2011 Keynote Address

The End of the Gatekeeper: How The Online Revolution is Revolutionizing Wine

By David White

Prepared for the 37th Nederburg Auction

Thank you, Carina, for that generous introduction. And thanks to everyone at Nederburg and Distell for the invitation — I’m honored to be here. The invite was very humbling.

I want to begin by talking about the most prolific wine critic in the world. She reviews 1700 wines per day, diligently recording tasting notes for every single one — and scoring all of them on the 100-point scale.

She’s not as well known as Robert Parker, but she reviews more wines in six days than Robert Parker does in an entire year.

And her website is much more popular than Parker’s newsletter, The Wine Advocate. At Parker’s peak, he had about 50,000 subscribers. An estimated 500,000 people visit our prolific critic’s website each month. And they visit her site over and over again.

In fact, her site records about one million page views every single day.

Stumped? That critic is you, it’s me, it’s all of us. The website that houses all of these reviews is CellarTracker.com.

CellarTracker was created in 2003 by Eric LeVine, a former executive at Microsoft. He was sick of using spreadsheets – or rather, Microsoft Excel – to keep track of all his wine, so he built a data-management program for his cellar.

When he showed the program to some of his friends — fellow wine geeks, of course — they begged him to share the program. So he put it online, where they could track their personal inventories, check out each other’s collections, and share tasting notes.

LeVine then decided to make his program available to everyone, online, for free. With a million page views a day, it’s safe to say that CellarTracker is rather popular.

The most remarkable thing about CellarTracker isn’t the number of wines in its database – 1.1 million wines from 77,000 producers, if you’re curious. And it isn’t the number of reviews that have been written — but that would be 2.1 million, at last count.

What’s amazing is that 90 percent of the site’s visitors — over 400,000 people each month — aren’t registered users.

As wine writer Jeff Siegel explained earlier this year, “this means people aren’t going to CellarTracker to mark off a wine after they drink it; they’re going to CellarTracker to read wine reviews written by amateurs.”

This notion runs counter to so much of what’s sacred in the wine world. Everything about wine — the bizarre tasting rituals; knowledge of little-known regions and varietals; identifying the best value at the local liquor store — all of this information is supposed to be handed down from on high.

From the Masters of Wine. Jancis Robinson. Robert Parker. The staff at Decanter. Wine Spectator. The gatekeepers.

CellarTracker demonstrates that the wine world is changing — fast. Consumers don’t need — or want — centralized gatekeepers telling them what they should or shouldn’t drink.

Consumers still need advisors, of course, but when today’s consumers want information, they turn to their friends and their trusted networks — in real life and online.

This change represents a remarkable opportunity for everyone in the wine industry.

How so? Consumer choice. For all intents and purposes, wine consumers have unlimited selection. With its hundreds of thousands of labels, wine has one of the longest tails in the marketplace.

Understanding this Long Tail — and its implications — is critical.

Seven years ago, Chris Anderson – the editor of Wired, a popular tech magazine – wrote an article that looked at sales in a whole new way. His piece – entitled “The Long Tail” – spawned a book and generated an untold number of business school lectures and marketing classes. And for good reason — the piece has huge implications for sales in the Internet age.

In his magazine article, Anderson looked at books sales, DVD rentals and music downloads. His visual image of the marketplace was a graph with two axes — the horizontal axis represented all of the world’s books and songs, and the vertical represented sales.

For movies, music, books, and virtually every other consumer good, there’s a steep mountain on the left. These products are purchased by the masses — think Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas. On the right, the line becomes flat very quickly. These are the obscure subgenres like Celtic Death Metal and Brazilian Folk.

The products on the right side of this hypothetical graph represent the long tail.

Books help illustrate the tail — and why it matters.

In 2004, Nielsen Bookscan – which tracks book purchases in the United States – monitored the sales of 1.2 million books. Only 25,000 of those books – about 2 percent of them – sold more than 5,000 copies. This is where you’ll find the bestsellers – like the Twilight series or Harry Potter.

Another 25,000 books sold between 1,000 copies and 5,000 copies. The rest – 1.15 million books – sold fewer than 1,000 copies. And most of those recorded fewer than 100 sales.

These numbers probably don’t surprise anyone. We’re all familiar with “hit-driven economics” – the concept that for television shows, books, songs, movies, you name it, only the runaway hits are profitable.

What surprised Anderson wasn’t that so many books sold so poorly, but that so many sold at all. Of course millions of teenagers are buying the latest Twilight novel. But who are all those people quietly ordering anthologies of Jewish-Japanese poetry? Who actually listens to Celtic Death Metal?

