Important issues are raised and nobody talks for SA wine.

The old canard of ridiculous wine mark-ups in restaurants  is once again up for discussion, as you see in Michael Fridjhon's column next door. It's an outrage issue that everyone, except the ripping-off restaurateurs, seems to agree on. Walk into your local wine shop and you buy the wine that's going to be on tonight's wine list for a third of the price. You wonder about your favourite wine producer's sentiments when you begrudgingly order only one bottle (and not two or three) that night.

The question is this: don't producers, who get a very small portion of the deal, realise that these rip-offs are counterproductive to their own marketing strategies? Simply put: the overpriced restaurant wines screw loving client loyalty.

But do you ever see or hear any producer complain? Who knows? Certainly we consumers are not aware of any body speaking up. And there's the rub: no central, democratic wine-producers body or organisation to do the lobbying, to fight the fight, to spread the message, to blow rip-off restaurants out of the water.

There are a plethora of issues to be addressed centrally, over-archingly: the local growth industry of (money-making) competitions; the threats to ban alcohol advertising; taxation, labour, empowerment, indigenous marketing....

The long and the short: the South African wine industry is paralyzed when it comes to speak with one, bold voice. Working together has never (probably since 1652) been a wine industry strength. Endemic, this lack of speak-up.