Graham Beck
One can be grateful for whatever Divine wisdom prevailed when looking at Madeba today. We see 1850 fertile hectares, 400 of them planted with vines that sweep up in orderly rows to the magnificent Graham Beck winery, breasting the vineyards like a man o' war in full sail, almost disturbingly defiant of tradition in its psychedelic warpaint. In place of the devastation that once existed there is now fine, disciplined viticulture and the production of quality wines, among the best in the world. The valley that was destroyed by an Act of God was restored by an act of Beck, almost as dramatically – and at a profit. Beck bought the ravaged land at a knock-down price and turned it back into prize real estate simply by bringing back the soil.
The trade-sanction days are past and South Africa is now firmly back in the world wine trade, boosted initially by the sheer topicality of the country's return – the "honeymoon" of our reunion with the international market. But that period is over. What faces us now is a fight for a bigger share of a highly competitive market – against the Australians who usurped our place when we could not be there and others such as Chile and Argentina who 'arrived' almost simultaneously with the return of Cape wines on the world stage and who are showing themselves to be tough and vigorous marketers of no mean quality.
South Africa floundered back into the market. Along with good wines were presented not-so-good wines and a lot of wine that should not have been dumped there at all. The big and medium-sized estates came barrelling in with the smaller producers swimming along like minnows between them. There was little in the way of good organisation and South Africans acquired a reputation for shoddy marketing and service due to some producers who lacked finesse in communications and deliveries. Some individual producers have scored impressive successes, but generally and collectively we have slowed down, bumping our heads against the rough, tough Aussies with their powerful base, smooth and aggressive marketing and big government-assisted producers. At the same time we are fighting for space against the ever-improving South Americans. The time has come for re-grouping and new planning. What's needed is muscle, and dynamic enterprise.
Which brings us back to Graham Beck, an example of the sort of re-shaping that is required to meet the challenges ahead. Beck began planting vineyards on the reclaimed Madeba land in 1984, and the winery established there was specifically built for Méthode Cap Classique – the first sparkling wine, Graham Beck Brut, was produced there in 1991, followed by the first Lonehill Chardonnay. A second cellar was built in 1992, specifically for red and white production.
Beck went on to purchase Union Wine, which included the beautiful Bellingham wine farm in Franschhoek. He amalgamated Union Wine with Douglas Green of Paarl in 1991 to form Douglas Green Bellingham in a 50-50 holding agreement with Kersaf. In 1996 Beck secured 100% ownership of DGB, and in 1997 brought Graham Beck Wines, Bellingham and Douglas Green Wines into the same sales, marketing and administrative fold while maintaining their individual labels and profiles. Whirlwind acquisitions as South Africa re-entered the world market after the end of sanctions in 1994. Then, last year, he re-organised again, selling 80% of his share in DGB to his management. The sale excluded the vineyards and wineries at Madeba in Robertson and Bellingham in Franschhoek, as well as the recently acquired wine farms Skoongesig and Vredenhof near Somerset West.
What he retained, therefore, were four state-of-the-art cellars served by superb vineyards in three different areas, each offering a diversity of excellent production material. He also retained the services of his two award-winning cellarmasters – Pieter Ferreira at Graham Beck Robertson and Charles Hopkins at Graham Beck Coastal in Franschhoek – along with talented viticulturist Johan Wiese, a keen support team of administrators led by general manager Gary Baumgarten, and a vigorous marketing division under Jacques Roux.
"The honeymoon is over," says Beck. "The only way we can beat France, Australia, Chile, the United States and all the rest is to make wine better than they do…"
Whisky man turned wine lover
Graham Beck is 70 years old – not that he looks it. A powerfully-built man who still manages to move with a surprising litheness in spite of the encroachment of old rugby injuries, he has embarked on a strategy to enhance the quality of his wines and expand sales on world markets at a time when most men have already faded into retirement. And wine production is not his major interest! One of South Africa's richest men, Beck is a coal producer and exporter, has widespread property investments and a yacht-building business in Britain. And he is among the world's top five race-horse breeders with stud farms in South Africa and the United States – he once hosted Queen Elizabeth on his bloodstock farm, Gainesway, in Kentucky.