It’s these obscure products — items from within the Long Tail — that are driving sales at retailers like Amazon. And sales from within the Long Tail are steadily increasing.

Already, between 25 percent and 35 percent of Amazon’s book sales come from titles that fall outside the top 100,000. Think about what that means — the market for books that are not even stocked at your average brick-and-mortar bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.

What’s the Long Tail have to do with wine? Just like with movies, music, and books, the selection is virtually unlimited — and today’s consumers are eager to be unique, free from the influence of gatekeepers and able to make up their own minds.

Witness the rise — and waning influence — of the wine world’s most important gatekeeper, Robert Parker.

His rise was epic. As Elin McCoy, the wine columnist for Bloomberg, recently wrote, “Whether by accident or design, Parker came out with a clear and concise message (rating wines on a 100-point scale) and adopted the attractive stance of a taste-it-and-tell-it-like-it-is advocate for confused wine consumers. The relentless promotion of his seemingly definitive wine scores by retailers and wineries helped transform him into the world’s most important wine critic and arguably the most influential critic of any kind.”

Of course, we all recognize that his influence is waning.

In February, Parker announced that he was handing over primary responsibility for California to Antonio Galloni, the Wine Advocate’s critic for Italian wines and Champagne.

This was huge news, and the clearest sign yet that Parker plans on retiring, perhaps someday soon.

His scores are also losing the influence they once had.

Among retailers that rely on scores to move wine, there’s little difference between The Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and medals at local competitions. I’ve been to three wine shops since arriving in South Africa on Monday, and all three were broadcasting the highest score, regardless of where it came from.

Even with First Growth Bordeaux — in China — Parker’s scores don’t matter as much as they once did.

In 2009, Parker lowered his rating of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild by three points – from a perfect 100 to 97. Nevertheless, the price of that wine at Asian auctions has nearly doubled in the past two years.

Last month, Wine Spectator reported that the 2010 Bordeaux futures campaign failed to meet expectations, even though Parker described the vintage as one of the “three greatest” of his career — and awarded 31 different wines possible scores of 95 points or more — the campaign “was not the blockbuster many had hoped it would be.”

As consumers grow more comfortable dismissing gatekeepers like Parker, the influence of local voices — the staffer at the neighborhood wine shop, the young, hip restaurant sommelier, the wine geek in everyone’s life — is becoming more important.

Across the United States, specialty wine shops are taking off — and many of the better-known ones don’t post scores at all. They see scores as an impediment to interacting with consumers.

Look at the worldwide increase in the number young sommeliers — and the attention they’re paying to the role wine should play at the dinner table.

In Washington DC, my office is just a few blocks away from a great restaurant called Bourbon Steak. It takes its wine very seriously — it has three full-time sommeliers on staff, and a wine intern.

While the head sommelier, Julian Mayor, stocks his list with everything he’s supposed to — a host of wines from DRC, plenty of First Growth Bordeaux, and just about every “cult” Napa Cab — he also offers dozens of offbeat wines from obscure regions.

He has a whole section — called “Secrets of the Sommelier” — stocked with affordable, food-friendly, esoteric options.

What Mayor has done at Bourbon Steak is incredible — but it isn’t unique. Across the world, more and more sommeliers have geek-friendly wine lists.

Or look at wine bars. I know that in Washington DC, dozens have opened in the last few years, providing opportunities for people to try wines that aren’t available at the local supermarket.

Again, this is evidence that the wine world is changing. The Sommelier is no longer a glorified sales agent who intimidates his guests — and only offers wines that have been approved by gatekeepers. Instead, they’re wine educators — eager to share their palates and preferences with their customers.

Robert Parker is also losing out to newer critics.

The leading guide for Burg-heads — who will rely on critics for quite a while, thanks to the extremely high prices of Burgundy’s wines — is Allen Meadows, who writes Burghound.

The leading critic for those who like a little — or rather, a lot — of personality is Gary Vaynerchuk. In 2006, with little more than a video camera, a website, and a small family wine shop in New Jersey, Vaynerchuk exploded onto the wine scene.

Every single day, he released a video — part criticism, part education, and always fun. He filled his reviews with wacky-but–accurate descriptors, complaining about the “oak monster” in Australian Shirazes and American Chardonnays, and discovering notes of Skittles and Sour Patch Kids in Cru Beaujolais.

His show eventually attracted as many as 90,000 viewers every day. Vaynerchuk has had as large an impact on the wine world as Wine Spectator and Robert Parker — even though they both had a 30-year head start, an enormous infrastructure, and plenty of money.

