June 2002
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Success - a double edged sword Oz Clarke was over in SA during May for the first annual South African Trophy Wine Show. This guy makes his living as a television wine critic and has found his niche by being outspoken and colourful with his opinions. He has in fact done a lot to make wine drinking more accessible to the average bloke (wine snobs say "dumbed-down"). The fact is that he is a successful critic, because he has lasted the distance and people know who he is. He had some very generous praise for the "new" attitude (new to him) that SA has discovered. Young winemakers (in both age and heart) examining the basics of what they are doing, not afraid to accept criticism and advice and traveling the world to learn. He singled out Charles Back as the "godfather" of this movement as he has done more that anyone to bring new ideas and young winemakers forward and introduce them to foreign commentators. The other person he singled out was Michael Fridjhon for organizing events that bring foreign commentators into SA and encourage direct comparisons between SA and the rest of the world. One such event was the Australian / South African "Taste Off" in 1995 when Aussie wines swept the board and SA wines were in the doldrums. In Clarke's opinion this was the moment that forward looking professionals decided they were going to have to get out into the world and find out what the world wants and how to produce it. Now he says the benefit of this is coming through. There are in Clarke's opinion many SA Sauvignon Blancs that are world class and the Chardonnays and Chenins are the best they have ever been. He has faint praise for Shiraz saying the style is very promising but as yet unformed and in the fortified wine department there are many "glorious" examples. He reserves his utmost praise for the Cape Winelands as the most beautiful in the world, with peerless views of seas or mountains wherever you go. He says, "Make the most of that, celebrate it and show what you are doing to make good wine and to give people jobs and to empower them and it will help to counter the creeping Afro-pessimism that zooms in on poverty and sickness". This "Afro-pessimism" is a very interesting concept, and it might be the Achilles heel of our industry. There are two sides to every coin. On one side we benefit from the God given country that we inhabit and on the other we have the legacy of the sub class of poverty stricken and Aids ridden that also inhabit this country. The first we cannot improve on, but maybe the second we can. This "Afro-pessimism" is actually being encouraged by protectionists on one hand and various "do-gooders" (for want of a better word) on the other. The improvement in the reputation of SA wines abroad has been accompanied by the industry appearing on the radar screens of various international ethical lobbying groups. There are some followers of anti-globalization groups who genuinely believe that global trade exploits the third world. Of course this view is being jumped on by any cynical first world producer who wants to protect his market from "cheap" imports. In the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers one of the most emotive subjects is exploitation of labour. The simple question "How do they make it so cheap?" is being asked. This is not an unreasonable question. Wine produced on another continent on the other side of the world and shipped to the supermarkets of the Europe and USA still ends up being cheaper than locally produced product. If price was the only consideration to the wine buyer then everyone would be drinking SA wine. The double edged sword of media interest was exemplified in a recent press article. It appeared in US News and World Report (a top 3 news magazine in the US) and was written by Jeff Glasser shortly after the Nederburg Auction in May. It described his investigation of the SA wine industry. He highlighted how the "dop" system was still prevalent on wine farms. He also raised awareness with buyers that Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is prevalent among wine industry workers' children. During his investigation Glasser found the owner of one export wine farm referring to his workers as dogs, the female workers as sub-human and workers on another export wine farm living in asbestos shacks. In the article the incidence of FAS is reported as 52 times the level of the US. This may be old news to those in SA but it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of a newly converted drinker of SA wine sitting in London or New York. To many, the answer to the question in the paragraph above is contained in the text of Glasser's 3000 word article. In the past it didn't matter what the outside world thought, but in the post apartheid export driven era it does. It is no news to anyone that buyers from big supermarkets in the UK inspect the workers' accommodation as well as the cellar on a wine farm. The ethical trading lobby has a lot of power now and reputation risk is a big factor in corporate decision making in all walks of life, as McDonalds and Nike have discovered. No supermarket is going to run the risk of being