Tim James: Wine ladders and entry-level wines

By , 20 January 2025

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There’s a well-worn but good joke that’s relevant to my theme – but a joke is anyway surely nice to have early in the year. It’s set in rural Ireland, though there are versions I know of from Scotland and France, and there might even be a Van der Merwe version (what happened to Van der Merwe jokes? I haven’t heard one for a decade or two – did we suddenly realise they were a touch racist? Or not as funny as we thought?). So – to keep it at its brief essence: The lost foreigner asks a local greybeard how to get to Dublin (or is it Galway?) After some headscratching, the slow answer comes back: “Well, to get to Dublin, you wouldn’t really want to be starting from here….”

When I mentioned last December some stuff about Van Loveren and their ambitions and latest moves – and alluded in not altogether reverential tones to the Four Cousins range – there were a couple of indignant responses that invoked the concept of the “wine ladder”. This was well expressed by the statement that “Four Cousins is perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but many a novice was introduced to appreciating wine, by exposure to precisely those products”.

Really? Many? I doubt it. Hence my recalling that joke, as Four Cousins seems to me a really bad place to find oneself on the road to even a modestly “proper” wine appreciation. (I’m taking that brand – and could have used, for example, Heineken’s 4th Street – to represent the sweet or semi-sweet rosé, white and red that accounts for two-thirds of wine sold in South Africa.) The ladder theorist would have it that it doesn’t really matter where you start to drink wine – there’s such an inherent logic to it that many drinkers (no-one claims all) of appalling wine will gradually clamber upwards to some point where they are drinking, well, non-appalling stuff.

Leave aside for a moment the crucial question of cost per bottle. What was ingratiating once, the theory goes, with experience becomes offensive (egregious sweetness, no real structure or balance, vapid lack of character, etc). To an extent, the ladder idea does clearly hold, if only in retrospect: I’m sure we readers of this website have all “advanced”. But I’d bet a lot (fortunately, perhaps, it’s not easily verifiable) that most of us at some early stage of adult wine-drinking started off with the likes of such decent wines as Tassenberg or Boland Co-op Chenin or Dutoitskloof Sauvignon Blanc. Very few of us (mostly as privileged, fairly comfortably off whites to whose culture wine was not foreign, even if not our parents’ everyday tipple) started our heavy-drinking careers with sweet rosé I’d guess.

Once caught, how anyone escapes the clutches of sweet rosé except perhaps in the direction of brandy and Coke or sweet cocktails is not clear to me, though I hope some do. But it’s not the place to start if Dublin’s shimmering silhouette is the final destination. I’d even suggest it’s the very worst place to start – being more in a quagmire than on a road to anywhere at all. Those who say, well, at least those people are drinking wine, get it wrong. (Unless you’re one of the four cousins, I suppose, and more than content with the masses getting fat in the sticky quagmire of sweet rosé. As an aside, I would support our temperance-leaning government’s including wine in any sugar tax designed to cut down the consumption of over-sweetened junk products, alongside fizzy drinks.)

Another version of the ladder theory uses an architectural metaphor: the “entry-level” wine – where the idea is that you’re on the ground floor of the edifice and will resolutely climb to the top. It’s a much more frequently used metaphor and that’s probably why it irritates me. It’s fine and good for a producer to have an “entry-level” range, especially insofar as it offers cheaper versions of the higher-level, premium wines. But more often than not the real attraction for the wine lover, especially in these days of greedy and aspirational pricing, is the comparative affordability of the wine.

That wine lover is certainly not always buying the entry-level version because it is “easier-going”, an “earlier-drinking” wine – though sometimes, certainly yes, and that’s fair enough. Part of the reason the wine is cheaper could be that, say, the vines are younger; it’s made from higher-cropping or less favourably sited vines; less expensive oaking and maturation are used; cheaper packaging, etc. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the wine is located thus partly because it hasn’t made it through the selection process for the grand vin. Then the chances are the wines will be closer in style and quality to the smarter stuff. (Think, as superior and not exactly cheap examples, of Buitenverwachting Meifort or Meerlust Red; or of the way that wines rejected as not up to the standard of Chocolate Block trickle down to other Boekenhoutskloof ranges – Porcupine Ridge or even Wolftrap.)

What I find offensive is when the “entry-level wines” are made in a totally different style to the senior ones – too often they’re sweeter, and with little structure (moving in the direction of sweet rosé, that is). That’s why I occasionally have a little campaign to try to find cheaper wines that are drinkable by serious winelovers without vast amounts of money (see here for a recent such search).

Usually, with the mass of second- or third-level wines, it’s not a question of the more abstract elements of quality like complexity, fine balance and ageability being absent. That would be absolutely fine and expected. Rather, though, the wines are, quite simply, deliberately dumbed down, incidentally showing contempt for the customer. Perhaps, sadly, that is what many undemanding wine lovers want from less-expensive wines. But there’s a large market out there for moderately serious-minded, lower-level wines at affordable prices.

My simple point is that too many producers regard “entry-level” drinkers as wanting vulgarly easy wines. Very often not true. They – we – are not floundering around on the lower rungs of a ladder, but just wanting halfway decent wine at a comparatively reasonable price. I must go and look for some more (suggestions welcome).

  • 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.

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    Peter | 27 January 2025

    As a long time wine drinker “wanting halfway decent wine at a comparatively reasonable price” this was a great article.
    I am currently running scared when it comes to paying for a wine that my jaded palate finds acceptable. I’m afraid my budget and my palate are currently only distant friends.
    But might do Four Cousins et al if I’m stuck in Putsonderwater with no options, and just accept the headache next day.
    Keep up the ascerbic wit!

    Tim James | 26 January 2025

    1. I can’t see what being a snob has to do with doubting that people graaduate from wines like that. A snob for me is someone who makes a value judgement prejudicially, only according to the extrinsics and not according to the inherent qualities of, in this case, wine. It is not someone who arrives at a considered opinion of a category or style or example of wine and then values one more highly than another – or even dismisses one as inferior (as I do, eg, sweet, industrial rosé). So no, I don’t think I’m a wine snob; I’m someone who more highly values proper, honest wine at various levels.

    2. I am not here to serve the wine industry. I’m here to give my considered opinions to winelovers. I have no interest in whether big producers smile all the way to the bank or not; or in whether people drink wine or cider. Though I do think that excessively sugared versions of both of those should arguably be banned, or heavily taxed, on health grounds.

    3. I didn’t say that any producer “deliberately” shows contempt for a customer; I said that (deliberately, yes) dumbing down wines incidentally shows contempt.

    Wessel Strydom | 25 January 2025

    Hi Tim, your previous articles provided me with much satisfaction but your last one left much to be desired. Gosh Tim!
    Your words, “Really? Many? I doubt it.” when referring to Four Cousins smack of being a snob which i believe you are not. Our wine industry need wine drinkers per se, whether it is wines of the quality such as Boekenhoutskloof (which i rate very high) or whether it is wines from Van Loveren or Heineken’s 4th Street. If our wine industry could capture only 5% of the beer drinking market every wine producer will be smiling all the way to the bank consequently leading to to even better quality entry-level wines. Tim, why will any producer willingly and deliberately show contempt for their customers? Tim, you can do better than this article, I am willing to discuss this over some peri-peri chicken at Dias. Lunch will be on me. In vino veritas.

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