Loving the wine, loving the diversity 14 April 2008

Russian wine journalist and educator Bisso Atanassov recalls his latest visit to the Cape

I have now visited South Africa twice. The first trip was to Cape Wine in 2004; the second, this winter (oh, I mean European winter) to get some insight into bubbly production. When the Aussies wouldn’t co-operate adequately, Angela Lloyd suggested trying my luck in South Africa. Méthode Cap Classique, how could I have forgotten. It was mid January, deep snow and winter here in Moscow, but for Cape bubblies, the harvest was due in three days. Then I discovered I needed a visa (four years ago I didn’t). Miraculously, I managed to get everything organized in only a week - with lots of help from friends at Graham Beck winery.

Returning also had its problems, when I missed my flight by one day.  Evidently I was not very willing to go back. Who would flee from the sun and warmth back into the snow and -15Cº? But getting in and out of SA has become my favourite game…

The first and most important thing about South Africa is diversity. It’s really the rainbow nation: rainbow country, rainbow kitchen, rainbow wines – you name it, you have it. People speak Afrikaans but drive the English way, drink more Port than in Portugal, eat more Greek salad than in Greece and more feta cheese than in Bulgaria. I’ve asked many times, knowing that there aren’t so many Greeks in the country (not speaking about Bulgarians at all) but never got an answer where this tradition comes from. Which leads us to the second important thing about South Africa – under-communication to the rest of the world.

A visit of discovery

Since 2002, I’ve been involved with South African wines, and tasted many, while working for a Russian importer. Now I'm a wine journalist and I’ve also been lecturing for three years on New World wines in a Moscow wine school. But it was only after living in South Africa for three weeks that I discovered ‘Boland’ was not the surname of an extremely rich guy who owns golf fields, travel agencies, mountain bike treks, a wine cooperative, or even a plant that produces “droë ys” (as I initially thought), but the name of hilly lands including wine regions such as Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Paarl etc.! Only here I found that ‘single vineyard’ on a wine label is regulated. Everyone knows that Abraham Perold created pinotage, but I guess very few people outside South Africa know that nouvelle is pinotage’s ‘white sister’ – a local cross between crouchen blanc and semillon. And so on and so on.

Of course South Africa has its own particular problems (tell me who hasn’t?) but they are largely overridden by the positive things. The first and foremost is the energy crisis. Many wineries have bought generators, which is a kind of solution. In Chile they have similar problems (I was there for the 2007 harvest): there, from May to November, the use of three-phase current between 5pm and 7am is strictly forbidden and subject to severe fines – with the country's 'flagship' grape, carmenère, harvested in May, that puts much stress on the winemakers.

The other major difference with this rival New World country is labour. Harvest time in Chile you work 24/7. No coffee-breaks, one-hour lunch and two 12 hours shifts (or three x eight hours). Grape pickers work not by the hour as in South Africa (how very European!) but are paid for the actual quantity that they pic. Quite often you can see pickers running through the vineyards with full baskets on their heads. In South Africa, you see pickers getting off a bakkie, see a bushvine vineyard and declare they do not feel like picking today. You don’t feel like what?!? Come on, this can’t happen even in Europe!

On the other hand, South Africans are extremely friendly and willing to help. I learned lot more Afrikaans words and phrases after a month here than I did the local dialect after two months in Chile (and I speak good Spanish).

South Africa strikes you with size and numbers. When Mossie Basson, Graham Beck's biodiversity specialist, told me that they and some neighbours ‘put 13 000ha together to form Graham Beck Natural Reserve, where you can find about 1600 plant species, 40 percent of which are unique to this place’, I just stood with my mouth and eyes wide open….

Wine diversity 

Wine is as diverse as everything else. I am an Anything-But-Chardonnay (and Cabernet) man, but I admit that some of the local examples really strike me. Syrahs too, and sauvignon blanc – sauvignons from Elgin, Simonsberg, Durbanville and Cape Agulhas taste as though they come from different planets. But what blows my mind are the blends. In no other place on earth do winemakers blend with such vigour, passion, boldness and intrepidity! For instance, Havana Hills Italian Job (where “Italian” stands for three logically unblendable varieties and ‘Job’ seems to stands for syrah, pinotage and touriga nacional), not to mention Bouchard Finlayson’s Hannibal.

But I found most inventive the guys from Franschhoek. Solms-Delta Hiervandaan, Boschendal’s Blanc de Noir, Môreson’s Cuvée Cape (an 80/20 pinotage/chenin MCC – and it’s white), Cabrière’s Arnim (60/40 Cabernet/Sauvignon Blanc – and it’s red!)…

I’d better not speak more about MCC (or I won’t be abale to resist the temptation to abandonand this article and go in search of a bottle) – enopughh to say that at the quality and price, I don’t see why you should think of buying champagne. Port and stickies? My every-night elixir was Bon Courage’s Port (R35 at the cellar door – three euros! Please bring me back to this paradise!)

Why would one ever drink anything but South African wine? Unlike other New World countries you have plenty of different varieties, hundreds of blends and of styles. Even old vintages are available. And unlike Europe where you travel hundreds of kilometres to get out of one region that makes more or less the same wine, here you find diversity on a spot several times smaller.

And the best thing is that there’s still place to grow. But more communication, more promotion is needed to get recognition for places such as those beautiful ‘heritage bushvine vineyards’ in Swartland and Agter Paarl. South Africa has unique things no one else has, and uniqueness is a treasure these days. Keep the diversity. Keep blending! The contemporary consumer looks for new things and likes to be amazed, and you definitely can amaze!

