Partly because as a reviewer I have found more wines scoring higher than ever before, and partly because some of my argument is flawed.
Firstly, wines are better now; and more consistent. Winegrowing has advanced, the understanding of terroir, canopy management, irrigation, clone selection etc is better. Virused vineyards are disappearing, yields are carefully controlled, new – sometimes better - sites are discovered, harvesting is for phenolic, rather than just sugar, ripeness. Similarly, winemaking has advanced, selected yeasts, better hygiene, varied fermenters, controlled temperatures and winemakers with international outlooks and experience.
Secondly, though, is the crux of my change. In a nutshell, if only the best wines are scored or judged, it makes sense that the scores will be high.
Reviewers only review the wines sent to them or presented to them. Competitions only judge the wines entered. Most wines are not judged or reviewed.
It stands to reason that the wines presented to be scored will be selected by the producer as their best wines. Why send a wine – at considerable cost – for reviewing when you know yourself that it merits a score around 70 / 100 ?
And cost is surely a factor, especially for smaller producers. An entry into a prestigious competition such as Veritas, The OMTS or the IWSC can cost between R1400 and R3500. If you wanted to enter a few wines for these two, plus say, a couple into the many more competitions on offer, including delivery costs, you could be looking at more than R15,000. Would this be justified unless you only sent your best wines and believed that they would achieve scores that would benefit sales?
Similarly with reviewers. It makes sense to submit your best wines. Platter’s Wine Guide is an exception here as it endeavours to taste all of a producer’s wines, though often wines are missing from producers as being ‘not tasted’ at the time. Other than Platter, logically, a producer that submits three wines for review may well be producing seven others, so achieving scores of 97 or 98 points for them might actually balance those that may have scored 70 or 80 points if they had been sent, or available, for review.
And speaking of Platter, the recent award of some 200 wines at the highest 5 star rating would previously have sent me into a tailspin, now I do the math, 200 of a potential 6,500 annual wines is just over 3 per cent. Is that so unreasonable when we are talking about wines that can take your breath away, win international Trophies or, as Georgio Dalla Cia says, “give me goosebumps”?
This leads to my third point. Numbers. As stated, South Africa is producing some 6,500 wines annually, and I could be wrong here by several hundreds.
Popular varietals, like Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz must be around 500 labels each a year. Nearly everyone, for instance, produces a Merlot so with 560 producers this figure makes sense.
But how many of those are submitted for review or into competition? My guess is less than half and probably even less than a third. I cringed when seeing wines proclaimed as ‘the best’, knowing that probably 60% of their kind were not represented. Not the competition’s fault, perhaps, but too much akin to a General Election for me. I felt that banners should come with, ‘Trophy Winner – of the wines entered’.
Gradually, I am weaning myself away from this position, though, because of the reasons stated. If only the best are submitted, a winner can surely claim to be the best. There aren’t many (but there are some very significant) producers who refuse to have any of their wines judged or reviewed.
And busy international reviewers can only do so much.
Whereas a reviewer might consider 1500 or so South African wines and first reaction to that might be that reviewing only 25% of the total is disappointing, now I realise that those 1500 represented, to a large degree, the best that we have to offer and therefore provide a fairly accurate picture of the state of play. You judge the advances in the car industry by analysing the best of the new products, why not wine?
Just as important as the reviewer’s pronouncements on individual wines are the yearly comparative notes they publish, icons are established, producers become familiar names, export markets (hopefully) open up, trends become visible, market response is illuminated, and the fact that the wines are really excellent and compete with the world’s best echoes around the globe.
It’s not just the ‘winners’ this showcases. Producers with high scores for their premium wines may benefit from a ‘trickle down’ effect, where their un-entered, less prestigious wines also get more attention, especially in export markets.
Thus the reviews – even of a percentage of SA wines – say to the importer of South African wines around the globe that SA wines are worthy, they reward and reinforce the producer’s talents and direction and they give confidence to the consumer that they really are getting something special.