Wine in Focus vodcast | Ep 2 | Elevating SA wine on the world stage

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• LM: Lerato Motshologane, Investec for Business, trade finance specialist and Discover Wine founder
• MF: Michael Fridjhon, Trophy Wine Show chair and Wine Wizard chair
• TM: Tom Carson, Trophy Wine Show judge and Australian winemaker
• BJ: Bruce Jack, founder Flagstone Wines and Bruce Jack Wines

• 00:00: Introduction and welcome of guests

  LM: Welcome to Wine in Focus, an Investec Focus Radio vodcast series to awaken not only your appreciation of South Africa's world class wines, but the diverse people behind a resilient industry that is a key driver of our economy. As proud sponsor of the Trophy Wine Show and the Trophy Spirit Show, Investec wants to showcase what our local industry has to offer.

  I'm Lerato Motshologane, a deal maker at Investec for Business, founder of Discover Wine and your host. In this second episode, we'll be discussing the Trophy Wine Show and the role that plays in elevating South African wine, both locally and internationally. Let's meet my guests: joining me today at Grande Roche in the heart of the Paarl winelands is Michael Fridjhon, Tom Carson and Bruce Jack.

  Michael is one of South Africa's most respected and awarded wine authorities with over four decades of experience spanning production, retail, journalism and judging. He chairs the Trophy Wine Show and the Trophy Spirit Show, and serves as a visiting professor at UCT's Graduate School of Business, where he directs the Wine Judging Academy. Michael is also chair of the Reciprocal Wine Trading Company.

  Tom is the award-winning chief wine maker at Yabby Lake in Australia, and director of the Len Evans Tutorial, a prestigious wine school dedicated to evolving the quality of Australian wine. With over 30 years in the industry, he's judged and chaired major wine shows across Australia and helped shape the next generation of wine talent. He is currently in South Africa as one of three international judges on the Trophy Wine Show.

  Bruce is a globally acclaimed South African winemaker and storyteller. After founding Flagstone Winery in 1998 and later serving as group winemaker for Accolade Wines, he launched Bruce Jack Wineries in 2018, a global operation producing wines across five continents. 

• 02:18: Origins and impact of The Trophy Wine Show

  LM: Welcome, gentlemen. It is such a pleasure and an honour to have the three of you here today. I'd like to start with you, Michael. We've got The Trophy Wine Show, and the show's been going for quite a while now, and it's done very, very well in its time, and I think today we just want to figure out: what is The Trophy Wine Show about? How did it come about? And where were you when you decided to start such a great initiative?

  MF: That's really a fun question Lerato, because I'd been judging a lot around the world and in many places, and I had a sense that the South African wine judging environment wasn't sufficiently competitive nor sufficiently international.

  So I looked very carefully and the model that I most liked was the one that had been pioneered by the Australians. Smaller panels, much more precise focus on outcome, outliers in a sense.

  If you have a panel of three, you narrow it down, otherwise you sit with big panels and average scores.

  The idea that there should be conversation between the judges, you can't run a competition that is run by arithmetic and totalled by a computer. So the end result had to be arrived at on a consensus basis.

  And in 2002, not having had enough response from the industry to reform the shows that existed at the time, we launched The Trophy Wine Show with a view to creating a model that was as close to fireproof as you could be in the world of subjective judgement, and the idea of trying to draw out of what the wine industry was producing, the finest wines possible, and to give a sense of direction that met the expectations of the domestic and the international market. 

• 04:24: An international perspective – Tom Carson’s insights

  LM: Amazing. Tom came all the way from down under - why The Trophy Wine Show? Why this one in particular?

  TC: Well, I've judged here twice before. And it was a really fascinating experience to be exposed to the South African wines and I just found that being able to come back and see the progression and see the trends and the focus that the industry is where they're heading right now is just really interesting.

  And the standard of the show is as good as any wine show in Australia. It's incredibly rigorous. And the integrity that the results mean to producers is really important.

  And being able to, I suppose, just contribute the latest trends in the Australian judging system and how we're tweaking our shows and refining them, I think it's great to give that input to Michael and the judges here.

  And certainly, you know, to judge with young judges in South Africa and just provide a bit of context and a bit of direction is just really satisfying. 

• 05:35: Remembering Len Evans: Training the next generation

  LM: Tom, you're the director of the Len Evans Tutorial, who is Len Evans?

  TC: He has sadly passed away, but he was a giant of the Australian wine industry and did so much for it. And Len was a big part of wine shows for a long time in Australia. He chaired and set up the National Wine Show. He's chaired Brisbane, Sydney, all the wine shows.

  But he got to the end of his career and he realised, I'm in the room with the same people I've been with for 20 years. There's something wrong here. We are not getting new people through the judging system. And he worried about that. He worried that it had become a bit of an echo chamber. And it was all the same judges, many of them, mostly wine makers from large companies in Australia awarding their own wines.