It’s notable that Gary Vaynerchuk recently called it quits and ended his daily video podcast. I’m sure there were many reasons for his departure, but I have to think that Vaynerchuk saw the writing on the wall — he had accidently become a gatekeeper, moving wine by bestowing high scores, and crushing a winery’s chances for success with one low number. And that had started to undermine his original goal — which was to educate consumers and demystify wine, so that people could make up their own minds, confident in themselves and their judgments.

Which brings us, again, to CellarTracker.

CellarTracker’s founder doesn’t believe that his site will displace professional critics, but I think he’s wrong. There’s a lot to be said for the wisdom of crowds. Just look at Wikipedia. Studies have found that the web-based, collaborative encyclopedia is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.

Consider your typical educated consumer — the one who understands that wine criticism is a subjective endeavor, and that different professionals have different palates.

Let’s say this hypothetical consumer finds a wine on sale — and isn’t familiar with the professional critic who bestowed 95 points on it. Wouldn’t he be more inclined to trust the palates — and tasting notes — of 50 amateurs who posted on CellarTracker? After all, CellarTracker notes are written by real people, typically drinking wine in a real way – at the dinner table, with food.

CellarTracker notes are also more up-to-date. We all know that wine is a living, breathing beverage – what might be delicious today could be over-the-hill in a year.

Put another way, for educated consumers, CellarTracker has become part of their trusted network.

Yes, this “trusted network” consists of people that only “exist” in the digital world. But it’s a community of amateur critics. Take WineBerserkers, a popular online message board. I’ve met several of my “real world” friends on it, and now follow their wine reviews on CellarTracker.

WineBerserkers has more than 5,000 registered users — some of whom spend hours, each day, conversing about wine. The message board at WineLibrary — the retail store owned by Gary Vaynerchuk’s family — has more than 6,000 registered users.

And then there’s Facebook. At the end of 2010, the site had 500 million registered users. These aren’t kids — 60 percent of Facebook’s users are over the age of 26. People are talking about everything on Facebook — and one of those things is wine. Twitter has just over 100 million registered users, and people are talking about wine in their Tweets, as well.

According to Cruvee, a social media monitoring platform designed for wineries, there are more than 200 million conversations about wine each month across blogs, Twitter, message boards, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

If that number is hard to conceptualize, think about this one: Cruvee has profiled over 6.5 million wine consumers. If you write about wine online, chances are Cruvee has a record of what you wrote — and knows you are, where you are, and what you consume.

The gatekeepers are also becoming less important because the wine media is changing.

Look at the blogosphere, which is now indistinguishable from the “conventional” wine media. Thanks to my blog, I’ve been invited to write for The World of Fine Wine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and countless other publications.

Wine consumers can still subscribe to the Wine Advocate, of course, but they can also check out CellarTracker.

Wine consumers can still subscribe to Decanter, but they can also turn to a local resource. In the U.S. State of Colorado, wine drinkers have ColoradoWinePress.com. The writer behind that site is just a tweet away.

In Washington DC, drinkers have me, of course, but they also have Dave McIntyre — a wine writer who writes twice each week for the Washington Post, plenty more on his own website, and is also easily contacted on twitter.

Just as consumers are becoming more empowered thanks to the weakening influence of gatekeepers, so are citizens. In the United States, at least, this political activism is having an impact on the wine industry.

From 1920 through 1933, alcohol was prohibited in the United States. Its legacy is still felt.

When prohibition was repealed, U.S. states were given the power to regulate alcohol within their borders. Some states created a “distributor tier” to sit between producers and retailers. Other states assumed complete control over the distribution and sale of alcohol.

These distributors couldn’t — and still can’t — produce alcohol their own alcohol, or sell it to consumers. They literally sit right in between the two, creating an artificial layer of separation between liquor producers and retailers that sell liquor.

A company like Distell — our kind hosts — couldn’t exist in the United States. It’s South Africa’s largest producer and distributor of wines and spirits. Production and distribution is kept separate, by law, in the United States. Producers can’t have relationships with retailers.

Back in the 1930s, the push for this system was understandable. Temperance activists didn’t like the fact that before Prohibition, liquor companies owned bars. After Prohibition was repealed, liquor stores and other retailers grew worried about dealing directly with producers, because organized crime had controlled the flow of alcohol in the tee-totaling years prior.

American lawmakers hoped that creating a middle tier would address these concerns. Instead, they created a brand new, artificial middleman that would profit from every single liquor transaction in the United States.

As one might guess, wholesalers became — and remain — incredibly powerful. Today, America’s two largest wholesalers — Southern Wine & Spirits and Republic National Distributing Company — have annual revenues of about 94 billion Rand.

These companies, together with their trade associations, donate hundreds of millions to political campaigns and spend even more on lobbyists.

