The Cape wine industry remains too exclusively focused on production, says Michael Fridjhon, and needs a different approach in building its future

Since the arrival of the Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century, the Cape wine industry has been a production-driven beast. Farmers fancied the idea of being wine producers and embraced viticulture with greater enthusiasm than the market gardening plans of the Dutch East India Company. Vineyards have a way of proliferating, and from quite early on surplus, rather than shortage, characterised Cape viticulture.

In the past three centuries, there have been few years in which a general absence of stock has driven up wine prices. If anything, the way the industry has been structured – especially from the beginning of the twentieth century – speaks of a community of grape growers whose vineyards yield produce for which the major challenge has been to find a market.

Given this background, it is hardly surprising that the industry’s perspective of itself is production- rather than market- driven. Most producers describe the business in terms of its vineyards and processing facilities, its winemakers and perhaps even its viticulturists. The more enlightened would include the personnel responsible for growing grapes, harvesting fruit, and assisting in the production of wine. At a push, they might add retailers and, as an afterthought, the all-important consumer.

Producers unsurprisingly view the universe from the perspective of the grapes that they grow and the wines that they make. To the extent that they wish to tweak their business model, they might fiddle with the viticulture or streamline their wineries. At best, most have only a vague idea about optimising the way that wine gets to market. Little is being done to focus on the way the market interacts with the production sector.

It is hardly surprising that until recently there has been no specialist training available for people wishing to enter the wine business. It is only in the last 30 years that the Cape Wine Academy was established to enhance consumer appreciation of wine products. We still have no formal training environment for sommeliers. It was only in the last decade that the wine show environment has experienced a little competition between competing service providers.

South Africans are served by very few specialist wine columns and even fewer specialist wine publications. The demise of the printed version of Grape may be explained by the quality of the publication – though I doubt this. A more plausible account is that we have done nothing to develop a critical wine culture. As a result the average wine drinker sees little need to be better informed.

It should be a matter of considerable concern that we have so few formal institutions designed to enhance talent and competence outside the pure production sector of the industry. We have restaurants which use their wine lists to milk revenue yet have no specialist wine buyers or wine sellers amongst their employees. In fact, they are happy to have their menus printed for them by a single supplier and have lately taken to charging fees for slots on these wine lists.

The industry has no coherent strategy to develop sales talent, and in fact relies upon a vast amount of voluntary or underpaid expertise to bring its products to market. There is an implicit assumption that people with wine knowledge will give their time for little or no reward. They are expected to conduct tastings, judge at wine shows, or participate at public events pro bono. It is a sad but certain fact that where the compensation is inadequate, talent will not gravitate.

Should we be surprised that there is such a dearth of winewriters, wine judges or consumer champions? Unless we approach the communication, grading, marketing, and selling functions of the trade with greater professionalism, we will watch talent drift away, publications founder, and institutions collapse.

Len Evans, the doyen of the Australian wine industry, recognised the importance of training up a new generation of talented ‘wine experts’, people free from the narrow vision of a single producer’s cellar. His annual Len Evans Tutorial gives a small number of talented individuals (who satisfy the entry criteria) a chance to learn about the world of wine and the wines of the world. In a week of intensive tasting and training Evans (and the colleagues he press-gangs to participate) add vastly to the knowledge and insight of young Australian wine industry specialists.

South Africa desperately needs to develop a similar institution of its own, where those who have proved they have a world-class talent share it freely to fast track the competence and expertise of the next generation. How else will we obtain judges with the talent and experience to provide the critical sounding board that producers need? Where else will we begin to generate the kind of expertise necessary for the sommeliers the on-consumption trade does not even realise it ought to have? How else will we find the panellists to participate and make intelligent comment at tastings, and to crystallise and drive the consumer perspective? What else will induce our winemakers to take greater cognisance of the expectations of the market?

Much of what is unique about a wine industry is intangible: it resides in a group of individuals who collectively reflect the experience, the body of knowledge which makes up the measure of its evolution, its status quo. If the Cape wine industry is to optimise its future competitive advantage, it needs to understand where it is, if only to chart a route to the place it regards as its destination.

We cannot risk losing this present touchstone – at least not without harnessing the good, and understanding what we have to abandon and why. That is why we must draw on the talent and achievements of those who are our present success stories. At the same time we must make sure that we have an institution that enables the next generation to use the best of the past as a starting point for the future.