Poor creatures 28 August 2006

In a recent Noseweek article, Tim James wonders whether most 'critter wines' are charming or merely cynical and pretty awful

How people choose wine, I have no idea. I don’t mean those who fancy themselves as connoisseurs and only buy after much swirling and spitting and judicious mumbling, but proper people who just want something decent for their money. Failing experience or trusted advice (professional or not), the safest and most boring answer is to choose the big brand name, but the wines will generally be boring too, and probably overpriced to help pay for all the advertising.

Competition results and little gold stickers? Magazine panel tastings? It’s true that if a wine has pleased a judging panel it is probably not bad, at least – but I’m afraid that most big comparative tastings give results that are seldom more plausible than if all the wine labels had been tossed in the air and the wines awarded przes according to where the label fluttered down. This is something that a few wine-judges reluctantly admit, and that all surely know in the secret sozzled recesses of their hearts.

Pretty labels! Perhaps as plausible an answer as most. Surely many wines are sold because the label colour complements the kitchen curtains or the host’s eyes or ties, or bears a design that is inviting and unintimidating or (depending on your pretensions) one that suggests grandeur or chic. Why not? – all other things being equal (or equally unknown) one might as well get something that pleases the eye, just in case it’s not going to please the taste-buds.

Looking along the shelves of my local supermarket, though, what struck me was how tedious most of the labels at the lower price-points are – dull and poorly designed. And almost absent was what I was checking for: a category of label that apparently does extraordinarily well overseas, particularly in the United States, where they speak of ‘critter wines’, bottles with bright, colourful labels representing some more or less charming animal – or any animal, in fact, represented more or less charmingly.

The pioneering and most successful critter wine is a much-hyped Australian called Yellow Tail, featuring a ‘primitively’ drawn wallaby. A cynical, accountant-designed wine from well-made start to sugary finish, it has made vast amounts of money and spawned a large and heterogeneous progeny. (To the discredit of Woolworth’s usually discerning wine-buyers, they dumb down their selection by stocking the stuff.)

So now penguins, frogs, crocodiles and emus are crawling all over American wine shelves trying to appeal to that strange nation’s idea of cuteness. It’s not a guarantee of a wine’s success, but according to industry analysts it helps a lot. (Strange, perhaps, to think of the hypocrisy whereby these appealing creatures will accompany meals featuring the cooked corpses of other animals – but heaven forbid that we should be morbid or cynical here.)

We tend to be a bit blasé about wildlife in South Africa, so possibly less impressed when they’re on our wine labels. Quite apart from the rather calculatedly childish (or ‘primitive’) pictures, there are not even many labels with proper animals – those red in tooth and claw – though the occasional bird, leopard and whale does wander down to the watering hole.

As to the real ‘critter wines’, significantly they seem mostly destined for foreigners. The biggest selling Cape wine of all, particularly in the UK, is the range called Kumala, which features a winsome gecko. These wines are available here now – but their pricing is international (so as not to prevent foreign tourists being irritated when they come here and see their tipple much cheaper than in Manchester), and not commensurate with their ordinariness.

Rather cheap (around R20 per bottle) is another critter range, produced by the mega wine company DGB, varietal wines coyly named Tall Horse, each featuring a differently brightly coloured childish drawing of a giraffe. They’re unquestionably attractive labels, well designed and striking, and the animal would be charming in a child’s book. And if the artwork is designed to appeal to infantile or sentimental tastes, the wines are appropriate. To invoke an organoleptic category occasionally deployed by professionals, they are rather awful. But let’s not be narrow-minded, they’re only awful if you like wine – you might love them if you enjoy sweetish, soft fruity drinks with a bit of oak flavouring that certainly didn’t come from loving maturation in fine oak barrels.

I confess that when taking the stuff off the Pick ‘n Pay racks, I cast furtive glances around to check that no-one I knew was watching. If they had been, I planned to glance contemptuously at the bottle, give a superior guffaw and replace it with the much better Alto Rouge which I noticed nearby – it seems to be always cheaply available these days and is a bargain at little more than R40. The elegant label won’t entertain the kids much, but it’ll look more respectable on the table, even if you’re not a wine snob – and who is, after all?

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine'

COMMENT

From Jean-Vincent Ridon, maker of great
Eszencia and other delights:
Interesting animal fashion you describe in your article, and every day I receive emails from US label collectors wanting to get a set of Signal Hill labels with the rooster on it. But I can promise that no French cock has been harmed or stressed during the design of the label, and that the wine has not been tested on live French cocks. Have a nice day.