Those donations make sense. America’s distributors need politicians to keep the regulatory structure in place — their survival depends on it.

But the regulatory structure stifles consumer choice and keeps prices artificially high.

Over the past few years, consumers have fought against it.

The resistance makes sense. Today’s consumers don’t want a critic serving as a gatekeeper — nor do they want a wholesaler serving as a gatekeeper. In the marketplace, consumers expect unlimited choices. In America, distributors often stand directly in that path.

In the United States alone, there are about 7,000 wineries. Most wine shops and supermarkets, though, offer just a couple of brands — I’m sure everyone here has heard of Kendall Jackson, Sutter Home, and Beringer, the three best-selling wine brands in the United States.

The reason? It’s a lot easier for wholesalers to work with big producers rather than seek out small labels. This system, though, is incredibly damaging for smaller wineries and consumers.

In the late-1990s, many Americans started ordering wine directly from producers as they developed an interest in small-production wines. These sales cut wholesalers out of the deal, so they spearheaded a campaign to prohibit such sales — pushing to prevent wineries from selling directly to restaurants, retailers, and consumers.

Fortunately, consumers fought back — writing legislators, engaging the media, and filing lawsuits. Twelve years ago, just 19 U.S. states allowed consumers to order wine directly from producers. Today, 38 states allow some form of direct-to-consumer sales.

This fight continues today — wholesalers are pushing hard to roll back the progress that’s been made. And all sorts of silly regulations remain. Just 13 of the 50 U.S. states allow consumers to order wine from online retailers. This makes it very difficult for specialty wine shops to succeed.

Let’s pretend I want to open a wine shop in Washington DC that only sells wines from South Africa. It’d be very difficult for me to succeed in the current environment, as I’d have a pretty limited customer base. If I could sell to the entire country, though, it might work out.

The rising backlash against wholesalers is a direct result of dissatisfaction with gatekeepers. And eventually, consumers will win. There’s no room for institutionalized inefficiencies in today’s marketplace.

Consumers who want to purchase anthologies of Jewish-Japanese poetry or the newest album from a Celtic Death Metal band don’t want anyone standing in their way. They want to go online and place their orders. Wine consumers are the same.

The dwindling need for gatekeepers also has enormous implications for wineries.

Historically, a winery could only meet its customers in its tasting room — or maybe at a large event in a nearby city.

Social media opens the floodgates.

In Napa Valley, there’s an exciting company called VinTank — it’s a combination research group and new media consulting firm. It also owns Cruvee, the social media monitoring platform I mentioned earlier.

VinTank’s founder, Paul Mabray, recently wrote the following about the impact of social media on the wine world:

“Whereas in the past producers pretty much entrusted retailers with the task of managing consumer relationships on an ongoing basis, they can now connect directly with friends, fans, and followers. Using Cruvee, they can gain insight into who their fans are, what interests them, what they’re talking about, whether or not they have plans to travel to wine country, and a whole lot more – regardless of what channel they purchased the wine in. That’s pretty powerful stuff.”

Paul is right. Wineries no longer need gatekeepers to interact with their customers. So smart wineries can make huge inroads — and it’s cheap.

For example, a wine company can hire a full-time employee, for an entire year, to engage with customers on twitter, facebook, message boards, blogs, you name it — for the same price it would cost to purchase a single full-page advertisement in Wine Spectator.

Consider my recent experience with Robert Oatley Vineyards, an Australian wine company.

Robert Oatley’s winemaker — who happens to be one of the world’s only honorary Masters of Wine — was visiting the United States, so his team invited me and a few area sommeliers to dinner.

As one might guess, wine was poured — eight different bottles. The knockout wine of the night was totally unexpected — a rosé of Sangiovese. It was stunning. Over the next few weeks, I published a story about the dinner on my blog, and then casually mentioned the rosé in a follow-up post.

Several friends told me that they bought it by the caseload after reading the post. They, in turn, told their friends about the wine, who told their friends about the wine… the impact of that one dinner — where I was wowed by one wine — continues to this day.

And I’m just a blogger.

The dwindling need for gatekeepers also creates huge opportunities for those on the far right of the Long Tail – this includes virtually every single South African producer.

Raise your hand if you’re familiar with search.twitter.com, which Gary Vaynerchuk has described as the world’s most important website.

Okay – I was expecting at least a few hands, I think we have one.

When you get back to your offices, head to search.twitter.com and search for your brand. Has a consumer had your wine recently? Thank them. People like feeling appreciated.

Next, search for your wine region – type in Stellenbosch, or Paarl, or wherever you are. You’ll likely find that people – both in South Africa and across the world – are getting excited about upcoming trips to wine country. Use that information to contact them. Don’t shill your products – offer to answer any questions, help with an itinerary, offer hotel and restaurant advice. Engage.

