Grape 21

Editorial: Coolers, scandal, and the Wine and Spirit Board

‘Wine coolers’ are at last to lose their grape variety names: No more Gecko Ridge Cape Peach Chardonnay, no more River Dew ‘classic pinotage infused with fruity raspberry’. After two years of explicitly permitting an illegal practice to continue, the Wine and Spirit Board will now start enforcing this regulation.

A minor victory, but a significant one in some ways. Following protests, the Wine and Spirit Board has changed its mind regarding its position on the use of varietal names on wine coolers. This climbdown (which should have been more shamefaced than it was) will end the essentially fraudulent practice whereby these drinks (containing only 50 percent wine, with added flavourants and water) are allowed to proclaim the names of wine grape varieties on their labels.

The law, which is explicitly against the practice, will be enforced, with a ‘reasonable phasing-out period for current non-complying stock’ allowed – that is, those who are breaking the law now may continue to do so until they make other arrangements! We agree with the Chenin Blanc producers that this cosy concession is unacceptable: the law should be enforced immediately, with no concession to those who have broken it. The industry also needs an explicit statement from the Board that it has abandoned its plans to have the current law changed.

Grape has been publicising this issue for about a year now, but it was only when we specifically urged a number of producer organisations to make their protests – and they did so – that the Board deigned to reconsider its position. The whole struggle, well worth conducting in its own right, offers some lessons that the industry as a whole should ponder and react to, especially in the light of other evidence that the Wine and Spirit Board is not always sufficiently vigilant in advancing the interests of the most quality-conscious parts of the South African wine industry.

Explanations needed

As wider evidence of that point we need look no further than the minor furore consequent upon Michael Fridjhon’s suggestion in a national daily that it seemed more than possible that some producers were adding flavourants to their wines. While much has been discussed about the obvious side of the scandal, there has been little said about the scorn Fridjhon directed at authorities that have apparently done nothing meaningful to uphold this aspect, or some other aspects, of the law.

Yet, as Fridjhon says: ‘This is the body charged with ensuring the authenticity of Cape wine’. With regard to the labelling of coolers, we persist in our questions:

	Why did the Board connive for years at the flagrantly defiance of the law by some (mostly big business) producers – and persuade the relevant sections of the Department of Agriculture to do similarly?
	Why did it propose a change in the law which went against best international practice (apparently ignoring the mass of evidence brought up when Californian producers were lobbying around the same issue: the abuse of varietal names was made illegal in California about the same time that the Board was proposing to legalise it here)?
	Why is the Board so out of tune with the views of the smaller producers that it proposes a change in the law that horrifies most winemakers when it is brought to their attention? (Note that the winemakers were not informed of the impending change in the law by the Board itself, which usually only reveals its intentions when it is too late to do anything about it, but by a third party – Grape.)
	Correspondingly, why is the Board apparently so attuned to the needs and desires of big wine business? On the Board working group that made the decision to allow coolers to increasingly well pass themselves off as wine, winemakers were represented only by Distell (one of the major cooler producers), KWV, and the organisation representing the big wholesalers.

A leading producer commented to us that ‘as a regulating authority, the WSB has failed dismally to carry out its mandate and encourages suspicion regarding their ability to withstand commercial pressures’. The evidence certainly points in that direction.

More accountability to all sections of the wine industry is necessary, as is greater transparency of policy and action.

Producer vigilance needed too

It must also be said, however, that it is time that the ambitious, quality-oriented winemakers organised themselves rather more professionally and effectively, and acted unitedly, in order to pursue their interests. One price of a quality wine industry is, unfortunately, eternal vigilance. But wine journalism is seldom going to help them – our country’s dominant traditions of sunshine journalism and pleasing advertisers and magazine-owners ensures that. Too often the few producer organisations that there are (the cultivar interest groups and the Cape Winemakers Guild – there is little else) are overly concerned with marketing, as well as quality improvement in some cases, and insufficiently watchful of the larger and smaller aspects of industry legislation and practice under which they have to operate.

We have asked our questions of the Board before, with no response; we have little confidence that it will choose to answer them now. It is high time, before it is too late, for the quality-oriented parts of the South African wine industry to start ensuring that it has some control over the Wine and Spirit Board.