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If SA felt crowded last year, that’s probably because over 8 billion people, or more than the entire population of the planet, came on holiday here. Yet as Business Day reports today, only 309 000 came for the FIFA soccer World Cup.
WOSA’s brave project to train 2010 sommeliers in time for the Fifa Soccer World Cup was completed last month according to Allister Kreft from service provider Let’s Sell Lobster. About 90% of the trainees were from previously disadvantaged communities and many of them were unemployed. Several have since found employment after being trained as sommeliers, so although missing the World Cup kickoff deadline by six months, lives have been changed by the initiative in a meaningful way.
Michelle Obama
National generic wine marketing is in deep trouble. Wine Australia has been shaken by big name defections while a story I ran on Marieta de Beer attracted many enquiries from SA exporters desperate for help shifting stock in overseas markets and confirming all is far from honeysuckle and roses in the bosom of SA wine marketing.
Marieta de Beer
Last year’s Fifa soccer World Cup was a bit of a fizzer in Cape Town as the Western Cape attracted less than half the number of visitors as Gauteng. Even worse was the poor performance of SA wine exports to the UK, largest export market, with sales to supermarkets down 11% by volume and 6% by value over the year.
This in a market which grew volumes by 2% and value by 7% as the UK clawed itself out of recession. How ironic then that Australia, a country sans World Cup, grew volumes by 5% and value by 7% from a much higher base with a currency that appreciated against Sterling even more than the Rand.
While Cape Town in winter is hardly an ideal soccer destination, it is one of the Gay Capitals of the world. So the news that SA is to bid for the Mr Gay World 2012 competition comes as welcome news to hard-pressed SA producers.
In a review of Simon Hoggart’s Life’s too short to drink bad wine: 100 wines for discerning drinkers, the blogger By George (WINE, FOOD, CRICKET, ART AND OTHER UNIMPORTANT THINGS) makes the point “I have always believed that it is better to read somebody who knows a bit about wine and can write well than somebody who knows a lot about wine and cannot write. There are too many of the latter” as the Grape communal blog confirms on a bi-monthly basis when the site is updated.
How Much? R80;
Where? Steenberg Vineyards, Constantia 27 (0)21 713 2211;
Why? If my Fifa-friendly Checkers World Cup of Wine TV quiz show had ever got into production, one of the questions would have been “What do the Franschhoek and Constantia Valleys have in common?” A) hideouts for international criminals (Jurgen Harksen in Constantia, the mafia in Franschhoek); B) more famous for wines made from bought-in grapes (Buitenverwachting Buiten Blanc, Boekenhoutskloof Syrah); C) more cell phones than Telkom land lines. The broad spectrum of flavours of this popular Sauvignon Blanc hail from Darling and Durvanville with a little bit of French oak added as an X-factor.
Lida van Heerden tells the HMS Rattlesnake tale
How Much? R123;
Where? Groot Constantia Estate, Constantia 27 (0)21 794 5128;
Why? “Refrain from sexual activity” was the insulting advice from Fifa boss Sepp Blatter to gays wishing to travel to Qatar in 2022 for the World Cup where the love that dare not speak its name is illegal. After a disappointing World Cup 2010 in which the Winelands failed to attract the training camp of a single team in spite of many lavish overseas jollies by bureaucrats to drum up business, Cape winemakers should make sure they don’t miss out on the next likely international competition to be held in SA: Mr. Gay World 2012.
Boela Gerber
The recent claim in Decanter by WINE magazine tasting panel supremo Christian Eedes that “South Africa doesn’t have a single ‘icon’ wine. One that is recognized and sought after the world over” rubs salt into the industry’s wounds, staggering from recent revelations that SA exports of bottled wine to the UK, its largest market, are down over 25% in the first nine months of the year, FIFA World Cup notwithstanding.
Christian
The Gugulethu mystery murder of British honeymoon tourist Anni Dewani has serious collateral damage for SA tourism. Thursday’s launch of Oak Valley’s easy drinking lifestyle range, called Rawbones, at Mzoli’s butchery-cum-braai boma in Gugs, has Mother City Wine mavens making their wills and requesting special transport arrangements from the Rhodesian bush war. Oak Valley owner Anthony Rawbone-Viljoen (whose initials ARV ominously double as Armed Reconnaissance Vehicle) issued the following press statement to calm the fevered brows of bibulists, bullshitters and bloggistes:
Anthony Rawbone-Viljoen
SA shipments of bottled wine to its largest market, the UK, are in serious trouble according to new figures from SAWIS. Exports tanked from 38.2 million to 30.7 million litres between January and June, a period in which the SA wine category received unprecedented publicity thanks to the World Cup. Imagine what the figures would have been without the Fifa hullabaloo!
Clearly marketing SA wine in its largest market needs an urgent rethink. For instance, was the plan to give away 300 copies of André Morgenthal’s braii book Cape Wine Braai Masters to readers of The Telegraph really the most effective way to spend SA wine marketing moolah?
A Braii book from Big Brother
