The Cape Winemakers Guild - A Perspective
Thursday, 30 September, 2010
Norman McFarlane
With the Cape Winemakers Guild Annual Auction a few days away - it kicks off at 9h00 at the Spier Conference Centre on Saturday, October 2 - it is perhaps appropriate to look below the surface to get a feel for what this organisation is all about.
The palate-numbing journey through 39 Auction wines in an hour and a half at the mid-August tutored tasting at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, followed by the far more relaxed, albeit much busier, Public Auction Showcase Tasting, trumpets the significant successes of its members.
Don't get me wrong. This was the first time that I'd been invited to attend the tutored tasting, and the constant pressure to taste the wine and jot notes aside, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Assuming that the Guild is the cream of the winemaking crop in South Africa - which may or may not be the case - it is a rare opportunity to taste (some of) the very best wines this country can produce, and to hear the winemakers speak about them.
Around 150 people assemble in school classroom - like rows behind narrow tables, and a small army of skilled pourers passes across the room dispensing the next wine, to coincide with each winemaker's three minute ascendancy to the podium to talk briefly about the wine. The logistics must be staggering. Imagine the chaos if just one wine is poured out of sync... The mind boggles!
The well organised tasting guide is an invaluable aid, but since it is reliant on what each winemaker says about their own wine, it is remarkably inconsistent in its content, from laconic more or less one-liners, to comprehensive explanations about viticulture, vinification and tasting notes. What I found most interesting was resisting the temptation to take a look at the winemakers tasting notes, and to instead write my own, for later comparison. I was pretty close most of the time, with some notable exceptions where I either didn't taste or smell what the winemaker did, and vice versa. Not too sure what that says about my palate, but there you are!
I do have my favourites, but I must admit to some reluctance to disclose them. My reluctance stems from a concern that my choices might suggest that I consider them "better" than the rest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, what I have singled out as my favourites would largely indicate my palate preferences. The very fact that a wine makes it into the Guild auction means that it has passed the test of the judging panel for this year, which means it meets or exceeds the exacting standards of excellence that Guild members have inculcated somewhere in their consciousness.
I tasted some really great wines that day, but the ones that stood out for me, in no particular order were Jeremy Walker's Grangehurst Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2005, Teddy Hall's Tribute Methode Cap Classigue 2003, Garry Jordan's Chardonnay Auction Reserve 2009, Bruce Jack's "Happy Hour" Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc 2009, Frans Smit's Spier Merlot 2008, and Adi Badenhorst's Kalmoesfontein NLH Vol 2 2008.
The Guild Auction is of course, one of two really big such events on the local wine calendar, the other being the much longer running Nederburg Auction, which premiered in 1975 with just 15 wines. The rivalry between the two has continued over the years, with 2009 being the first time that the Guild raised more in its annual auction (R5.2 million) than its rival at just over R4.03 million. This year's Nederburg Auction raised a record R5 683 810, 41 % up from last year, but it remains to be seen what the Guild's auction will rake in this time around, on Saturday at Spier. If the trend continues, it could well thump the Nederburg Auction yet again.
But it is worth taking a look at the origins of the guild concept, and indeed the origins of the Guild itself, in considering its relevance and impact on the local wine industry.
A cursory glance at the dictionary reveals that a guild is, depending upon where you look, "an association of men sharing the same interests, such as merchants or artisans: formed for mutual aid and protection and to maintain craft standards..." There are of course, many definitions, some with minor differences, but in essence, the central themes are "mutual aid and protection" and "maintain craft standards".
This particular definition does note that it applies to medieval Europe, but since guilds are believed to have emerged in China - they were known as hanghui - during the Han Dynasty as early as 206 BC, this form of association has been around for centuries.
Another, perhaps less savoury feature of guilds, at least for the outsider, is the controlling of the secrets of the craft or trade for which the guild was formed. If you desired to practice a particular craft or trade for which a guild had been formed, you would have to be invited to join the guild before you could learn the tricks of the trade so to speak, or to benefit from the guild's protection.
In some instances the flow of trade was restricted to self-employed guild members as the result of letters patent granted by an authority or monarch. If you weren't in you were out, to state the obvious.
The Cape Winemakers Guild is clearly not a guild in every sense of the word, but it certainly does foster exclusivity and the growth standards. Formed in 1982 by eight founder members including the likes of Jan "Boland" Coetzee, Walter Finlayson, Peter Finlayson and Beyers Truter to name a few, the home page of the Guild's website makes interesting reading.
It notes that potential members must have been making outstanding wines for a minimum of five years, and that admission follows a process of nomination - presumably by a Guild member - and subsequent voting at the annual general meeting.
There is no indication as to what constitutes a "Yes" vote for a nominee, a simple majority of 50% plus one, or a specific percentage. We do know that acceptance of a member's annual auction submission requires a 66% "Yes" vote from the judging panel, so one wonders whether the same applies to admission.
What we don't know reliably, is whether anybody has ever been invited to join, and declined the invitation. We also don't know how many winemakers have been nominated over the years and not made the cut at voting time. That would be interesting indeed.
There is no question that the Guild has contributed to the upping of winemaking standards in South Africa: ask any wine critic or wine writer of reasonable vintage who has tasted Guild wines over the years, but that improvement of standards is largely restricted to members. Indeed the web site notes that "With stringent membership criteria, and objective measurement of wine making progress along with continuous collegian support, the Guild constantly improves and innovates with outstanding results over the years." Collegian support suggests specifically that members benefit.
With the explosion of wine estates after 1994 and our readmission to the global village, logic dictates that far more winemakers would be knocking on the Guild's door, and membership now stands at 41, with five new members having been admitted this year. One wonders just how much bigger the Guild will actually grow, before membership begins to lose its gleam of exclusivity.
The Guild's gender split raises a question mark. Currently, only one woman winemaker is a member, Haskell Vineyard's (and Dombeya) winemaker Rianie Strydom, who was admitted this year. She follows the likes of Janey Muller of Lemberg, Louise Hofmeyer of Welgemeend and the doyen of women winemakers, Norma Ratcliffe, who went on to chair the Guild, and despite no longer being a member (she retired from active winemaking a couple of years ago) is still actively involved as a Keeper of the Key and a member of the Protégé Programme Steering Committee.
Whilst the gender split in this male-dominated industry is still overwhelmingly lopsided, I doubt that it is as high as it is in the Guild: 97.5% men : 2.5% women. One wonders what ANC Women's League chairperson Angie Motshekga would have to say about this imbalance, considering the Leagues insistence at the ANC National General Council last week in Durban, that all-pervasive gender equity legislation be introduced in Parliament as soon as possible.
Having said that, the Guild has made progress towards addressing past imbalances with the introduction of the Nedbank Winemakers Guild Development Trust which focuses on supporting education in the winelands for children from previously disadvantaged communities, and more recently in 2006, The Cape Winemakers Guild Protégé Programme.
The programme's goal is to "...bring about transformation in the wine industry through cultivating and nurturing winemakers from previously disadvantaged groups to become winemakers of excellence. It is the long-term vision that some of these Protégés could in time be invited to become members of the Cape Winemakers Guild". Harking back to the gender issue, the first woman, Praisy Dlamini, was accepted into the programme in January 2008 after graduating from Elsenberg the previous year, and the 2010 protégés are both young women, Sacha Claasen (Elsenberg) and Tamsyn Jeftha (Maties).
With the membership having been exclusively white up to this point, it begs the question whether this initiative will also help to address this glaring racial imbalance. Only time will tell.
But these issues aside, all eyes will be on the auction at the Spier Conference Centre on Saturday to see if the Guild can continue to eclipse its rival in the money stakes.