  So he just sat down, he got on the phone and he said, what we're going to do is we're going to form a wine school, and we're going to train judges and identify talent. And so in 2001, he commenced the first Len Evans Tutorial. So there's 12 scholars that go to the Hunter Valley. And they have five days of intensive wine training.

  They have judging sessions in the morning. And it's not just Australian wine, it's international wine, it's wines from all around the world. So they'll be given a group of 30 chardonnays, and there will be six or seven different countries and they have to judge those wines and score them.

  In the afternoons, they have master classes and over the week, the cream of the judges rise to the top. And those people are given opportunities in the wine shows in Australia.

  And what's been very important is to get those young people coming through and breaking down that old boys club. And over the last 20 years, it's been incredible in doing that.

  And it's forced the wine shows to have what we call rotation policies where you can be a judge there for three or four years, but that's enough, we've got some new people coming through. And it's kept it very dynamic. And it's given many, many opportunities to young people. 

• 08:03: Judging standards and the selection process

  LM: Michael, how do you choose your judges? What does that selection process look like?

  MF: So, that's a really interesting question at two levels. Firstly, we have one international judge on every panel. And that international judge has to be someone with a literally fireproof reputation in terms of quality of judgement. We're not looking for high profile, it's nice if you get it. But we need people who really can deliver precision of judgement.

  Tom here has chaired just about every important show in Australia. He's been a senior wine judge for over 20 years. We know that he's not going to be seduced by a pretty wine that doesn't deliver quality. We've been running a wine judging academy here since I think 2007.

  Tom, as he will tell you, is a graduate of a model on which we have, in a sense, built our wine judging academy, which is the Len Evans Tutorial in Australia. And that is the idea that people should be trained to be wine judges. Not to be people who simply like wine and enjoy it and think, well I like that, therefore it is good. So we do that.

  We like to have wine-making expertise on every panel. We like to have somebody with a consumer interest on every panel. We have to have one international on every panel, and we only have three people on the panel, plus one associate, which is a graduate of the wine judging academy, who's graduated with a distinction, and then has to work his or her way up through the system in order to become a judge.

  So it's very tight, there's no room to move. You can't afford a weak link. It doesn't work. 

• 09:51: Why the academies matter: Beyond the echo chamber

  LM: You know, as a consumer of wine, I find that things like The Trophy Wine Show and these judging academies really aid and assist in when one has to pick a wine.

  If you look up The Trophy Wine Show and you see the wines that have got good rankings, it's a great way for one to then use that as a guideline. But apart from that, why is it good to have judging academies and you know, how is that of importance to the development of the South African wine industry?

  MF: So it's really interesting, before The Trophy Wine Show, wine judging was an echo chamber, the industry's competitions were driven by winemakers. They already had a house palate. They liked the style, they reinforced each other's views on what was a wine-making or wine judging aesthetic, and it bore no resemblance at all, firstly, to what consumers wanted, and, secondly, most importantly, to what the international market expected.

  The result was there was a disconnect between what judges thought was good, what consumers wanted, and what the international market was ready to buy.

  And until we were able to bring those three components together, until we were able to bring international judges with a view that wasn't necessarily a comfortable one to South African producers, and until we had producers sitting in the room and hearing what the internationals had to say, all we were doing in a sense was reinforcing each other's prejudices. That's what we had to break. 

• 11:32: Bruce Jack on endorsements and the power of awards

  LM: I love that you touched on the international market, because then it brings me to you, Bruce. You have done quite well in those markets.

  BJ: The export market, well, first of all, third-party endorsement in an environment that is so overcrowded to have an endorsement from an organisation like The Trophy Wine Show, which is so well organised and with such high-profile people, really helps everywhere.

  We've been able to track our success, not only in terms of exports but also in terms of direct-to-consumer sales when we announce a really big award. So, you know, it's a moot point whether or not to put all the medals on the label.

  And also, I think there's a trick and a craft in how you talk about the award that you've got to the right sort of people to the right sort of channel. But if you can get it right, it's really important and you've got to just keep your foot on the pedal. And I think that's what the export market is all about.

  But, you know, in South Africa we are one of the markets, one of the suppliers, that is really starting to succeed overseas, where, particularly those who've had it easy for a long time, i.e., the northern hemisphere, are starting to see things in a more difficult light because of the changing world. We've always struggled. So it's no different for us. We are ready. 

• 14:10: South Africa’s wine evolution: Changing palates and practices

  LM: That is amazing. I want to jump back to Tom here. You said you've been judging The Trophy Wine Show – this would be your third year? So you've done it twice before, and the last time you were here was more than 10 years ago, 2013, to be exact. What do you think has changed? Have you seen it progressing? What are the changes you've picked up on?