Look for opportunities to talk to people about Pinotage or Chenin Blanc or Ostrich meat.

Point is, the Internet presents a remarkable opportunity to interact directly with the end user. Again, for less money than a single full-page advertisement in Wine Spectator or Decanter, you can hire an employee to engage with consumers, daily, online.

And you can actually demonstrate a return on investment. If you take out an ad, there’s no way to prove how many people actually looked at it. If you engage online, you can point to a specific number of existing and potential consumers you identified and interacted with.

This also matters because today’s wine drinkers are more adventurous than the oenophiles of yesteryear. First Growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy are no longer affordable, of course, but even if they were, consumers would be more interested than ever before in exciting their palates.

As Wine Spectator columnist Matt Kramer recently wrote:

“Today’s wine world is radically different from the one I entered 35 years ago… Few surprises were then available, as most wines of quality came from long-established and highly regarded districts.

Today it’s the reverse. The majority of the world’s most interesting wines now come from ‘unknown,’ or at least unheralded, locales. Collectively, their numbers far outstrip the relatively small pool of famous zones commanding high prices. To call this a revolution understates it considerably.”

Consider, again, my story about Robert Oatley. Until then, my impression of Australian wines was oak-heavy, Shiraz fruit bombs and Yellow Tail. And I know a lot about wine. Oatley opened my eyes to elegant, food-friendly Shiraz and how delicious rosé of Sangiovese can be.

Another obvious answer? Smart marketers can use recommendations to drive demand down the Long Tail.

In Chris Anderson’s Wired article, he mentions Britney Spears. At the time, Spears showed up on the homepage for Rhapsody, the online music download site. Clicking her picture would get consumers to page listing her songs next to “similar artists.” Among those artists was Pink. On Pink’s page, the “similar artists” included No Doubt. And on No Doubt’s page, the list included a band called Selecter, a 1980s British ska band.

As Anderson explained, “In three clicks, Rhapsody may have enticed a Britney Spears fan to try an album that can hardly be found in a record store.”

They key here is that Rhapsody — just like Amazon and countless other retailers — has figured out how to give what they don’t know they want, but are likely to appreciate.

If you know a consumer likes Burgundy, introduce her to Pinot Noir from Elgin. If she likes that, introduce her to Etna Rosso from Sicily or Blaufränkisch from Austria.

If a consumer is complaining about the price of Bordeaux or Napa Cab, tell him to give South African wines a try.

CellarTracker demonstrates that the self-esteem of your typical, educated wine drinker is growing. Consumers are confident in their own palates, and willing to trust the advice of people in their social networks. This trend is only going to accelerate.

Refreshingly, wine’s biggest gatekeepers recognize that changes are on the way.

In July, Jancis Robinson spoke at America’s annual Wine Bloggers’ Conference. Her speech focused almost entirely on how the online revolution has changed wine journalism.

She concluded her speech with a “final hope” that the “multiplicity of voices we now have about wine means that we will no longer have just one or two voices telling people what to buy, and that retailers will regain their rightful role of making their own selections rather than regurgitating those of a handful of voices.”

“Who knows?” she continued, “Maybe my original dream of sharing information with consumers so that they can make up their own minds, as increasingly well-informed wine drinkers, confident of their own judgments and preferences, will actually come true — I hope so.”

Jancis’s dream will definitely come true — sooner than any of us may now think.

After all, the Internet as we know it is only about 15 years old.

And it was only 30 years ago that people like Robert Parker started taking on some pretty strong gatekeepers himself.

What else was Bordeaux’s Classification of 1855 but the creation of a gatekeeper? This wine is really good… everything else isn’t.

Regardless of whether one hates Parker’s 100-point scale or his palate, he made wine accessible — people understand what a 95 means on a 100-point scale, and what an 80 means. Before Parker came along, countless consumers saw wine as pretentious.

Wine isn’t pretentious, of course — it’s what moves all of us, what fascinates all of us, and why we’re all here today. It’s a beverage to sip, to savor, to share. It can lead great conversations, make meals more flavorful, and make all sorts of experiences more memorable.

There are many changes ahead, but the whole industry will be better off for it — and plenty more people will feel just as strongly as we all do about wine.

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Auction white wines come to the fore

Quite a bit of the excitement around this year’s Nederburg Auction has been around the white wines on offer, with 36 wines represented in this category, including three blends, 12 Chardonnays, seven Chenin blancs, 12 Sauvignon blancs and two Semillons. The views of several industry experts and critics on the wines in this specific category, which also highlight the ageability of white wines and touch on the influence of terroir, have been collected and packaged into this short video, which you can view by clicking on the clip below.

