Aficionados of futuristic horror films will no doubt have watched Contagion, which was released scarily enough on 9/11 in 2011. No doubt at the time they will have wondered whether anything that terrible could really happen in the safe environments the developed world has come to take for granted. Less than 10 years later they had their answer.
Much of the fear-inducing content of Contagion relates to mortality and mayhem — a situation that would certainly have been our own Covid-19 experience if the coronavirus had been as lethal as Ebola and as infectious as the Omicron variant. But there are other deeply unpleasant features of pandemics we’ve only discovered over the past couple of years and which did not form part of the Hollywood version of things: the enforced separation of families stranded on opposite sides of the globe, the meltdown of the hospitality and travel sector, and the implosion in the office rental business are obvious examples.
Adjusting to the new norm requires more than adopting new technologies. How do you do business if, by the very nature of your enterprise, you need to be in direct personal contact with your customer? Consider the “estate” wine business, which is divided between producers who have (or pretend to have) a brand home offering an immersive wine experience, and those who approach marketing from behind an inhospitable “by appointment only” sign.
Zoom doesn’t work for the former — the producers who have built their brands by making the most of the winery experience. For them, the property is a theatre that depends on an audience. It will have a sophisticated tasting room (think of Creation, with its wine-and-food pairing), high-end dining (Rust en Vrede), deluxe accommodation (Delaire Graff), gardens (Vergelegen) and museums (historical at Groot Constantia, cars at L’Ormarins, glass at Glenelly). While videos and Instagram can provide some form of supplementary support, they cannot replace the interactive live experience.
When the pandemic hit, the effect on these producers wasn’t simply the revenue loss of facilities without patrons: the very nature of the brand message was compromised. We are now midway through the Cape’s second severely compromised tourist season. Local custom is back but many of the foreign buyers who might have become brand ambassadors abroad for the wineries are simply not there.
Unlike the hospitality industry that could at least partly reduce losses by negotiating with landlords, retrenching employees and supplying Uber Eats, these wineries have much less flexibility. Their investments in their unique form of wine theatre have been made, and must be amortised; their specialist staffers are not easily replaced, and must be kept on the payroll. Massive cost savings aren’t possible. Meanwhile, the investment is not able to perform as it had done when the winelands were packed with guests.
Chatting to producers whose properties normally enjoy a high percentage of foreign visitors over Christmas, I have had mixed feedback. Some have said they managed to engage by using Zoom technology and working with their foreign agents. By connecting with those who have already been to the estate, they were able to deliver samples to homes in various European countries so the winemaker could conduct an online “live” tasting.
As an interim measure, this has been very successful — and surprisingly cost-effective. Those without access to the database and the offshore distribution have been less upbeat. Almost all have expressed astonishment and gratitude at how their SA customers have been “super-active” in their support.
There’s no easy solution to the Covid-19-induced predicament of wine producers who rely on their brand homes as their primary promotional strategy. They have to believe that the pandemic is winding down. Hopefully they are right.
Then, just possibly, the national coronavirus command council — a rival for the most inept of the institutions created by the ANC — will sail into the sunset. The cast of many thousands can then return to the Cape, and the next season of Playing in the World’s Most Beautiful Winelands can begin.
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