MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Quality meets value when our wines compete globally
Sale shows disconnect between quality and price
Research in the UK reveals that 96% of the wine sold there retails for less than £9 a bottle. A similar exercise in SA would probably confirm that less than 4% of all Cape wine trades for more than R100 a bottle. Certainly more than half of all domestic wine sales are at less than R50 a bottle: at double that amount there’s only a tiny percentage of wine left in the ultrapremium bracket. Richard Hemmings MW, commenting on Jancis Robinson’s website about the UK research, goes on to observe "that almost all the content on this site — in excess of 11,000 articles and 160,000 tasting notes, plus the complete Oxford Companion to Wine … is dedicated to just 4% of the wine that Britons actually drink". The same line of reasoning doubtless applies to editorial available locally on Cape wine. While publications such as the Platter Guide and websites such as Wine Wizard (home to my tasting notes) cover most wines, irrespective of their selling price, in reality almost everyone who consults th...
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