Zulu links give Bayede! the royal treatment
You may not have heard of a wine called Bayede! — every bottle comes with an elasticised bead bracelet fitted around the neck. You would, if you were a traditional wine buyer, either not notice it or think that it is a marketing gimmick not unlike the straw flask packaging typical of industrial chianti.
This is a pity, because the wines are quite good and have mostly been produced under the supervision of the Bayede! wine maker at cellars whose standard releases are well known to the average punter. These include, among others, Eikendal, Dewetshof, Fairview and Vergelegen — all respectable enough in their own right and an indication that the enterprise enjoys support from industry heavy-hitters.
Bayede! is one of several “empowerment” brands, where established wineries have produced special cuvees for BEE-registered enterprises to facilitate transformation in an industry that is heavy on capital and light on profits.
What makes the Bayede! story a little different from Seven Sisters (for example), is its link to the Zulu king whose involvement appears to be more than simply a royal warrant along the lines of “By Appointment to his Majesty”.
It was his idea from the outset and he saw it as a way of providing income to the more vulnerable members of the community – hence the beads. In the short history of Bayede! about R600,000 has trickled down to rural households. It’s not a reason to buy the wine, but it is palpable evidence of an intention beyond mere production and distribution.
When the growth of the screw-cap industry made it clear that the virtual monopoly enjoyed by Portugal’s cork producers was under threat, vast sums were invested in a PR campaign designed to promote the “natural” values of cork, compared with the industrial nature of stelvin.
Prince Charles was moved to issue an appeal to protect the natural habitat of migratory birds that pass through Iberia’s cork groves. No one leapt to the defence of little old Spanish ladies who, until the 1980s when their labour was replaced by machines, used to handmake the fine wire bottle “baskets” that adorn many of Rioja’s top wines.
Bayede’s bead bangles may be only slightly more useful (and could probably be made in China), but at least they suggest that there’s something more than a cut-and-paste job to the brand.
No doubt everyone who buys a bottle will be happy to consume it in a single sitting — there being enough around to spare it the moniker of “vinous rarity”. But what if you’re down to the last priceless bottle in your cellar and you want to eke it out over several evenings, or share it with a number of enthusiasts, not all of whom can be gathered in the same place at the same time?
US collector Greg Lamprecht who studied nuclear physics at MIT and now designs medical devices, created Coravin – a not inexpensive wine, but a preservation system that enables you to “steal” wine through the cork of a bottle, replacing the missing fluid with inert gas.
You can remove about 65% of a bottle’s contents without any perceptible loss of quality and one Coravin device can be used to access many bottles.
It’s a great accessory for the by-the-glass sale of superpremium wines and for wineries wishing to keep their top cuvees fresh for weeks (or even years), while having a sample on offer for potential customers.
But the motivation for private ownership (at about R7,000 per unit) seemed pretty weak until I read an interview by Jancis Robinson, in which Lamprecht said, “every evening I have between one and four glasses of great wine” (from different bottles).
People who can afford a Coravin won’t need the free beads that come with Bayede!, but if they do need a subsidy, they might appeal to the cork mafia: the device doesn’t work on screw-capped bottles or on composite corks.