Wine caught up with him at his Cape Town pad:
Q: We hear that although you produce wine, you prefer to drink Scotch. Can this really be true?
A: Yes, I'm afraid so. I like wine – especially Chardonnay and Pinotage. But I've always been, first and foremost, a whisky drinker. Mea culpa, mea culpa…
Q: You have seven homes: your Sandton house; residences in the Madeba valley, Robertson, and Kentucky, USA; in the Cape, a house in St James and your apartment in Clifton; and your house in Hyde Park, London. When you travel by air, you go in your private Astra jet. It's an amazing lifestyle. But doesn't it exhaust you?
A: My long established home is in Sandton. However I have to live where I work, and I work in Johannesburg, the Cape, London, the United States and in the air. But yes, sometimes I do feel like a refugee.
Q: It's a refugee status other refugees might envy. But when you are in one place how do you keep things going in the other places – especially as it is said you are very much a "hands-on" executive?
A: Two things: The recent advances in communications and the fact that I have good staff. I've always had good staff. Maybe I have a knack of finding them. But what they all have to learn from the outset is how to communicate. I communicate with them frequently on a daily basis – and I expect them to communicate with me on anything important the moment it happens. Anyone who does not communicate gets his butt kicked.
Q: How did your business life begin? We know you were not a poor boy. You had a university education. But where did all this serious wealth begin?
A: I graduated from UCT with a B Com. But I had nothing. Worse still, times were bad and I could not get a job – until I saw an advertisement calling for coal miners. So I applied and got taken on as an apprentice miner at seven pounds 10 shillings a month – including board and lodging. It was the first step on a very long ladder. I was at the coal face, got my miner's and blasting certificates and worked my way up to become a mine manager. I worked underground for about 15 years. Then I raised a bank loan, bought mining equipment on terms and drilled my own coal mine. The result was successful, and after that it was all relatively easy.
Q: How did you get into the wine business?
A: Quite by accident. The late Jan Pickard, an old friend from my university days, asked me to buy Union Wine, which included Bellingham, and it was the beginning of a fascinating journey. When the Laingsburg floods happened in 1981 I already owned Highlands Stud in the Madeba valley. My growing interest in wine led me to buy the Madeba farm in 1983, to establish vineyards on the land we reclaimed and build the Madeba cellar. It all developed from there.
Q: What drives you in the things you do? Is it that you are just a workaholic?
A: I think it is just that I like to do things, to create. When the devil gets on my shoulder, one things leads to another.
Q: You are 70 years old now. When are you going to ease the pace?
A: When I assess the time is right. My eldest son, Clive, was beginning to take on a lot of the responsibilities in the mining and farming spheres, but he died tragically about five years ago. My younger son, Antony, is running the stud farms. Meantime I keep on going with rest of it.
Q: What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
A: I think it is that I have been able to give employment to thousands of people, and that this has enabled them to better their lives, and the lives of their families. I have learned what it means not to have a job.
Q: You bid a sensational amount of money – R230 000 – against Hans Schreiber of Neethlingshof for a bottle of wine at the Nederburg Auction one year. Did you see that as some kind of challenge?
A: No. Someone said: "Go on, Graham, take him on." So I did, acting purely on impulse. But it had a lot to do with the fact that it was an auction for charity and the money was going to a hospice. My mother died of cancer and I have never forgotten what hospice did for her. I am grateful for all they have done for both my parents.
Q: We understand you do a great deal for charity. Is it true that your private jet is always available, when not otherwise in use, for urgent deliveries in transplantation operations?
A: Yes, the aircraft does provide that service, free of charge. And yes, my wife Rhona and I do try to help people as much as possible. Rhona spends a great deal of time doing social work – especially the upliftment of people on our farms, such as organising crèches and gardens for them, and attending to their welfare in other ways.
Q: How do you see your role in the wine industry now?
A: I want to help set the highest possible standards for producing South African wines of outstanding quality and sell them to a world which is becoming more affluent and more discerning in its demand for better wines.
