Tim James: Wine as a luxury product

A friend of mine – seriously interested in wine, though not ridiculously so – was telling me of the pleasure he had in discovering the joys of cabernet franc. But the prices of the well-known, more enticing examples were so high as to inhibit comparison and exploration. As for syrah – he mentioned how the prices of many at the top end seemed to have virtually doubled in the last few years; he couldn’t bring himself to spend R1000 or so on a bottle of the likes of Luddite Shiraz.

This person could pretty easily afford an adequate supply of such wines, but there’s something in what’s happening to the prices of fine and perhaps-nearly-fine wine (not just here, but internationally) that sticks in many throats. Certainly in mine. There might be a generational component to this: my friend and I are of an age and we’ve observed this rise as a radical change. But don’t forget that this is the generation in the middle class that can most easily afford to drink well. How are keen young wine lovers faring (see Jamie Goode on the subject here)? For most of them, serious wine is going to be something that gets tasted (if that) rather than drunk, which is an arid way of learning to love and understand fine wine, and probably a doomed one.

I’m thinking now, though, of that sticking in the throat, a feeling of visceral displeasure, even revulsion, at the way wine is increasingly a luxury product (and no more). Internationally, burgundy is Exhibit A in this regard. I started buying red burgundy a dozen years ago – mostly village wines and a few premiers, but from fine producers. The early ones I acquired are starting to drink well now, but wines I bought for three or five hundred rands are now selling at five times that or more; current vintages cost many times what I paid, and I certainly wouldn’t enter that market now. A few years back I gave up my annual bugundy allocations – partly, I confess, because I wasn’t sure of the wisdom at my age of buying wines that I’d want to keep for ten years or more before drinking, but largely because I’m unwilling to think that the wines are worth what is being charged for them.

As for those I have in storage: easy to say – and I do tell myself – that I’m lucky to have them, forget the “value”, and just enjoy drinking them. And on occasions when I’m dining with people who’d enjoy and can respond well to such wines, that’s fine and I do. But I live alone and am not particularly sociable, and the majority of my wine pleasure comes from drinking alone at dinnertime. When most of my wine goes down fairly unconsciously (though relished) as I gawk at Succession or get anxious yet again with Mansfield Park, it simply seems wrong to do that with a bottle that would cost me R1500 or more to buy.

That’s not entirely rational, arguably. Where and how does one draw the line? But most of us know in some aspect of our lives that lines have to be drawn, even when there’s no glaringly obvious place to draw them. Sometimes the morally important thing is to have lines – and with wine I’m increasingly impelled to draw them, however arbitrarily.

I was saying something about this and related topics in a recent email conversation with Michael Fridjhon. Now, Michael’s household economy is much larger than mine, and his cellar a great deal closer to being splendid, but he understood. “And you’re right”, he said, “it is strange how irrational and personal the tipping point of current price tolerance ls. So I can live with a wine I bought for R300 now being worth R1500, even though R1500 per bottle now is not where I do my shopping. But the R1500 bottle from five years ago which might now be worth R10K is a wholly different proposition.”

Michael also mentioned that James Halliday (the great Australian wine writer, critic and collector – for want of a better word) “always said to me you can only buy wine once, so he never thought about the current market price when he opened bottles. Yet even he finally sold off his DRCs.”

Admittedly, a First World problem indeed!

And there’s probably little that can be done about it. Good wine will increasingly become the province of the rich, and the finest will largely function primarily as another “asset class” for investors and a prestigious tipple for the showy dinner tables of the ultra-rich (even if they might really prefer whisky or Coke). The best South African wine will increasingly serve those classes locally and be exported for the delectation of wine lovers who can’t afford the likes of fine bordeaux and burgundy but can afford Mullineux and Crystallum.

We can, and should, however, protest. The world’s remaining wine writers, for example, are largely passive or silent at best about this, the gaudier ones even complicit, with artful point-scoring. All genuine South African wine-lovers, though, can at the very least resist the mind-rot involved in accepting the cynical blandishments of producers, merchants et al who assure us, or imply, that it is a matter of national pride that our wine prices are lifted so high that most of us can’t – or won’t – buy the stuff.

It seems logical and likely that in years to come the number of genuine, well-informed and well-experienced wine lovers will decline, as the realistic prospect of learning to love and enjoy fine wine withers on the vine. But the problem is even greater than that. Michael Fridjhon put a simple point strongly to me, and I agree: “Wine has become too flash, too flamboyant and too expensive relative to the pleasure it’s supposed to provide.”

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. He is a taster (and associate editor) for Platter’s. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.