Now I look out of my Moscow window and see the white sands of Boulders beach ... though it’s actually freshly fallen snow…). I’m listening to the music of Mallies le Roux and Ladysmith Black Mambazo and to Valiant Swart, sipping some Simonsig Redhill Pinotage 2003, and dreaming about South Africa.

COMMENT

From Tim James:
You have to wonder where Bisso observed these luxurious pickers who get paid by the hour and then decide they don't want to work. I'm pleased to be able to assure him that, like grape pickers around the world (Poles in Germany, Mexicans in California, Chileans in Chile, etc) the South African ones on the whole have a pretty rough time. As far as I know, most of them are casual workers paid their pittance according to what they pick. (How does he think we manage to produce the wines of the cheapness he admires?) It must be sadly confessed, however, that there is a bit of protective labour legislation which does mean that if casual workers choose not to accept a particular back-breaking job like picking bushvines for the wage on offer, they're allowed to decline. Signs of properly conducted labour relations, like those Chilean workers running around vineyards carrying heavy loads (and were they children, perhaps?), or not having any rest- breaks, might happen occasionally, but are officially frowned upon. I'm so pleased he liked the wine, though.

From Emile Joubert:
The problem with a website such as Grape, which claims to provide news as well as being so eager to comment on current issues, is that basic tenets of journalism seem to be lacking. Take the old-fashioned, die-hard pink liberal diatribe provided to our friend the enthusiastic Russian by Grape's Editor.

Moving seamlessly from the pinot noir tasting table to the role of political activist, the Editor gives us the following assumptions, not one of which is backed by a single fact:

-        "…the South African ones (grape pickers) on the whole have a pretty rough time".
-        most of them are casual workers paid their pittance according to what they pick.
-        (How does he think we manage to produce the wines of the cheapness he admires?)
-        Signs of properly conducted labour relations….might happen occasionally, but are officially frowned upon. I'm so pleased he liked the wine, though.  [A crucial bit you've chosen to leave out of that sentence Emile! – TJ]

Like all workers in the agricultural sector, grape-pickers are protected by the Basic Conditions of the Employment Act and the Sectoral Determination for Farm Workers. Farm workers are also protected by the Labour Relations Act, the Employment Equity Act and the Skills Development Act. (If properly conducted relations were officially frowned upon, why have these Acts in the first place?).

 Mechanisms to uphold this law are solidly in place and are actively used by workers, farmers and NGO's to ensure that the law is not transgressed.

There is a minimum wage for farm workers R5,59 per hour or R1090 per month - although as someone who has frequent access to farmer and farmer worker organizations, I can tell you that most wine farmers pay much more than this minimum.

And seeing the editor was too lazy and/or impassioned to do his own research, I did some for him among various wineries. Grape-pickers (seasonal or otherwise) are paid – on average - between R2,50 and R5,00 per basket, with workers picking on average between 40 and 80 bins per day. A blue chip farm has had workers pick 120 bins on one day. These rates are inflation-linked at are approved by the various representatives from labour and producers through formal collective bargaining processes.

Of course, this kind of money is not going to allow for foie gras and Burgundy each night. But these wages are inclusively determined by law and various industry representatives.

Despite the Editor's reluctance to do research, one would have hoped that general knowledge would have carried him through on the issue of South African wines being "cheap ". The Australians and Chileans are able to land bottled wine on the European markets at less than one Euro. Not one local supplier I spoke to could do the same.

As one of the few commentators on wine-related issues, it is a pity that Grape does not seem to attempt to uphold any of the principles of journalism. Stop flogging dead horses, get a notebook and start asking questions.

Response from Tim James:
I don't want to enter into debate about my lack of journalistic standards with someone who believes it OK to combine being a wine jounalist and a wine public relations consultant. But I should point out to him that the ability to read intelligently, and to notice a bit of irony might not do him any harm. It's irony, Emile, to speak of 'properly conducted labour relations, like those Chilean workers running around vineyards carrying heavy loads (and were they children, perhaps?)'. Irony here implies that I don't really regard things like child labour and overwork as very nice. My point, Emile (let me explain carefully) is that the Chilean practices so praised by Mr Atanassov are actually not allowed here, and it is such practices that would be frowned upon. So that rather than suggesting that there were no protections here, I was in fact welcoming the fact that there is, indeed, some protective legislation.

If Emile could grasp irony, he might then turn to struggling to understand that I was picking up on Mr Atanassov's delight in the cheapness of the wine rather than making claims about myself. After that, I'm afraid, it is a question of one's opinion as to what constitutes a pittance. And I'd suggest to Emile that he takes his self-vaunted research a little further into the conditions of casual workers and those employed by labour brokers. But on the whole, I am delighted to disagree with Emile about as many things as possible. And I'd suggest to him that if he doesn't like Grape's journalism that he should avoid it, just as I avoid his.

From Cathy van Zyl:
Bisso, thank you for your entertaining and favourable article about South Africa and its wines. We need more friends like you and I hope that we, as an industry, can learn from your canny observations (some cloaked in irony, perhaps?). Unfortunately, vineyard workers in our country, do not enjoy the freedom or laissez-faire alluded to, despite what Emile Joubert would have us and the rest of the world believe. Granted, while they are (supposedly) protected by legislation and while some employers do go a long way to try to improve 'their lot', the life of a vineyard worker is certainly not aspirational oor rewarding.