Editorial: Does SA make too much top-end Chenin Blanc?

Nuschka de Vos of Vulpes Wines.

Nuschka de Vos was winemaker at Reyneke Wines from 2015 until late-2021. The emergence of the Omicron variant of Cov-19 disrupted travel plans and instead she decided to forge ahead with her own label, maiden release being the rather good Vulpes Chama Chenin Blanc 2022 (see here).

Now she is launching her second vintage, the range having expanded to included not one, but two, examples of Chenin plus a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Whereas Chama (after the Cape Fox) is from two Paardeberg vineyards, the new Chenin called Velox (after the Swift Fox) is from a neglected Citrusdal Mountian vineyard that De Vos discovered along with viticulturist Rosa Kruger – a full review is pending but suffice to say for now is that both these wines are excellent.

The question that must be posed, however is does South Africa now produce too many examples of top-end Chenin Blanc (De Vos’s two wines will both sell for R385 a bottle)?

To some extent, the South Africa Chenin Blanc situation cannot be changed and must be accepted. It remains the country’s number one most planted variety, 16 192ha in the ground at the end of 2023, the equivalent of 18.4% if the national vineyard. South Africa has more Chenin Blanc vines planted than any other country. It’s what SA does. Nobody asks if New Zealand makes too much Sauvignon Blanc or Austria too much Grüner Veltliner…

Besides, over the past few decades, South Africa has been smashing it with Chenin. More and more wine critics and somms are inclined to view what’s coming out of this country as not just some of the best Chenin but some of the best white wine on the planet.

But is market demand really endless? Put differently, at what point does yet another deluxe Chenin Blanc become overkill? If South African producers flood the market with top-end Chenin Blanc, there could be issues with supply outpacing demand, leading to reduced pricing power or market saturation. How many people in the world are looking for a top-end Chenin Blanc experience? Probably not as many as local producers would like to think.

If too many premium-priced Chenin Blancs hit the market, consumers might gravitate back toward more familiar white wines like Chardonnay. In terms of sheer quality, there’s very little to choose between SA’s best Chenin and its best Chardonnay, while Chenin has never carried the same prestige as Chardonnay – just ask the producers of Savennières and Vouvray.

Price sensitivity is a related issue. If there’s too much expensive Chenin on the shelves, some consumers are going to realise that there are cheaper options out there – Sauvignon Blanc, at least those made with serious intent, as well as white blends, offer drinking pleasure without necessarily costing as much as the most ambitious examples of Chenin.  

Top-end Chenin Blanc has been hugely successful in the last two or three decades, but if it’s to continue then the industry is going to have to make a conscious effort to maintain demand and differentiate these wines in a crowded global market.

How to get that market positioning right? That’s a complex question to answer but there does seem a tendency creeping into local wine circles to view wine as an investible asset rather than a product of curiosity.

Consumers with a more acquisitive bent, those more inclined to see wine as an asset class, can’t help but be preoccupied with value appreciation. Some buy wine with the intent of selling them at a higher price in the future. Others are still going to drink their holdings but a key motivation in acquiring any wine is that it should increase in value over time. A trophy hunting mentality is involved. Score inflation among critics, collectors trying to corner the market, and fanciful auction results are the unfortunate side-effects.

If top-end Chenin Blanc is going to survive and prosper, then it needs to be positioned as product of curiosity rather than as a category with a few rare and hard to obtain examples that become highly traded and a whole bunch of also-rans.

To some degree, wine needs to be sold as something other than wine. Wine tells the story of the land it comes from, the people who make it, and the history behind its production. Wine as cultural artefact, wine as transparent medium to convey not just site in narrow agricultural terms but also human society in broad terms.  

Ultimately, there’s no getting away from the fact that while wine is a physical object with lots of cultural connotations, it’s also a consumable product and those who engage with wine as a product of curiosity, meanwhile, are driven by a desire to have as many different sensory experiences as possible. Wine is about the nuances in aroma, flavor, texture, and it interacts with food or changes over time in the glass. Wine is not for selling again and again, it’s for drinking.

Returning to the two Vulpes wines, how lucky are we that as a winemaker as accomplished as De Vos has decided to make more than one example of Chenin, allowing us to contrast the Paardeberg with the Citrusdal Mountain, and providing two distinctly different drinking experiences, despite being made from the same variety. De Vos is a Dutch-language surname meaning “the fox” and hence the theme of foxes in the branding – members of the Vulpes genus are colloquially referred to true foxes, and there are apparently 12 existing species around the world, so maybe a few more site-specific Chenins to come.