Tim James: Can SA wine brands outlive their creators?

A good deal of the excitement in South African wine in the last few decades has centred on the efforts of individual winemakers – winegrowers, rather, as many of the best of them have also been involved in the vineyards even when they don’t own them. In fact, the general rule for ambitious young wine-producers has been to at least get going by making their wine in rented space (or in the space and time generously allowed them by their wine-estate employers) from bought-in grapes. Typically, they then spearhead any marketing strategies themselves, their personalities often a crucial element of the perception of their wines.

The focus on the heroic winemaker has been an often brilliantly successful strategy, allowing for fast and exciting growth. But building a reputation and a brand around one person – rarely two – has an obvious inherent danger. What might Alheit Vineyards be without Chris Alheit? Miles Mossop Wines without Miles? Van Loggerenberg Wines without Lukas? With many et ceteras…. How to take the brands into a future with more stability than can be guaranteed by one fine winemaker and his or her hard work, supportive partner, and skill? As more and more of the new-wave heroes reach middle-age and beyond, strategies to make their brands grow and survive without them are emerging – or not.

Miles Mossop, for example, responded with great candour when I asked him about this. “My brand is so linked with me”, he admitted. “that it is a problem”. He has a reputation as one of the finest winemakers of his generation, both in his former position at Tokara and with his own brand – but he owns neither winery nor vineyards. There’s no certainty that his children will have interest in continuing his work. How to make a sustainable business as well as great wines is the obvious task now. Miles speaks of getting to the stage of at least having an assistant winemaker, of firmly linking the brand to a place to provide continuity (he admires not only Bernard Bredell’s Scions of Sinai wines, but also his building an association with a particular location rather than a name – something beyond himself), and is investigating the idea of slightly shifting the name of his own brand away from something so personal.

By contrast, Chris Williams told me that it was a conscious decision not to use his own name in The Foundry, the brand he established with his business partner James Reid. The Foundry now also has a base in the vineyards and buildings of James’s Voor-Paardeberg farm. Although Chris has been central to building the reputation of the brand, there is little doubt that it could survive without him. In some ways a sad truth (of the kind we all have to face someday), but really a triumphant one if one wants one’s work to survive longer than oneself.

The name thing is obviously significant in setting up some apparent limitations. At an extreme, one imagines with diffiiculty David & Nadia without … David and/or Nadia. I wrote last week about how three other leading new-wave Swartland producers with brands named for themselves (their surnames and family invoked)  have changed and built stability over the last 15 years – different strategies, but all involving the achievement of brand bases in winery and/or land.

Of the three, Sadie Family Wines is looking to be the most securely sustainable brand right now, despite being so dependent on leased or semi-leased vineyards. Above all, making the “Family” bit meaningful, Eben has two sons establishing their reputations as winemakers (gosh – I remember them as little boys, their beautiful manners a tribute to a strict Calvinist upbringing, who called me Oom Tim). Charming young men, they are unlikely to share the charisma of dad, but the imprimatur of the family name and family training should help work wonders in terms of continuity. As to the Mullineux, I don’t pretend to have an inkling of the nature of the deal with their rich partner, but I would suspect that the Mullineux Family Wines part, at least, is safe enough, and there is a next generation to which one can attach hopes – as with Badenhorst Family Wines (where, I reckon, financially all-important Secateurs is anyway sufficiently independent to be viable without Adi attached).

Other new-wave Swartland winemakers/brands with strong identifications with the winemaker, like Testalonga and Mother Rock/JH Meyer, have also recognised the need for a fine-wine brand to have something really solid behind it, and have already established themselves as landowners, in a smallish way, and cellar-owners. There will surely be more soon. As with Sadie, owned vineyards may not for a good while supply all the grapes needed, but, along with the winery itself, the stake in land offers an assurance of long-term seriousness. I once quoted Eben as saying “To have a future, you must plant”, and he really meant it – literally, symbolically, even spiritually.

Further afield, Le Riche is a fine example of a family-named brand closely linked to the winemaker but successfully transitioning to the next generation; the fairly length stability of the brand and the source of grapes, the oversight of Etienne himself, the timely acquisition of a cellar and some land were well thought through.

A more interesting example is Neil Ellis Wines, in which Van Loveren recently acquired a majority stake. The buyers were getting, among other assets including the cellar, the use of the full name of the founder and his reputation for excellence – which had already successfully been used as the main responsibilities were passed to a younger generation. Now, although the family remains fully connected (for the present at least), the brand has moved beyond its control. It seems unlikely that any loss of confidence in the brand will result. That sale is, paradoxically, a real sign of success.

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.