Wine producers splash out

Cape Town - South African wine producers spend more than R4.2m every year on local wine-tasting competitions in the hope of being able to attach winners' labels to their bottles so as to set them apart from the rest of the industry.

Wine-tasting is on the increase every year and more than 6 000 wines are sampled for possible consideration in the John Platter South African Wine Guide 2009.

This was the finding of Kim Maxwell, who performed an in-depth investigation for the wine industry's monthly newsletter WineLand.

She came to the conclusion that the results of the different competitions differed so greatly that a wine producer's chances of being awarded a particular medal were just as good as those of winning the lottery.

During 2008, 19 competitions meeting Maxwell's criteria for comparison were held - competitions she considered independent, for which an entry fee was payable and which offered a cash prize.

If a wine producer entered only one of his wines for each of the 19 competitions, it would have cost that producer R6 780 in 2008.

If three wines were entered for each competition, entry fees would have set him back R20 340, bringing the total amount spent on competitions last year to R4.2m.

According to Maxwell this is not all it costs to participate in wine-tasting competitions.

A significant number of competitions expect producers to provide the organisers with a fair stock of the wine being entered, free of charge, which some organisers then even use for their own promotional purposes.

The cost of taking part in a competition is further boosted by the fees charged for attending the dinner at which the winners are announced and the prizes handed over.

Organisers of the different competitions are however convinced that it's worth the time and the money, since winners in many cases buy additional stickers to put on their bottles - to draw the consumer's attention to the excellence of that particular wine.

But the stickers also come with a cost, since the organisers of the wine-tasting competitions in some cases award only a limited number of free stickers, while the rest have to be paid for.

An example cited by Maxwell is the Sauvignon Blanc Top 10, where winners receive 2 000 stickers, and participants buy up to a further 30 000; in 2008 there was an order for as many as 300 000 bronze-medal stickers.

It seems that the larger wine estates do significant research into the value a specific wine-tasting competition offers them.

Charles Hopkins, a winemaker at De Grendel, says a sizeable number of wine consumers follow the results of wine-tasting competitions and make their purchases accordingly.

"We regard competitions an important component of exposure to consumers, but the secret lies in knowing which wine to enter for which competition, because the costs of participation are simply too high."

- Sake24.com

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