturation lasting 13 months in older barrels.
Initially the nose shows top notes of musk and rose before red and black cherry while fynbos, white pepper and even a little meatiness emerge with time in glass. The palate shows good clarity of fruit, lemon-like acidity and lightly grippy tannins. It’s deftly done but lacks some of the heft of previous vintages – alcohol is 12.82%.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
In recent years Cape pinot noir has shared in the large price increases common to most top-end wine, perhaps especially reds. It hasn’t reached, though, the stratospheric levels of, especially but not only, the cab-based Stellenbosch wines that have been particularly vulnerable to ego- and greed-driven producer ambitions (oh, all right, let’s credit “the market”). Actually, I wonder if this isn’t going to be changing soon for pinot, with the best examples getting ever pricier. Why not? Cape pinot reputations are good, locally and internationally, and there are many red burgundy-lovers being pushed aside into the (relative) gutter as the price juggernaut there moves on relentlessly.
The most illustrious top local versions are already keenly taken up, it seems from a glance at what’s available online, even as prices edge towards (and occasionally past) R1000 per bottle. Names like Storm, Crystallum, Newton Johnson, Hamilton Russell, Paul Cluver and a good few others seldom seem to even reach the shelves (locally at least) before they are eagerly grabbed. Even among the slightly less lauded labels, prices over R500 per bottle are common.
Modestly priced alternatives are not easy to find, however – unlike with, say, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz. Probably, I suppose, because most of the somewhat lesser pinot fruit goes to support the huge and lucrative demand for sparkling wine. So when, feeling in the mood for a coolable cinsault the other day, I called in at Woolworths to get a few bottles of Marras The Trickster (R99), I was surprised to notice on an adjacent shelf two bottles of pinot for little more than that, one from the rather grand DeMorgenzon estate, the other from Haute Cabrière.
It seemed a good idea to see if I could find a few more at that sort of price to report on. The Pick n Pay supermarket in the same shopping mall gave me the cheapest one I found in my admittedly brief survey, from Southern Road (a label which I’d never heard of). (Incidentally, and with not untypical incompetence for PnP, which is undoubtedly the poorest of the supermakets in their wine offering, the few pinots were jumbled up with the pinotages, under big placards, one of which announced “Pino Noir”.) And at my excellent local independent, Constantia Wine and Craft in Plumstead, Cape Town, where there was a good selection of pinots, I found one from Kruger Family Wines – always an impressive and good value range. All but one of these from 2021.
The result of the little tasting was not without some impressive results. Unfortunately, the Southern Road (R95) didn’t shape up to the other three. As far as I can tell, Southern Road is a brand connected in some way with Nuiba Wines and with an out-of-date website, which says their wines are from the Swartland – though this one is WO McGregor – not the first place where one would expect to find pinot vines. It’s not a bad cheap anonymous red, both a touch sweetly confected and a little green and lean, with not a lot of pinot character.
The most expensive of my quartet was Haute Cabrière Pinot Noir Unwooded 2022 (R115). A pleasant everyday wine; clean and light-feeling, with decent pinot character, balanced and flavourful enough, though a touch more raw than the others – ascribable to its being so young, I suppose. I should mention that I tasted the wines twice, rather more chilled on the second day. None had enough tannin for that to cause any problems, though a herbaceous note on this Haut Cabrière only emerged when cold.
Like that wine and the Kruger, the DeMorgenzon DMZ Pinot Noir (R110, a Woolworths exclusive) is WO Western Cape, so I guess the grapes were at least partly bought in. Deeper, darker fruit aromas and flavours here (varietal cherry/raspberry with a hint of undergrowth, which is nice), softly textured but well structured. A very acceptable example for the price, I’d say. It’s not as fine, of course, as another Woolworths exclusive, the also good value Catherine Marshall, but that is closer to R150.
Undoubtedly the standout of this little tasting was the Kruger Western Cape Pinot Noir 2021 (R110). There’s a good deal more aromatic and flavour intensity than on the others, but with a characterfulness that goes beyond mere fruit-forwardness, a good structural balance, and a bit of tannic grip to the velvety texture that I enjoyed. A wine I’d be more than happy to drink, and would do so with respect for itself and for the way it over-delivers on the price.
Arguably, some of the expensive, terroir-expressive Cape pinots also over-deliver on their price, especially in international terms. I’d certainly say that that is true for the splendid, ageworthy (age-demanding, in fact) Storms. But, to repeat, I’m pretty confident that those prices are going to be rising inexorably. This modest Kruger is a bit of consolation, but don’t expect to find many real pinot bargains at this price level – now or in the future. If anyone can suggest others, I’m sure we’d all be grateful.
Subscribers receive daily reviews and in-depth reports before release to the public. Cancel any time.
