It’s been several years since I visited Vergelegen, long considered to be one of the country’s flagship wine estates, but I’m aiming to rectify this omission soon. There have been significant changes since Michel Rolland became the property’s consulting oenologist several years ago. Ahead of a visit, I thought I should sample the current releases — all blind and lined up against suitably positioned competitor wines. It’s always difficult to take an impartial view of what is in the bottle in the midst of the vaulted cellars.
It turned out to be a useful exercise, partly because it confirmed how good Vergelegen’s serious wines have become under Rolland’s guidance. They have mostly shed the faintly herbal severity that characterised the vintages from 2005 to about 2012. This has been achieved without an increase in alcohol levels, a tribute to a different vineyard management strategy and to Rolland’s role in assembling the cuvées. But the other (unintended) outcome of the tasting is that it highlighted the question of what to make of prestige bottlings and the premium they attract.
Consider this: tasted blind, the 2017 vintage of Vergelegen’s Last Word Cabernet, which sells for about R450 a bottle, scored an impressive 95. The similarly priced 2017 Vergelegen First Thought Cabernet came in one point below.
Allowing for palate preferences and bottle variation, it is clear that both are very smart wines. The standard Vergelegen Reserve Cabernet, which is two years older and at R390 a bottle about 15% less expensive, cruised in at 93 points. Hairsplitting aside, the point is clear. All are very good, different by nuances rather than in significant measures, and priced appropriately for how they performed in a blind line-up.
They were among 11 different cabernets tasted that morning; it was a strong group with almost all of the scores above 90. The merlot class sampled earlier the same day fared rather less well, averaging roughly five points lower.
But here’s the thing: in that same cabernet tasting, there was a bottle of the Vergelegen V — admittedly from the less propitious 2014 vintage. It scored a perfectly respectable 93 points. The only problem, from a consumer perspective, is that it costs (and presumably sells for) three to four times the price of the other Vergelegen cabernets.
You can argue that whoever buys these ultra-premium reserve wines is not expecting a proportionate increase in quality for their added investment in price. If the standard wine in the range hovers at near 92/93 points and costs R400, you can’t seriously expect that a bottle that sells for R1,500 will score 350 (percent). Perceived rarity rather than intrinsic quality drives what you pay for a bottle of “icon” wine.
It seems fair to expect that an increase in price — at least up to a point — should yield a better wine. This was true of the various Vergelegen cabernets until the stratospherically priced V, and true of the two Vergelegen merlots both from the same vintage: the Reserve 2015 was one point shy of the curiously named The Mistake merlot, which sells for 50% more.
This pricing anomaly is not limited to Vergelegen. There were two Nederburgs in the morning’s line-up, and the regular bottling (2019) edged out the 2018 Manor House, which sells for twice the price. There was a vintage difference, with the 2018 compromised by the stressed fruit notes that are a feature of most wines from that desperate final year of the drought.
Clearly inferior vintages — at least in SA — are not offered at a discount (though fashionable vintages come to market with a premium). What determines price once a certain quality threshold has been met is driven by marketing and the market. Packaging, “sex appeal”, the desirability of the brand and the status of the cultivar all play a role. Much is influenced by conditioning: why, for example, is the Vilafonte “C” twice the price of the Vilafonte “M”? Savvy buyers know not to treat price as a proxy for quality, but sometimes it seems the rules are too arcane even for industry insiders.
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