seen to be supporting labour exploitation through any of the products it sells. One such lobby group is the Ethical Trading Initiative. They describe themselves as an alliance of companies, NGO's and trade union organisations committed to working together to identify and promote good practice in the implementation of codes of labour practice. An unholy alliance of the naive and the cynical one might say, but these guys are onto the case of the SA wine industry. Their self expressed main aim is to promote the observance of internationally recognised labour standards, and in particular fundamental human rights throughout global supply chains. They want to ensure that the working conditions of employees in companies that supply goods to consumers in the UK meet or exceed international standards. They have recently completed a pilot study of wine and grape production in the Western Cape. To put this in context other pilot studies include the clothing industry of China, the banana industry of Costa Rica, the prawn industry of India and the ready made garment industry of Sri Lanka. So our industry is grouped with these in the league tables of working conditions, or is at least worthy of study, according to the ETI. Anyone with a modicum of economic sense will tell you that by applying first world labour standards to emerging industries in poor countries immediately takes away their competitive advantage and imposes a tariff and a hindrance to them accessing first world markets. But is the South African wine industry classed as an emerging industry in a poor country? It may not get the benefit of the doubt in the mind of the only person who really matters, the buyer. There are important buyers among the members of ETI, including ASDA, Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer and Tesco. We at TMV are looking forward to reading the report. Of course the conditions of farm workers in the Cape has got to be improved and their standard of education must move in line with that. That is just common sense. We have no view on who is right or wrong or who is being idealistic or being taken for a ride, or who is exploiting the situation. We see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to improve and to find out what the client wants. If you know that then half the battle is over. As Oz Clarke suggests we are going to show off what we have got and show what we are doing to improve the lot of those who don't have much. All simple things like building a skill base of loyal staff, and dignity and respect in the work place. This all costs money of course, but it is in our budget and will be implemented along with the other improvements we are budgeting for. The major expense currently is the cellar, from which hopefully wine will flow for the benefit of all, investors and staff alike.
We had some crucial decisions to make on exactly how we were going to use the space we have built. The options were endless and baffling. Should we go for tall steel combination tanks, for separate steel fermentation and settling tanks, for wooden fermentation and steel settling, for the new Ganimede steel system http://www.ganimede.com or for concrete. Of course our newly arrived wine grower had a good deal of input with Manie working out the practicalities and the cost and Tom and John making the final decision. Decisions like this start at the top. Tom and John already know what style of wine they want. They ask the winegrower if and how he can achieve that. He produces a plan. Manie engineers the plan and costs it with the builder and other suppliers. The quote goes back to Tom and John who tear it up and start again. No... seriously, once we had decided on having a "hand-made" wine the rest followed on. The first requirement was for open fermenters so that punching down by hand could be done. The next was for as many small fermentation vessels as possible. In fact the optimum was to have one separate fermenter for each block of vines, so individual blocks could be harvested separately. The next was for as much gravity flow around the cellar as possible. By spending several hours pacing the floor of the cellar with a massive tape measure and eventually with a laser measuring device we worked out that we couldn't fit in as many round tanks as we needed. Why are tanks round? That is the next question. Tanks are round because they are stainless steel sheet, usually 1.5mm thick, and stainless steel sheet doesn't like being pushed into a square shape. Usually stainless tanks are custom made off site by getting a piece of sheet and welding the ends together so it becomes a tube and then welding plates on each end so it becomes a cylinder. Cylinders are naturally very strong and so few welds make for great integrity. The problem is that they are a very inefficient use of space as they don't fit together. Why are tanks steel? Tanks are steel because they are very easy to keep clean and hygenic, very easy to cool and valves pipes etc can easily be welded into them. They are portable, can be sold as separate items and replaced, they can be custom made and are relatively cheap. How could we fit more fermenters in our space, at the height we needed without building