BRIGHT SPARK: SPARKLING WINE

Sparkling wine has had a tough time, but Clifford Roberts finds there's still some sparkle left.

The past two years have seen a roller coaster descent for sparkling wine - with the millennium rollover being the spanner that popped off the wheels. Excise figures, which represent on and off consumption sales, show that sparkling wine volumes grew from 8,3 million litres in 1995/96 to 8,5 million litres in 1999/2000, but then fell to 6,4 million litres in 2000/01. Apart from the liquor industry's general malaise of the past few years, consumers simply didn't party as was expected, leaving wholesalers and retailers overstocked.

Supermarket shelves tell the current story of sparkling wine really well - JC Le Roux is everywhere except in the spaces filled by bottles still covered in their millennium celebration finery from nearly two years ago. Pessimists may say South Africans have little to celebrate these days, but it's rather a case of both wholesalers and retailers once bitten, twice shy. There is still accumulated stock to clear.

The situation for the category is, however, not all gloom. Despite being small, estate producers have contributed to a market which now has prices and degrees of sweetness or dryness for everyone, even if the audience is shrinking. Quality, too, has improved - an element many marketers see as essential to competing on the global market.

This became evident in a recent tasting by Hotel & Restaurant sister publication, WINE magazine, where a tasting panel gave no less than eight local sparkling wines fours stars and above. In addition, the 2001 National Wine Show (Veritas Awards) crowned Simonsig Cuvée Royale 1992 with a double gold medal - the only sparkling wine at the show to receive the award. The Malan family, owners of Simonsig, pioneered this style of wine in South Africa when Frans Malan bottled South Africa's first Méthode Champenoise sparkling wine, Simonsig Kaapse Vonkel, in the seventies.

In terms of volumes, however, Simonsig and others like it remain small in comparison to the country's top selling carbonated products from Distell. It is interesting to note that in the face of considerable decline, advertising spend for sparkling wine has remained on a steady upward trend moving from R3,9 million to R4,3 million for the 12 months to April 2001.

The top brand in SA remains JC Le Roux, whose Le Domaine variant enjoys dominance, with a marketshare of 52%.
The House of JC Le Roux near Stellenbosch produces between three and four million bottles per year of carbonated sparkling wine. For the Cap Classique range, it produces between 500 000 and one million litres every year. Marketing activities, says marketing assistant De Bruyn Steenkamp, are focused on promoting the brand not only as a drink for celebrations, but as a beverage for any occasion at any time of the day.

Another Distell brand, Grand Mousseux is in second place and holds 15,3% of the market.

Naturally, with the two big brands catching the most of the ill winds of the moment, Distell is eager to stimulate broad consumer taste for sparkling wine through new products like Tiffany's. The brand, which featured the single orange juice and sparkling wine mix variant Tiffany's Old Buck's Fizz, has added Tiffany's Black Currant. Both compete in the Flavoured Alcoholic Beverage (FAB) category - home to 18 to 25 year olds and the only category showing consistent growth in recent years. Both the Tiffany's variants are available countrywide in a 340ml bottle.

Sparkling wine, however, remains the drink of choice when it comes to celebration and with the festive season around the corner, retailers will be hoping to pop their own corks over even the slightest increase in sales.

Hoteliers and restaurateurs would do well to remember that the holiday season is a time when families get together. And that means there will be mothers and grandmothers in most groups of diners who will want a sweeter sparkling wine than can be found on many of the winelists Hotel & Restaurant has seen in recent months.