Producers naturally sing from their hymn sheets: if you are in the volume wine business you praise the importance of stock continuity; if your grapes come from your own vineyards you present site or terroir as the defining feature of fine wine. Between these two positions it sometimes appears as if there is an unbridgeable chasm.
In Burgundy, which is the ultimate patchwork quilt of single-site claims, a distance of 10m can translate into a fivefold increase (or decrease) in the price of a bottle.
Bordeaux is home to great estates. Three of the five First Growths share the same area of origin (Pauillac). However, even if he wanted to, the cellar master at Chateau Latour could not make wines taste anything like those of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.
So this poses a wider question about the nature of terroir and the limitations to fine wine scalability. If a 10m distance can really make that much difference, the term “site specific” must surely be restricted to very small parcels of land that are homogeneous in terms of soil profile (in the strictest sense of the word), climate and aspect.
This would limit most such claims to little more than a few hectares, often less. Yet properties such as the great Bordeaux estates — Lafite and d’Yquem — occupy comfortably more than 100ha. They produce wines that are instantly recognised in blind tastings by experts familiar with them, so they must clearly express something akin to terroir — certainly something more than the hand of the winemaker.
Sustainability perspective
Anthony Hamilton Russell argues that his 50ha of vineyard, planted to only two varieties, satisfies this broader definition. Johann Krige would say the same about the Kanonkop estate wines. Taaibosch (formerly Cordoba) has proved to be a very special place for cabernet franc. Winemaker Schalk-Willem Joubert believes it will be possible to extend the existing 11ha of vineyards to other sites on the property of close to 60ha without diluting the quality. He had better be correct if the Oddo family, owners since 2017, are to recover the investment made into the cellar.
From a sustainability perspective these issues are important. Very few farming enterprises can survive off a few parcels, each a few hectares, unless wine pricing is stratospheric — and the number of such enterprises can be counted on the fingers of a badly mauled hand. For a start, land cost becomes a barrier to entry, as does the resulting price of the wine. Clos de Tart, a 7.3ha estate in Burgundy, fetched almost €30m/ha in 2017. Smaller sites have sold for even more.
So a more realistic grail appears to be slightly larger estates, with slightly lower per bottle prices. SA has several of those, and while I have not had sight of their books, it seems a safe assumption that they are profitable enough (as long as they are not trying to pay off the land or start-up costs).
Whatever the protestations of their owners, you can be sure — at least on a cash flow basis — that Meerlust, Hamilton Russell, Boekenhoutskloof, Tokara, Thelema, Klein Constantia, Paul Cluver and Kanonkop are doing OK. Annual sales of 20,000–30,000 dozen (sometimes substantially more) with retail per-bottle prices averaging upwards of R300 go far towards making the business more than a fiction to gratify the proprietor’s ego.
As with everything in SA, this achievement looks Lilliputian compared with the big international players. The Lafite property produces about 35,000 cases annually. About 40% is Grand Vin selling ex cellar for R9,000 per bottle; the second label fetches almost R3,000. This single estate grosses almost half the turnover of the Cape wine industry.
We should be focusing on what is important. By hyping the artisanal and single-site wines we are lifting the profile of SA wine — but as far as the real wine business goes, we are languishing below the horizon.
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