The Partyberg, prime wine producing appellation between Malmesbury, where people bray and Riebeek-Kasteel, where people wear gray (this season’s new black), is in crisis and for once I’m not talking about the hysterical “camp” followers of local winemaker Eben Sadie, as Mike Fridjhon humorously described Eben’s far-flung church in Business Day last week. For the Paardeberg is Ground Zero for poultry farming and financial results for Country Bird Holdings reported in Business Day yesterday, make grim reading for farmers.

Chicken, the cheapest source of protein in SA, is down from R16/Kg to R13/Kg. Which could explain why the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Malmesbury ran out of the stuff a while back yet the shop remained open, reduced to selling cool drinks and coleslaw.

Without chickens to subsidize grapes, quality will be under pressure in both the Swartland and other appellations that buy-in Partyberg fruit: Cape Point, Stellenbosch, Stanford and Franschhoek being four prime examples. Farmer Brown is under pressure from reduced demand (those 1 million jobs lost in the recession so far) plus cheap imports thanks to a rand on steroids.

Speaking of which, what happened to all the cheap wine imports? With the Rand and the Euro favourably poised for importers, where are all the cheap Champagnes and reduced-price Rieslings?

Where are the cut-price Chilean Cabernets and afslag Argentinian Malbecs? Are the Americans, in the shape of E&J Gallo, the only capitalists around to have seen the price opportunities for their cut-price Californian juice in the SA market? With their first world advertising nous and generous residual sugar levels, they are sure to make a big splash in the SA spittoon. While SA wine marketers salivate over the USA as export destination and accumulate their business class airmiles, have they left the back door open to a flood of cut-price cuvées? Are their chickens about to come home to roost, big time?

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