New Cape Fine and Rare sale could put fizz back into local wine auctions
Fine-wine auctions in SA have had something of a chequered existence. The first modern sale was conducted at Fairview in the early 1970s, followed by Nederburg, the greatgranddaddy of them all, which was launched in 1975.
In the early 1980s, an amendment to the Liquor Act enabled Sotheby ’ s to trade privately owned collectible wines. A year or two later the Cape Independent Winemakers Guild introduced an annual sale of the special bottlings produced by its members. Suddenly it seemed the wine auction business was booming.
The political and commercial isolation of the 1980s produced its own pressure-cooker economy. There was a certain ebullience to auction pricing: Nederburg ’ s turnovers exceeded estimates, as did Sotheby ’ s. For SA wine collectors seeking the unusual or prestigious, auctions were the place to shop: the falling rand and unfriendly international suppliers forced everyone to adopt “local is lekker ” criteria.
For a decade or two the auction scene ticked on, but lost a little steam along the way. By the 1990s Sotheby ’ s (then Stephan Welz & Co) abandoned wine collectors ’ sales: the revenue wasn ’ t worth the cost of handling the stock.
By the early 2000s Nederburg yielded ground to the Cape Winemakers Guild, whose more modern offering caught the zeitgeist of the punters. With much fine wine about, auctions hardly mattered. The cannier buyers realised that few current release wines were really rare, while most of the older wines lacked the sex appeal of the millennial age.
In the last few years it looked as if it would only be a matter of time before the roller-coaster would grind to a halt. The established mainstream auctions kept reducing their offering to fake a sense of shortage. The problem with this strategy is that to meet the overheads of setting up an annual event, an auction needs a certain amount of turnover. The reduced volume did not yield a commensurate hike on bottle prices or commission earned.
This year has felt the first gusts of change: a Cape Town wine merchant has teamed up with Strauss & Co to offer wines from private collectors at properly curated sales. The idea is to establish a trading platform that will help to grow a wine investment market.
Distell, proprietor of the Nederburg Auction, has also decided to debrand the event to make it available to the industry as a dedicated Cape wine platform, relaunching it as the Cape Fine & Rare Wine Auction.
The Wine Cellar-Strauss programme was launched with a finely assembled catalogue of generally desirable wines in Johannesburg in June but yielded tentative results: the organisers overestimated the tolerance of buyers to part with R1,000 a bottle, regardless of the producer ’ s reputation.
Last Saturday ’ s Cape Town sale fared little better: less than 70% sold on the day, and the average hammer price of the local wines continued to hover around R1,000. While this was generally below mid-estimate, it is hardly a frivolous sum.
The Cape Winemakers Guild auction, which features currentrelease auction cuvées created by its members, takes place on October 5.
Two weeks later it will be followed by the Cape Fine and Rare sale, the selection panel of which I was a member, so I can hardly claim to be impartial.
The catalogue of investmentgrade wines includes just older than current-release craft wines as well as carefully selected classics, with some of the older bottles recorked.
No-one can pretend there isn ’ t a lot of fine wine about — more perhaps than the market is ready to absorb.
With consolidation in the wine auction sector inevitable, the Cape Fine and Rare wine sale may offer a template the industry will have to consider: a high-profile destination event that attracts major international buyers and brings out the best reserve wines from the Cape ’ s leading producers.
NO-ONE CAN PRETEND THERE ISN ’ T A LOT OF FINE WINE ABOUT — MORE PERHAPS THAN THE MARKET IS READY TO ABSORB