The Nederburg Auction takes place this coming Friday and Saturday, September 16th and 17th, at Nederburg in Paarl.

To compliment the mantra of exclusivity and rarity, a selection of fine handmade jewellery pieces, part of the Carla Antoni Collection that offers luxurious African-inspired keepsakes, will be on show and available for purchase. Additionally, Tokara Winery has arranged for several Wine Made Art pieces, created by the students at the Marie Stander Art School in Jamestown, near Stellenbosch, to be on display. The Wine Made Art initiative was created six years ago to encourage new and creative methods of incorporating wine experience in art.

The wine that would not lie down

In 1969, former Nederburg cellarmaster Günter Brözel created South Africa’s first noble late harvest from botrytis-infected grapes, which he called Edelkeur.

As legislation at the time did not permit for wines with a residual sugar this high to be sold, special permission was obtained to sell the wine on auction, and so the Nederburg Auction was born, with the debut event held in 1975. It was also the birthplace for a South African platform to showcase the best, rare and special in South African winemaking.

This coming Friday and Saturday marks the 37th year of this auspicious event. View more comments from Günter, current Nederburg cellarmaster Razvan Macici, and several other producers participating in this years event, in the clip below.

Nederburg impresses potential buyers at pre-auction dinner

One of the most sought-after invitations in the Winelands, was the opportunity to attend the Grande Roche dinner for potential bidders ahead of this year’s Nederburg Auction. It gave wine buyers a chance to preview in a superb setting some of the Nederburg wines scheduled to come under the hammer of Bonham’s Anthony Barne MW on Friday, September 16 and Saturday, September 17 at Nederburg in Paarl.

Chef Roland Gorgosilich of Bosman’s Restaurant at the luxurious hotel dished up a swanky menu paired with the award-winning Private Bin wines that Nederburg makes for sale exclusively on the annual auction.

Nederburg Private Bin D234 Sauvignon Blanc 2009 was served with mouth-watering herb-stuffed calamari, creamy spinach and beurre noissette foam, while cured salmon carpaccio, cress and crème fraiche was a gorgeous match with the 2005 Private Bin D253 Sauvignon Blanc/Chardonnay. Succulent beef fillet, glazed beetroots, pommes fondant and foie gras partnered perfectly with Nederburg Private Bin R172 Pinotage 2001. Delectably soft lamb loin, root vegetables and polenta was harmonised with two wines, Nederburg Private Bin R101 Malbec 2001 and Nederburg Private Bin R163 Cabernet Sauvignon 2001. Nederburg’s enticing Private Bin Edelkeur 2003 and a trio of chocolate dessert melted the hearts of diners.

Now in its 37th year, the auction has lined up some of South Africa’s very best-of-best wines from Nederburg and other famous-name producers.

First day of spring signals final countdown to 2011 Nederburg Auction

Every year the arrival of spring heralds a new beginning, creating the anticipation that comes with the changing of the seasons. This excitement is also palpable in the Nederburg Auction offices – the 1st of September has kicked off the final countdown until the opening bid for the 2011 Nederburg Auction on 16th September.

Prestige runs deep in the Nederburg Auction DNA, and will be evident again at this year’s event, where exclusivity goes deeper than just fine wines. With good food, art and entertainment on offer to compliment the wines, guests will be sure to enjoy a memorable day out surrounded by beauty in various forms.

The refocusing on exclusivity is aptly supported by this year’s dress code. Exactly 15 days remain to put together an outfit that’s smart, yet expressive, and with a touch of opulence.

To compliment the fashion and style that will be present, this year’s event atmosphere will be enhanced by a beautiful selection of food, prepared by Andrea Foulkes and the team from Dish Food & Social for guests to savour and enjoy after the business of bidding and buying is concluded. Entertainment offered by SA’s top jazz band Breakfast Included and vocalist duo Silwer provides the perfect conclusion to a relaxed afternoon.

Let the countdown begin.

“Terroirist” to address 2011 Nederburg Auction

“Terroirist” (ter-war-ist) noun: “A person, usually a member of a group, who is fanatical about wine, especially when it has a sense of place”.

This is the description you’ll find on Terroirist.com, the daily wine blog founded last year by US-based wine writer David White, who has been announced as this year’s guest speaker at the 37th Nederburg Auction of fine, rare wines on Saturday 17th September.

Based in Washington DC, this ‘Terroirist’ talks to 10 000 readers a month through his award-winning website, which was recently named “Best New Wine Blog” at the annual Wine Blog Awards, presented at the 2011 North American Wine Bloggers Conference in July.

