Izak Smit gives us a picture of the SAWi methodology

“With the proliferation of wine competitions and the plethora of awards and medals  that adorn wine bottles these days, Ed, how does the ‘average’ consumer know what constitutes a ‘good’ wine?” the Publisher asked me recently. Resisting the temptation to point out to him that ‘average’ is probably the kind of compliment I’d avoid when considering his wine knowledge, I did concede that the question is one I often grapple with.

I called Izak Smit, the project director of the South African Wine Index for a little advice. Izak identified the general merits of the Publishers question some years back and set about developing a method to quantify the various awards given to wines and to determine as objective a rating of the quality of a wine, over time, as possible.

After a lengthy correspondence, that left the Publisher confused and the Editor in search of a drink, we managed to hone it down to one paragraph and a very useful picture. We hope you get it.

At present, the index considers and aggregates all credible and blind-tasted wine scores and awards given to a wine, over a period of three years, into a single score out of a 100. In due course the single score will be represented as a split score to further categorise wines according to maturation periods and regions of origin.


See www.sawineindex.com for rated wines.