Okay, it does ring up marketing razzmatazz, but the Four Cousins beat the pack with the first 2010 wine on the shelves. They can merrily sound a few more bells.

Cheers to the Four Cousins Light Natural Sweet Rosé 2010, a clever wine that no doubt will add to the remarkable success of this fast-growing local brand, invented by the enterprising Retief cousins of the Van Loveren winery out in Robertson.

The wine, a chirpy Valentine pink, hits the wine store shelves this week, at a time when harvesting has not even begun in certain regions. It joins the Four Cousins Extra Light White, which has clocked up good sales for the largest family-owned local winery. Both wines carry a Weigh-Less endorsement in the form of a clearly-defined bottle sticker - another stroke of marketing suss.

Of course, the ‘me-first’ in wine launches has lost a little shine in recent years (remember those jolly beaujolais nouveau-esqe gamay parties of yesteryear?), but it still makes for zippy soft news.

The man behind these ideas is managing director Phillip Retief, one of the four Retief cousins (Hennie, Bussell and Neil are the others) who run the family wine business. The Four Cousins range - which stands apart from the Van Loveren and other labels - is the largest bottled wine brand in South Africa. It has steadily increased sales by launching new products, well-priced and aimed at the widest wine-buying audience. A bottle-fermented sparkler recently also joined the range. The use of the four cousins’ faces and profiles (a witty angle to the lights) on the labels has worked extremely well in the market. It seems to connect spot-on with the ordinary wine-drinking public.

South Africa’s first bottled wine from the 2010 vintage comprises a blend of 80 percent white muscadel and 20 percent pinotage. It has 35.3 grams per litre residual sugar. Like the Extra Light White (a blend of white muscadel and fernão pires), the alcohol is 9 percent - hence the Weigh-Less endorsement. Although not overly complex, both wines are crisply drinkable - and the supermarket-shopping public out there loves it. At under R30 (at Ultra) it certainly sells well - and now even those with a little more around the waist will be happy to buy a rosy bottle.