  TC: Oh, I think the quality of wine's improved, That's for sure. And I think the realisation that some of the great assets you have here in South Africa, like old vine chenin blanc, which is really unique in the world to have those assets, and the wines that are being made from those vineyards are really something amazing and should be celebrated.

  And when you have something that nobody else in the world can do that's what you lead with. That's really important, to tell your story about these old vineyards and these amazing wines that you're making.

  The first time I came here in 2005, there was a lot of talk about it, the assets you had, and these wonderful vineyards, but we didn't really see many of the wines.

  The wine making and the viticulture hadn't really grasped the potential of what was there. But, you know, the wine palates, the great palates in South Africa, understood there's something special here that we should really focus on. So that's been a great progression.

  I mean, I judged some Shiraz today, and I remember back to the last two times I came, it was like, oh, sorry, we've given you the Shiraz class. Today we found some fantastic wines, so there's a real focus there as well, which I think is something new.

  And coming from Australia, which is 50% Shiraz, I was explaining to the judges last night that there are still vineyards producing wine that were planted in the 1840s in Australia. And we drank a wine from a vineyard that was planted in 1893.

  And these sort of wines and that history that Australia has with Shiraz is really interesting for everybody. And to taste some really great examples today, some really, really modern wine making and some really smart viticulture to get those wines there was a delight. 

• 18:48: The future of SA wine: A 10-year vision

  LM: Gentlemen, thank you so much. We are coming to an end of this episode and I just wanted to ask you one last question. It's a question that I've been asking everybody that's come on and that is, where do you see, or where would you like to see the SA wine industry in the next 10 years?

  MF: I would like the South African wine industry in the next 10 years to be exporting at least as much as it is now with a better spread in terms of markets. So a lot more into the rest of the continent, to discerning consumers, who embrace it as part of the heritage of the continent.

  I would like the international markets, which includes obviously Africa, but Europe, Australia – where there is an export market for South African wine – and the America's plural, and of course Asia, to recognise the "Capeness", the "South Africanness" of our wines. Not as would've been the case 20 or 30 years ago because of the discernible lack of evolution. I was going to say defects, but in fact, lack of modernity.

  I think that we are now making thoroughly modern wines that are not simple. And I think we will see more complexity. And the statement that separates us, just as we recognise the Frenchness of French wines, the "Americanness" of Californian wines, I would like there to be a sense that when those wines are on the table, they're not global wines, they are South African wines in a global context. And if we achieve that in the next 10 or 15 years, we have moved a serious step forward.

  LM: Tom?

  TC: Oh, well, I wish you all the greatest success with South African wine, and I think the international market is tough, but wines that mean something in the international market are wines that have what we call a sense of place. They are grown and made from a place where they are distinct and cannot be reproduced anywhere else. And I think that is the focus.

  The old vineyards in South Africa need to be protected. They need to be nurtured, and you need to have the right winemakers there at the helm, and then the best marketers taking those wines to the world. And that's how you'll maintain and increase your standing in the world, which is, uh, it seems to be a very bright future.

  BJ: We've done that an enormous amount in the industry from a transformation perspective. I think a lot more than most other industries, particularly from an agricultural perspective, we haven't been forced into that transformation like the mining industry, for example. We've done it internally. And that is starting to bear incredible fruit.

  I've actually just hired an assistant wine maker who's a Tsonga and she's living out there on the farm with me at the southern tip of Africa. And it's all a bit of a shock to her, but I am just blown away every day by how excited she is about the wine industry and I see in her the future, an incredibly bright future for South Africa.

  The next 10 years I think are going to start seeing a lot of that transformation particularly from the wine-making perspective play out. I think partly it's going to be because the South African wine industry has got this second lease of life, which makes it an exciting industry.

  And also because I think of this cultural relevance of being a South African product and being embraced by all South Africans, and also because of this African opportunity that it's got a lot more significance. So that transformation needs to blossom and bloom and really take hold.

  And now I think in terms of what we do as a wine-making country, we need to keep on our toes. I think we're going to go into a period of relative fortune. And I think we must be careful not to get complacent.

  When we lose rugby games and cricket games, it’s because we think we are better than the rest. And I think as long as we keep thinking we are the underdog, we are going to win.

  LM: Oh, amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you to you three. But before I let you go, I'd like to propose a toast, and this toast will be to the African spirits and wine, and to our amazing judges and experts. Cheers.

  All: Cheers. Cheers.

  LM: Thanks for listening to this episode of Wine in Focus, brought to you by Investec Focus Radio SA. You can also find all the episodes of this series at investec.com/wineinfocus, or wherever you get your podcasts.

  If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it, leave a comment, and forward it to your friends and colleagues. 

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