22 Jan 2017 SA’s top-end wine producers elated, while 2016 hit lower end hard
How South African wine producers feel about 2016 is likely to be determined by where their wines are to be found on the pricing pyramid, writes Michael Fridjhon.
Those perched on the apex will reflect back on the year with satisfaction. Auction prices were the strongest yet, probably the result of a general consensus that the wines on offer were more deserving of enthusiastic purchase than ever before.
The Nederburg Auction now represents a substantial selection of the very best of the generally more mature wines available to collectors.
The Cape Winemakers Guild sale offers much younger examples. Its members include many of SA’s best producers. In 2016 in particular there was a palpable excitement about the wines that made the cut for inclusion in the October sale.
Wine makers working the high end of the trade have equal reason to be satisfied: chardonnay in particular has swept back into focus, so estates with decent plantings of the great white Burgundy variety have found themselves managing allocations rather than promoting product.
The Swartland and its often geeky wines continues to dominate headlines overseas. Jancis Robinson, for example, has given greater prominence than ever before to the increasingly original bottlings from the vanguard of the new wave.
Chenin blanc is probably the most celebrated single variety in this environment, though shiraz (and more lately cinsaut) have enjoyed a fair share of the press.
Lower down the pyramid 2016 has been a tough year. Exports have been solid enough, and rand yields benefited — at least in the earlier part of the year — from Nenegate and its aftermath.
However, negative publicity around labour and wages on some farms once again raised apartheid-era spectres from their shallow graves.
The campaign, mainly in Scandinavian countries, about conditions in Robertson has, perhaps inadvertently, highlighted two issues whose refrain is disquieting and persistent.
The first is that much employment in and around the wine industry is of the most menial kind and is more likely to end in automation than in large salary increases…..