Counting the vines 20 May 2008

Latest statistics of the Cape vineyard now available

The most recent outflow of statistics from Sawis (SA Wine Industry Information and Systems) will delight the junkies, who can pore over such things for hours, extrapolating, inferring, interpreting…. And will bore everyone else.

For those who find more usefulness in such facts and figures than in any number of media releases, the ‘Statistics of wine-grape vines as at 30 November 2008’ will give much gratification. The overall picture gives the first interesting fact: after continual increases since at least 1990, the size of the Cape vineyard actually contracted slightly in the latest year for which statistics are available, by all of 0.2%. The total area under grape-vines is now 101 958 hectares – still slightly more than it was two years previously, and up from about 88 000 ten years ago.

What are the cultivar winners and losers? White varieties are continuing their modest comeback of the past few years, following the big swing towards planting vines for red wines in the latter 1990s and early 2000s. During 2007, about 81% of new plantings were of white varieties – a figure that would have looked extraordinarily unlikely a decade ago. (Is agreement spreading that South Africa does white better than red?)

Total white varieties occupy 55.8% of the total vineyard area – in 2006 it was 55.1%, and in 2000 it was 63.8%. And good old chenin blanc remains by far the most planted variety, seemingly stabilised for now at around 18.8% of total area (24.1% in 2000). Colombard follows with 11.6%, chardonnay interestingly continues to rise (from 8.0% in 2006 to 8.7% in 2007), and sauvignon blanc (surprisingly?) shows a slight drop (from 8.2% to 8.1%). These are by far the most significant white grapes.

Cabernet sauvignon leads the reds with 12.8% (down from 13.1% in 2006), followed by shiraz (up 0.1% from 9.6% in 2006), then merlot, then pinotage. Pinotage and cinsaut are the only two leading reds which show a drop from their highpoints: in 2001 pinotage was glorying with 7.3%, comfortably ahead of merlot; now it has fallen back into fourth place, with just 6.0% of the total vineyard area. 

Those youthful vineyards

For many analysts, the high proportion of young vines in the Cape vineyards is a matter of concern, the accepted truth being that vines under, say, eight years old cannot normally produce very high quality wines. A fascinating comparison in vine age (and some would claim that the comparison is matched by a quality comparison) can be made between chenin blanc and shiraz. Nearly 40% of chenin vines are older than 20 years; only 1.8% of shiraz vines are. Another 1.8% of shiraz vines are between 16 and 20 years, while the figure for chenin is 15.3%. For the 4-10 year age bracket, the shiraz figure is 81.3%.

Chardonnay and pinotage also perform reasonably well in terms of vine maturity, with nearly half the vines over 10 years old for both varieties. For sauvignon blanc, over 40% of the vines are more than 10 years old.

There’s more to explore. But if you want to fill in the gaps left in the stories told here, or compare the plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon in the Cape with those in California, Chile or Australia, or you want to know exactly how many hectares there are in South Africa of tempranillo, barbera, grenache blanc or pinot gris, you will have to brave the not-very-user-friendly Sawis website: go to Statistics, then to Other reports, then to Vine statistics, then to 2007. Or just click here, and you’ll be just about there.