Should pinotage be part of a ‘Cape blend’ as some marketers and producers argue?  Alex Dale thinks the whole idea a ridiculous mistake

French wine producers are getting more headlines today for their commando-style dynamite attacks on Public Administrations, train lines and government emissaries than for their vintages, vineyards or wines. To the producer in the Languedoc in southern France, the word Australia – at least when associated with wine – is about as popular as American foreign policy is to the Sunnis of Baghdad.

The Languedoc alone produces more wine than the whole of South Africa; the New World (not even just Australia) is ever increasing its share of the world’s wine market; the French domestic market has lost 50 percent of its consumption in the past generation; the planet produces each year 20–25 percent more wine than it consumes…. When you consider these facts you can easily understand the despair of a whole community, in the throes of losing the only way of life and source of income, and the only tradition that it has ever known. These people are deeply in trouble.

Assume for a moment that the viticulturist Professor A I Perold had been living and working in Narbonne and not Stellenbosch. That he had manipulated two awkward and improbable bed partners (in cinsaut and pinot noir) to create a vinous oddity called, let’s say, Le Messie (the Saviour), and that it made up today about one twentieth of the annual crop.

Imagine that several decades after the first wines had been made from the new variety, the industry had changed completely from the quaint, introspective business of his day to a cut-throat, modern, globalised, commodity-like consumer goods industry with no (let alone scant) regard for preserving rural traditions.

Imagine that today the consensus of the producers of the region, in order to take-on the marketing hegemony of the all-conquering Australians, Californians and others, was to develop a ‘unique concept’. A new ‘blend initiative’ would be launched – with no regard for the traditional viticultural qualities of climate, geology and topography; it would simply assert that the Le Messie variety would be used in a blend. By virtue of the exclusivity of Le Messie, the producers would (they are convinced) be able to take-on the brutal world market, heads held high, armed with the unique marketing juggernaut that would prove unmatchable by the competition…. I have not the slightest doubt that commercial salvation would be as forlorn a hope as would Schabir Shaik’s hopes of becoming our next Finance Minister.

Not cricket

Changing angles totally, I recall a conversation I had during the English cricket tour to South Africa last summer with a pinotage producer friend of mine. He was telling me how wrong it was to appoint a black wicket-keeper on the grounds of his colour rather than on merit. How it would let down the team’s performance and thus the country’s. Affirmative action was not, in his view, the way to take-on, let alone beat, the international competition.

Later that evening after a hefty braai, matched only by the hearty consumption of wines from different parts of the globe, my friend was staunchly defending the notion that pinotage should be a mandatory ingredient in any so-called Cape Blend. That it was our unique indigenous asset – that alone provided all the merit sceptics should require for including it in the national blend. Well, you guessed it, I asked him if he didn’t consider that his cricketing and wine opinions were the exact opposite sides of the affirmative action debate. I have to say, the look of puzzlement on his face was a rather comic though exemplary image of bewilderment….

The mantra that Cape wine production today should be consumer-driven and not production-driven seems to be a smoke-screen for marketers in South Africa to defend the cause of pinotage as a vital ingredient in any Cape Blend. We are told we need a unique wine to differentiate our offering from that of the competition, to set us apart from the rest of the international industry, if we are to successfully market our image and our wines in the world’s major wine markets. As if the markets were clamoring for pinotage. As if no other wine-producing country could produce pinotage. As if it were such a hot property. As if pinotage had earned the respect such singular hype deserved.

Let’s face it, if pinotage were so great an asset, would it make-up only five percent of our production? Would the Australians ignore it? Would it have such a relatively low average retail price point, both here and internationally ? Would we even have a ‘pinotage debate’? How long would pinotage stay unique to South Africa if it were to become so premium an asset? Look how Australia has usurped the great properties of syrah to assert itself as the leading international shipper of shiraz wines. Do you think the average consumer knows or cares that it was grown in France before Australia – by that or any other name?

We have to get past the novelty factor and look many moves further into this chess game of competing wine minds and nationalities. Sustainable success (whatever passing appeal and distraction there might be in novelty value) can only be based on being consistently better and more forward-thinking than your opponent, and not on simply sacrificing your rook for a pawn in the early moves of the game.

Strange ideas

You know, even the very notion of a ‘Cape blend’ is somewhat ridiculous. How can one possibly impose a single variety on wines from any corner of the Cape’s multiple growing regions? As if imposing carignan on Burgundy or Alsace would make sense in creating access to a unique ‘French blend’. As if pinotage was well suited to all the vineyards, soils and climates of the Cape winelands.

And how generic a principle can it be to insist on adding a potentially weakening ingredient to a blend in order to give it the marketing status assumed apt for competing against the rest of the planet? Using the lowest common denominator in order to somehow add value and uniqueness?

But pinotage is supposed to be representative of our singularity and therefore must be force-fed onto the market. How consumer-driven is that? Leafroll virus is also very representative of the viticultural Cape, but we don’t insist on that being mandatory in vineyards producing Cape Blends. Though some might argue that virus is about as beneficial as pinotage….

Another contradiction occurs to me in that the Cape produces more white wine than it does red. The ‘Cape blend’ initiative, however, excludes whites, to the lone benefit of reds. Why on earth would you want to do that? Let alone if marketing were your main justification for what you were trying to achieve by your initiative, as you’d be excluding the majority of your exports. Again, upon further analysis, the logic of the pinotage faction just doesn’t make sense.

Image

My last point is that of reputation and image. When entering into the realm of marketing, the image of a product has a disproportionate effect on its value. Even more so than its quality. A silk shirt tagged Ralph Lauren would fetch a considerably higher price than it would if it sported a Mr Price logo. If Mr Price decided today to compete in the premium branded sector, it would have a hell of a battle on its hands. Pinotage doesn’t even boast the popular support that Mr Price commands (here let alone overseas). In fact pinotage has a pretty ropey image and a somewhat limited following. In some markets, pinotage actually has a bad reputation. And, as we all know, good reputations are difficult to earn, while poor reputations are even more difficult to lose.

Perhaps pinotage’s first priority should be to gain credibility and respect by cleaning up its act and by actually proving that it can stand for quality, individuality and desirability. Once that is achieved, in say two or three decades time, one could think about being truly competitive and commercially viable with our ‘unique’ South African variety. By then, however, I doubt it would be unique to us any more.

Today’s self-serving pinotage faction should meanwhile decide if they support merit or affirmative action. I’d be interested to hear that debate.

• Alex Dale is one of the partners in The Winery, producers of the Radford Dale, Black Rock, Vinum and New World ranges