Aces in the pack
In his venture to boost his label as a superior South African brand on the international market, Graham Beck has two aces up his sleeve: two of the leading winemakers in the Cape, Charles Hopkins in Franschhoek (Graham Beck Coastal) and Pieter Ferreira at Graham Beck Robertson. Both are examples of Beck's almost uncanny gift for finding talent and nurturing it until it pays handsome dividends.
Hopkins and Ferreira have produced highly acclaimed, award-winning wines – ranging from excellent reviews in WINE Magazine, SAA awards and Veritas Double Golds to accolades at international competitions. At Madeba, Ferreira focuses on sparkling wine, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Merlot, while closer to Cape Town, Hopkins concentrates hugely on Pinotage, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc – each winemaker maintaining his own identity and following the direction of his own appellation and individual style.
Last year alone, Hopkins' achieved Double Gold at Veritas for his 1998 Graham Beck Shiraz, a 4¡ Star rating in WINE for his 1998 Graham Beck Pinotage, and 4 Star ratings from the WINE panel for his 1996 Cabernet Franc and 1997 Pinotage under the Bellingham "Spitz" label.
Ferreira, on the other hand, has become one of the Cape's top Méthode Cap Classique winemakers, especially with his Blanc de Blanc and Brut wines under the Graham Beck label: good ratings in WINE, two gold medals at the International Wine & Spirit Competition in London and trophies at the SAA Winelist Selections. Most recently, his Graham Beck 'The Ridge' Shiraz 1998 was awarded 4¡ Stars by the WINE tasting panel (May 2000).
Their reward has been what most winemakers dream of: good vineyards, state-of-the-art cellars. "He gives us just about everything we ask for," says Ferreira, "and the result is that we give him everything we have – the utmost effort, the utmost dedication."
Hopkins recalls: "The ambition he inspired in me motivated me to ask him to buy our two new farms in Somerset West. When I saw Vredenhof I knew we should have it. Terrific soil. Fantastic climate. I agonised over how to approach him, because he is the sort of guy you don't mess around with. You walk round him very carefully…
"I set my alarm for 3am, because he was in California at the time and I didn't want to make the fatal mistake of waking him up in the middle of the night. When I got him on the phone, he said 'Yes Dutchman, what do you want?'. He calls me Dutchman because he has always been amused by me, an Afrikaner, having an English name. Well, I took a deep breath and said: 'Mr Beck, there's this fantastic wine farm which I think you should buy. It's going for R6-million.' There was such a long silence that I tried to make a joke: 'If you don't buy it, I'm going to buy it myself.' He said 'I'll look at it when I get back', and put the phone down, rather abruptly."
When Beck returned to South Africa, Hopkins took him to Vredenhof. "There are no old Cape Dutch gables or slave bells or any such claptrap at Vredenhof. It's just outstanding terroir, and I prayed he would see what it could do for us. Well, he walked around, sort of chewing his underlip, which usually means he's not impressed, then said 'OK, Dutchman, you can have it. But God help you if it doesn't prove worth it'."
Ferreira says of Beck: "He has great vision. He's never had any basic training in wine, and admits that apart from being able to tell the difference between a good or bad Chardonnay, he's no taster. But he absorbs information from all over the world and is constantly briefing us on new ideas. He's also a great person to bounce ideas off."
"He has this knack of making the right decision by some sort of gut instinct," says Hopkins. "When he told us a few years back to pull out all the Riesling vines at Bellingham, we freaked out, running back and forth showing him figures to prove it was commercially unwise. But he ignored us, and just repeated 'PULL 'EM OUT!' Now we have those vineyards planted with red varieties, and all I can say is the man was right on target. How he saw it when no one else could, we'll never know. He's twice my age and I just don't know where he gets all his inspiration and energy from."
The four farms in Robertson, Franschhoek and Somerset West provide a wide range of terroir and varieties and different levels of intensity. The way is open to a whole new world of exciting challenges and success. According to Hopkins: "It's the start of a long steep road to ever-increasing quality and excellence. This is not just an ambition. Production of quality wine is the key to survival in the international wine industry."