another cellar next door? We had the idea of concrete tanks. These were long discarded by modern cellars as they have none of the properties of steel described above. Once built they cannot be moved. They need to be lined to be hygenic, they might be tricky to keep cool and they need integrated steel "fronts" to fit the man-way and the valves. But if you can get the correct cooling system and lining you have the perfect solution for a small hands on cellar. In fact after much further pacing and measuring, as well as laying out hundreds of bricks to see how it would look we conjured up the perfect solution. The key was open fermentation. Once we were decided on that the need for steel was reduced. One of the main advantages of steel fermenters to modern wineries is that they are not open and can be closed up so wine can be stored without it mixing with oxygen (nitrogen is pumped in the occupy unfilled space). But punching down by hand is notoriously difficult through a trap door standing on the top of a slippery tin can. We would of course have to buy a couple of large separate closed steel tanks for blending and storing, but they could fit nicely below the mezzanines that we envisaged our concrete/brick tanks standing on. Using the oblong concrete tank idea we measured out the space for 14 separate fermenters, each capable of holding 12 cubic meters. They are ideal in that they are much longer than deep so the contact area for the cap is high compared to the volume. This is the ideal size as we can harvest a 1.5 ha block at up to even 8 tonnes per ha (we think we will be nearer 6 tonnes / ha but just in case) straight into it and the tank will be 3/4 full. This gives the winegrower fantastic flexibility over timing and on our current hectarage he will never run out of space even if every grape on the farm ripens on the same day at the same hour (he'll have plenty else to think about if that happens!). The next question was would the mezzanine support the weight of all this concrete and brick. In came the quantity surveyor and after much huffing and puffing and measuring (they are experts at measuring, huffing and puffing) went away promising a report for the builder to quote on. We discarded the idea of a steel supporting frame once we decided on the concrete so our builder gets the whole job now which he is pleased at. Aesthetically the two mezzanine floors on either side of the fermentation cellar will fit in with the maturation cellar, being brick built arches supporting a concrete floor. The floors will be 3.0m off the ground with a 0.2m thick concrete floor. This allows for the tanks to be 2.0m deep and still give enough room to walk on top of them to punch down below the 7m high eaves (hence the need for harnesses!). With all that decided we just waited for the quote. In fact it turned out not much more expensive than the original steel plan, but we were getting twice as much fermentation space. The only thing we were losing was the ability to seal the fermentation tanks so they would be useless for storage and blending. But below them we have a whole floor for steel tanks and barrels and presses of all sizes for pressing, blending, storing and malolactic fermentation etc.
Unfortunately we couldn't afford to do the whole built in space this year as the current budget would not stretch so we decided to build the mezzanine floors and kick off next year by getting the builder back to build a few tanks. We thought of sacking Manie to pay for it, but we couldn't be without his sweet Jack Russell so he escaped retrenchment. We looked for a tank lining solution and after some enquiries came up with Muncador http://munk-schmitz.com/home.htm which sounds a bit suspicious but is in fact made by a German company so you can probably excuse the name. It is apparently used to line concrete in many food processing lines. After further enquiries we met up with a few happy clients in the wine industry so that looks like it is the answer. No definite plan on cooling yet but Manie is working on it. We had thought about custom made stainless steel lining/cooling but even the guy who came to quote on it thought we were barking. Initially the builder thought he wouldn't want to put the tiled floor down in the cellar before constructing the tanks 3m above it in case falling workers or bricks damaged it. Manie came up with the ingenious idea of covering the whole tiled floor in plastic sheet and then sand to prevent the highly expensive acid resistance etc tiles from harm. Manie to the rescue once again. With all this decided it was only left for Manie to get to work on another of his now famous scale models. Apparently he has had Blue Peter (UK children's show) begging him to consult for them since his last effort, but thankfully TMV spotted his talent and signed him to an exclusivity clause (we kid you not). We signed up to the builder's final proposal on 28th June and his sleepless nights were over. At last he could get on and finish the job. If you are looking for a very patient builder in the Tulbagh area we can recommend one but we are not revealing his name just yet (not until the tanks are in)!!
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