MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Too many winners take the fizz out of Platter’s wine guide

The latest edition of the Platter’s wine guide will be hitting the stores over the next few weeks — in time (as always) for the Christmas trade. Whether there will be the vast piles stacked up at the tills at Exclusive Books (as there used to be 10 or 20 years ago) remains to be seen.

The trend has been fewer and fewer sales of the country’s wine bible as consumers everywhere find alternative ratings resources. This was inevitable: it’s the sign of a mature consumer-orientated industry when there’s a choice of critics to go with the vastly wider choice of wines.

The geeks (many with their own mercenary axe to grind) have been dismissive about the guide for years: they rubbish its five-star selections and challenge the validity of the judging arrangements, mainly because the primary ratings are arrived at by sighted (rather than blind) tastings. While they may not be wrong in the particular, I think that the criticism is a little like dismissing the game of football just because it’s played by prima donnas who roll around on the turf pretending to be injured hoping to induce the ref to award them a free kick.

The guide is the most complete compendium of Cape wine. The few wineries whose proprietors prefer to boycott the invitation to submit samples do themselves — and the country’s wine consumers — a disservice. The book is packed with information about the wines and wineries, but also about wine tourism, wining-and-dining in the wine lands, where to stay and — for those a little reticent about engaging in winespeak — what to say.

Lost purpose

Its ratings have long been a subject of controversy — not just at the five star level, but from the cheapest superquaffers up to the most overpriced. Generally, if you’re in the ratings business you must expect to offend more people than you reward. However, with almost 200 five star laureates (95 points or more) and a further 291 wines on 94 points (both out of 100) there’s pretty much a lollipop for everyone.

There’s a correlation (which may be coincidental) between the decline in sales of the guide and the increase in the number of highly awarded wines: when there were only 40 five star wines, the guide sold almost three times the number of copies printed now. Perception of credibility is undermined when there are too many winners on the podium. And when the launch event for the latest edition is treated as an award ceremony for best-in-class winners, five star laureates, Winery of the Year, Newcomer of the Year and Editor’s Pick of the Year, it seems as if the book has lost its sense of purpose.

The guide is a splendid publication. Its primary defect is that while it invites the wine-consuming public to value it on the merits of its judgments, it hands out so many accolades it’s impossible to see the trees for the woods. There was a time when the guide’s view of the country’s best wines had meaning. This is no longer the case: not with 200 five star awards, 300 94 pointers and probably 1,000 wines scoring four-and-a-half stars.

For the record: Mullineux won the Winery of the Year Award — a calculation based on the number of its five star wines in this guide. It’s the third time in the past four years that the Mullineuxs have bagged the accolade. Trade Winds won the Newcomer of the Year (best ratings for a debutant winery) and Duncan Savage the Editor’s Award (the only one of these gongs where Philip van Zyl — the man who puts the guide together — is free to make a call based solely on his own judgment).

The world of publishing has been transformed by the digital revolution. For the guide to survive in this new era it needs to remind SA wine consumers that it offers a wealth of solid, often unflashy, content. Hyping hundreds of often unobtainable icons is clearly not selling the book.