Artfully straddling the divide between traditional and digital media, David is well poised to comment on the myriad challenges facing the wine industry, including the changing media landscape, the democratisation of wine criticism and what it is that new generation consumers want.

Says David: “Whether it’s new markets, cutting-edge technology or changing consumer preferences, the wine industry is being forced to adapt at lightning speed. It’s an exciting time, but those who want to succeed must recognize – and embrace – how the market is changing.”

Nederburg Auction business manager, Dalene Steyn, concurs: “Given that the look and feel of the auction itself have changed to offer a platform that is both progressive and relevant, we’re excited to have someone like David offer a fresh insight into the changing wine landscape and the future implications for both the industry and consumers.”

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Since its launch on November 9, 2010, Terroirist has been mentioned by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Reason Magazine, and many other highly regarded publications. The blog has also been highlighted by a number of leading wine writers. David and his team of eight fellow ‘Terroirists’ provide daily updates about anything and everything relating to wine.

David White, who has his Level 3 (Advanced, with Merit) certificate in wine and spirits from the London-based Wine and Spirits Education Trust, has authored several wine pieces that have featured in leading publications, including The World of Fine Wine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Reuters.

He is a member of the Society of Wine Educators and is also a founding board member of the American Wine Consumer Coalition. Recently, he was awarded a fellowship to the annual Symposium for Professional Wine Writers at Meadowood Napa Valley.

2011 auction line-up impresses local wine critics

“In the history of the auction I’ve missed very few pre-auction tastings, and none so far has shown the quality and depth that has been visible this year” – Michael Fridjhon

“This is the strongest line-up of white wines that I’ve seen” – Neil Pendock

“The Nederburg Auction is definitely ratcheting up the quality” – Fiona McDonald

“These are wines with character. Wines that stand out” – David Biggs

These are a few of the observations made by some of South Africa’s leading wine commentators at a recent pre-auction tasting held at Nederburg, of approximately 50 of the 2011 Nederburg Auction wines.

Words such as ‘consistent’, ‘premium’, ‘visible’ and ‘good quality’ were used to describe the selection of wines that were tasted, which offered a good representation across this year’s stylistic spectrum. The Chardonnay category elicited a surprising favourable response – read more about how this flight was rated on Cape Chatter.

Although overall volumes are down 15% from 2010, local wine media were in agreement that it is reflective of a clever, more careful approach to provide a more exclusive line-up of wines, initiated by a stricter selection process, which for the first time saw sommeliers participate on the judging panel.

Collectively the media’s overwhelmingly positive response delivers a verdict that serves to confirm that the Nederburg Auction is well on its way to achieving its objective to be a showcase for this country’s finest, most rare wines.

View more of the comments from this pre-auction tasting in the clip below:

Nederburg Auction wines surprise and please

Woodstock in Cape Town was the place to be earlier this week, as wine enthusiasts gathered at the Upper Eastside Hotel to sample and savour a selection of some of SA’s finest wines. A 2004 Syrah from Marcel de Reuck, an elegant 2005 Merlot from De Grendel, Le Bonheur’s acclaimed Prima 2001, and a 2005 Nederburg Private Bin Eminence, the beautiful dessert wine produced by 2011’s Platter’s SA Wine Guide Winery of the Year, were just four of the 19 wines that members of the public previewed with Cape Wine Master Bennie Howard, who hosted the seated tasting.

The pre-tasting provides an ideal opportunity for the public to experience some of the extraordinary wines on offer at the annual Nederburg Auction, which is only open to licensees. Wines purchased at the auction are available at selected wine shops, and liquor and supermarket outlets shortly after the auction, and are easily identifiable by the ‘Sold at the Nederburg Auction’ sticker, clearly visible on all Nederburg Auction bottles sold at the event.

Congratulations went to Melissa Chetty, an avid Merlot supporter, who was the lucky winner of a pair of tickets to attend the actual event at Nederburg in Paarl on 16th and 17th September.

Click on the clip below for an overview and some some comments from the evening. Tickets for the Joburg public tasting event on Wednesday 27th July are still available through Computicket.

Limited speciality wines to open Saturday’s bidding floor at 37th Nederburg Auction

Some are there because of their age; others because of their sense of occasion. Whatever the reason for their extraordinariness, you’ll find a piece of bottled exceptionality in this year’s Nederburg Auction Private Collection category, which opens the second day’s bidding at this year’s event on September 16 and 17 at Nederburg in Paarl.

Introduced for the first time, the Private Collection category serves to accommodate exceptional wines that are available in extremely small quantities, from producers who have literally been treasuring their last few bottles for an event such as this. “Each wine included in this year’s selection of 14 items has an original story to tell that enhances the rarity, uniqueness and collectability of these wines”; says Nederburg Auction business manager Dalene Steyn.

