The great wine show squabble: an update
4 July 2006
Well, such excitement rarely hits the
local wine show scene! Winex and the yet-to-prove-itself Jo’burg Wine Show (JWS
from now on) are engaging in the sort of fighting done by heavyweight boxers
before the match – where they sort of pretend the other one (the one they’re
actually insulting) doesn’t have a name. We were first! nameless others are
illegal! I thought I should bring you the latest developments, seeing I
mentioned it all before.
To be fair, it should be said that the
aggro is originating with Winex, clearly worried at someone muscling in on
their lucrative devotion to serve the wine-loving public.
The story thus far for those who need
reminding: JWS cleverly arranges to be able to have producers selling wine
from their show. Winex is enraged! Because it does everything first
and best, and had wanted to do this ages ago, but found it illegal. So it
starts casting public doubt on the legality of JWS’s plan. JWS refutes this.
Then, lo and behold, Winex suddenly
tells producers that they can sell their wine from Winex – it is, they say,
‘the first (and at this
stage only) legally compliant arrangement permitting the off-consumption
sale of liquor at an on-consumption wine event’. Surely a claim that is only
true if JWS has been telling lies. Further, Winex gives a very broad hint
that anyone participating in JWS (not that any other particular show is
referred to, of course) might get into legal problems: ‘any attempt to
circumvent regulations’, says Winex, ‘may jeopardise producers’ licences’.
Heavy stuff, really.
Now, unsurprisingly, JWS hits back –
not (as far as I know) with a court order restraining Winex from such
blatant attempts to scupper their show, but with a notice to producers
re-stating their own claim to both originality and legality (very
reasonably, as far as I can judge), with remarkably mild, I thought,
references to the ‘rumour and speculation’....
Oh well. The bottom line is, I suppose,
that most sales-starved producers (and don’t underestimate the problems most
of them are having in profitably getting rid of their stuff) will be obliged
to fork out yet more money and appear at both. But let's see what actually
happens – will the whole thing work?
And we attendees? Perhaps it should be
pointed out that Winex might not have been first in allowing sales, as they
now clamorously pretend, but are at least much less expensive (at R65 versus
JWS’s R130) for punters, if not for exhibitors.
So we can go to either or both, get a
little pissed, and make lots of purchases on the spot which we’ll bitterly
regret either the next morning when we’re sober and headachey, or when the
credit card bill arrives. Or when the wine arrives and we can’t at all see
why we were so enthusiastic about it back then....
