The drought is not letting up, despite visitors to last week’s Stellenbosch Wine Festival being treated to the sight of various delighted attendees doing a rain dance as a quenching sheet of rain fell down on Coetzenburg, where the show was held.
Many of our Michelangelo entrants are, however, talking of a harvest that might be down in volume, but is certainly producing wines of the quality characteristic of the South African wine industry. Some regions, such as Durbanville, are seeing yields on par with those from 2016 – slightly down on last year, which was a bumper crop.
Lower yields have led to tighter bunches of smaller berries offering more intense and concentrated flavours. Pinotage producers, custodians of an early-ripening variety, are talking of truly exceptional wines originating from the densely concentrated fruit. Out in Robertson, the Chardonnay barons are talking of grapes showing superb chemistries despite the drop in volume caused the water restrictions and the searing heat that valley is experiencing.
An interesting observation has been the resilience dryland vines are showing in this parched year. As these vines have only depended on natural irrigation all their lives, they have built up a relative resistance to dry conditions and have learnt to handle years in which the going gets tough. Without the luxury of drip-irrigation on tap, these vines’ roots go deeper, sucking up the most remote vestibules of water as well as having built a camel-like ability to survive, grow and ripen fruit in dry conditions.
With a harvest predicted to be at least 20% lower in volume, 2018 could be a turning point in the industry. Supply will be lower, with more products finding their way into bottles than being tapped into lower-price bulk containers.
Hopefully this will lead to a change in the perception that South Africa’s wines are too cheap and that we will forever be a nation of price-takers instead of the price-maker status we deserve to be.
To all producers, we wish you a good harvest and we are sure you are more than capable of accepting the challenges nature is throwing at the winelands in the current time. Most of all, we are looking to tasting your 2018 wines and believe they are going to be every bit as good as they deserve to be despite these trying times. After-all, we in the wine industry are no strangers to adversity.
- Lorraine Immelman, CEO and founder of the Michelangelo International Wine & Spirits Awards