Wine industry analysts are struggling to make sense of the worldwide crisis of surplus stocks and declining sales: consumption is at levels last seen 60 years ago.
There has been no shortage of investment in research to understand what has happened. Unfortunately, some of the apparent explanations are contradictory. Moreover, what’s true in one market may not be true elsewhere. We do know there’s a glut.
Jancis Robinson shared this succinct summary from Wine Australia: “Producers there have nearly twice as much wine in stock as they can reasonably expect to sell.”
Meanwhile, Drinks Business International tells us “fine wine defies downturn as $250+ bottles keep selling”. In the US, shipments of cabernet with an average price of $200 or more grew by 14% in value and 10% in volume. However, cabernet priced at less than $60 a bottle declined by 17% over the past 12 months. Other research reveals younger, well-to-do newcomers are not necessarily persuaded that fine wine justifies the premium it currently enjoys. Clearly they are not the buyers who are still spending north of $250 a bottle for Californian cabernet.
Then Areni Global, a wine industry think-tank, released its latest report. It shows consumers are still entering the market, but with less long-term commitment than previously. In particular, women do not appear to be staying the course: they enter fine wine “in equal numbers to men, attend more events and invest more heavily in formal wine education. Yet only a quarter go on to become regular fine wine buyers.”
Happily for the Cape wine industry, research conducted here doesn’t completely corroborate these international trends: yes, sales are not buoyant, but they are not catastrophic and at least we have a vibrant community of new wine drinkers. Many didn’t grow up in a home where wine was the beverage of choice. They have discovered the route to wine knowledge is in the company of friends. This requires an open-mindedness and a lack of pretension: those for whom wine is a pleasure rather than a snob purchase are unlikely to use (high) price as a primary purchase motivation.
These seemingly conflicting ideas were front of mind when I attended a trade tasting organised by one of the distributors whose range is disproportionately loaded in favour of (mainly) young, adventurous and experimental producers. It seemed likely their thinking around pricing would at least be partially aligned with the new audience for wine in South Africa.
There was some consistency to the pattern: Julian and Sophie Schaal (who make wine in the Cape and in France, and who are certainly youthful) offer some exceptional value wines in their small but thoughtful range. The Schaal Mountain Vineyards chardonnay 2024, produced from Elgin grapes, is precise and harmonious, delivering stunning value at about R200 a bottle — no small achievement for handmade rather than industrial wine. Their 2025 pinot noir is equally delicious. Perhaps not as complex as the chardonnay, it more than makes up for it with the exuberance of its fruit.
Trizanne Barnard, long regarded as one of the Cape’s best producers of nuanced and subtle (rather than “blockbuster”) wines, recently launched the 2021 vintage of her Makeba cap classique. Pinot-dominated and superbly crafted, its vibrant red fruit is held in check by a delicate and persistent line of lime-citrus — and at R370 it’s fairly priced.
Then there’s Carl Schultz’s new Solo range of wines, produced in minuscule quantities by the man whose dedication and skill made Hartenberg the success story it is today. His pricing probably reflects an older generation’s assumptions about what the market will bear. Schultz knows his audience, and it’s Boomers not Millennials. So the chardonnay — unshowy and very fine — sells for about R450 a bottle, so not cheap. But this is roughly half the price of his cabernet and his merlot, both of which I liked — though not at his asking price. I might be a Boomer, but I think like Gen Z.
This article was first published in Business Day.