A perfect example is the 1974 Cabernet Sauvignon from Rustenberg, the last vintage made by this winery’s former owner/winemaker Reg Merriman Nicholson, and which, according to current owner Simon Barlow, was probably his best. “Most of this wine was in fact consumed at my sister’s wedding – we do not even have a bottle in our wine library at Rustenberg, so it is extremely rare indeed”. Simon believes that it is vintages like this one that show South Africa can make world class wines – a great reason to perhaps bid on the item himself, as he comments (insert YouTube link to video).

An item that underpins the ultimate sense of occasion, marking a monumental period in our nation’s history, was specially bottled for the inauguration of former president Nelson Mandela. The 1994 Graham Beck MCC was made by Pieter Ferreira and is not easily available on the open market. One case of four 1.5 litre bottles, at a reserve price of R1 000, will be sold.

One of the oldest South African bottled wines still available that features in the Private Collection line up is a spritely 1930 Red Muscadel Jerepigo from KWV. Despite its age, this wine still displays an astonishing freshness with an amazing array of flavours, including spicy and herbal naunces. Just six bottles of this 81-year-old wine will be offered at a reserve price of R1 200. Staying with the ‘grandfathers’ of South African wines, a fantastic matured wine from the 60s comes from Chateau Libertas, the original trendsetter for blended natural wines in South Africa more than 70 years ago. One case of just three bottles of the 1961 vintage, at a reserve price of R3 000, will be sold.

Dalene concludes; “Buyers who bid on the Private Collection wines at the start of the Saturday auction on September 17 will not only be buying a special wine – they will also be purchasing their own special piece of bottled exclusivity.”

The complete list of this year’s Private Collection wines is included in the catalogue, available for electronic download on the auction  website.

Surfer donates one-of-a-kind 10-bottle collection for greater good

One of the most sought after and best-performing wines from South Africa in the international arena features on the 2011 Nederburg Charity Auction, which takes place at the close of the main auction on Saturday September 17th at Nederburg in Paarl.

Winemaker Eben Sadie, of Sadie Family Wines, who also happens to be a skilled surfer, has put together a special case of 10 bottles of his renowned Columella, from the 2000 to 2009 vintages, marking a decade of this celebrated wine produced in the Paardeberg Mountains of the Swartland region. Due to the limited production of this wine, it is almost impossible to find some of the older vintages on the open market and a case of the historic 10-year line of the development of this limited wine is a rarity. Columella is a blend of Syrah and Mourvédre, and is, says Eben; ‘a true wine of terroir that has always been about place above progress”.

The charity sale offers unusual wine items, many of them collectors’ items. Alongside the Columella collection is the last of three sets of Nederburg Tribute Shiraz 2007, specially created by visionary Nederburg cellarmaster Razvan Macici to mark the 35th anniversary of the Nederburg Auction and 350 years of wine at the Cape in 2009.

As well as impressive local wines, the charity auction is privileged to have several top-ranking foreign wines included in this year’s line-up. Donated by Swedish wine personalities Britt and Janåke Johansson is one of the most exclusive, sought after sweet wines in the world – a 375ml bottle of Oremus Tokaji Eszencia 2000, of which just a few hundred bottles were made. Hungary’s world-famous Tokaji, often referred to in literature as the ‘wine of kings and the king of wines’, is incredibly difficult to forget once tasted. Although very sweet, with a residual sugar content of 468 grams per litre, the enormous acidity perfectly balances this beautiful nectar, offering a spectacular richness and an unequalled flavour.

Another international item was donated by Auctioneer Anthony Barne MW and is also a dessert wine; this time a First Growth from the commune of Sauternes, on the banks of the Garonne river in the southern part of the Bordeaux vineyards. The acclaimed Chateau d’Yquem 1986 made, like all Sauternes, from noble late harvest grapes, was given a 98-point rating in Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate of January 1998.

One of the doyens of SA wine, Duimpie Bayly, has donated three extraordinary old wines from the Distell tabernacle, including a two-bottle collection from the 70s that come from the acclaimed McWilliams winery in Australia. He comments further (in the clip below) on these marvellous old wines.

This year’s charity auction also benefits from items donated by Zonnebloem, Fleur du Cap, La Motte, and Stellenrust. Last year’s charity sale raised R169 500 for the Goedgedacht Trust, the Pebbles project Trust and World Vision SA Mbekweni in Paarl. This year consideration will once again be given to locally-based community projects. Anyone may bid, and all proceeds raised will go to community-based organisations. View the complete list here.