You don’t need first-hand knowledge of the patriotic spirit of the French or the Italians to guess that the imported wine market in Italy and France is minuscule. Pride as well as unashamed ignorance of what might be available makes a booming market in foreign wine seriously unlikely.
High-end Parisian restaurants list a few international wines — to cater, one imagines, for Americans unfamiliar with French treasures. Mostly when fine dining establishments in Bordeaux talk about “foreign wine” they mean burgundy, while those in Burgundy mean bordeaux.
SA is not much different: imported wine hardly features in the national statistics. The sole exception is champagne, whose success as a category seems to have grown in inverse proportion to the supply of electricity from Eskom (no secret why). Proudly South African is the most likely explanation for why we drink local, especially given the choice of what’s available (mainly from Spain, Portugal, and Italy) — much of it selling for the same price as the local equivalent.
The same qualms and concerns don’t appear to bother Australians (who drink bucketloads of burgundy and champagne) and Americans (especially those living on the east coast). The US is pretty much the most important market in the world for Italian and premium French wine, and has become increasing important to Australian producers — especially now that they have been taxed out of China.
None of the world’s major New World wine exporting nations even bothers about SA. They know we are not worth the price of an air ticket. The same is largely true of the Old World producers with the single exception of a couple of Champagne houses. I would be surprised if our total annual imports from America and the Antipodes exceed 2,000 cases. We — or at least the cash-flush segment of our population — consume that volume of Champagne in a single week.
This made it all the more surprising to discover that SA was again importing wines from Penfold’s — the best known and among the most ancient of the major Australian companies. Despite its being the object of desire in countless mergers and acquisitions, Penfold’s has managed to retain its brand pre-eminence and its hallmark style. Over the years I have been fortunate to sample many of its top-end wines, including most of vintages ever produced of Penfold’s most famous wine, the modestly named (and even more modestly packaged) “Grange”.
News that a range of Penfold’s wines was again available again in SA provoked my curiosity: were we being asked to mop up the lower-end wines the Chinese were no longer buying, or was there also some vinous treasure? Armed with an invitation to taste what had just arrived, I found a very fair range from decent enough entry level wines right up to the top. Grange (at R12,000 per bottle) is apparently already sold out. That’s no bad thing — it’s there to position the brand, not to be quaffed. But there were a few affordable bottles worth the effort of a visit to Norman Goodfellows.
The Koonunga Hill Autumn Riesling at about R350 a bottle was a respectable enough buy, though it was no match for the Koonunga Shiraz-Cabernet which sells for the same price. The Koonunga has made great strides in the past decade, delivering excellent value and dollops of seductive, savoury fruit. The Bin 389 — a one-time favourite of mine — was a bit of a disappointment: now at just under R2,000 a bottle it had none of the nuance I was expecting. Compensation came in the form of the St Henri Shiraz 2019 (which costs slightly more). Textured and opulent, it’s the kind of wine which gives you a real sense of the luxury end of the wine market.
Does this mean you should splurge on Grange when it’s next back in stock? Not unless you’re willing to age it for at least 20 years. While it’s fabulous, impressive and pretty much faultless, it’s the G-Wagon of the wine industry.
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