Colyn Truter questions whether smaller wineries will survive | The Month July 2012

Did you know that many of the farms in the Robertson Wine Valley have been in the same families for as many as six generations? Surprisingly, despite the region’s wine-lineage being far shorter than that of Constantia, Stellenbosch or Franschhoek, this simple truth is rather unusual in the South African context.

“Wow!” some might say; while others may choose “Big deal”. But a big deal it is when you consider the number of wine farms for sale and the many corporates and foreign businessmen who simply purchase wineries to grow their portfolio or who choose to remodel them into holiday destinations for lovers of travel, rather than wine. And the first thing to disappear when a family winery is sold is bound to be a unique wine brand that has the potential to be very different from the run-of-the-mill.

What’s sad, however, is that it’s not really the fault of that corporate or foreign businessman – wine drinkers
are to blame. Equally sad is the knowledge that the difference in sales volume per brand at R29.99 as opposed to R31.99 is huge and that the psychological barrier of spending more than R30 is as marked as the average drinker’s desire to save even R2. You may not give it a second thought when next you make that saving, but consider the difference it makes to the producer whose total production is just 60 000 bottles. And then there are wines that sell wine for R20 a bottle on promotion! It’s something that smaller brands just cannot achieve unless they’re prepared to literally give money away with every bottle sold.

What can small family-owned wineries do then, to survive in a market that wants cheaper wines but within which it simply cannot compete against the ‘big boys’? The short answer is nothing. But I believe that if restaurants and retailers would look past the brands with enough money to advertise and promote their wines, or at least give family-owned wineries a chance, we’d see real value for consumers, returns for the retailers and longevity for the wineries and South African wine in general.