Reasons to visit WineX Johannesburg

Reasons to visit WineX Johannesburg (or at least reasons to wish you could...)

RMB WineX Johannesburg runs from 27 to 30 October at the Sandton Convention Centre. Show chairman Michael Fridjhon introduces this year's event, which provides an unparalleled opportunity for wine lovers to meet the country's top producers.

 

It was only in 1976, when the Court House - a grand residence in Johannesburg's northern suburbs - fell vacant, that someone suggested to the Rand Daily Mail's event team that it would make the ideal venue for a consumer wine show.

The stylish house - which had been previously owned by American billionaire Charlie Engelhard - had a pool house large enough to host the event. The city's major wine merchants were the only exhibitors, supplying wines they had sourced from national wholesalers.

It was a resounding success, becoming a fixture on the annual wine calendar (with a new title when the Rand Daily Mail morphed into Business Day, and at increasingly spacious venues). But by 1999 it had run out of steam and some kind of intervention was necessary if the country's oldest wine festival was to be saved. Redemption came in the timely form of sponsorship from Rand Merchant Bank, and a dedicated team of people whose core competence was event management in the wine industry.

RMB WineX - in its present incarnation - opened its doors for the first time in 2000. At the millennium, there were about 350 wineries in the country - a significant step up on 1994 (just over 200) but half the number of today. Exports had been on a roll since the Mandela presidency, doubling and redoubling as small starting volumes became an increasingly important percentage of the industry's total production. But foreign business is brittle and uncertain, as the global financial crisis has confirmed.

Realising that it is vital to establish and maintain contact with a domestic market - especially in Gauteng (the largest market in the world for Cape wine) - producers have come to use events like WineX as a crucial interface with the consumers who help to shape their way forward. They have also become increasingly realistic about the vital importance of direct selling. With over 8 000 wines now listed in Platter's, they know they stand a less than 5% chance of getting even one of their wines onto retail shelves.

As for wine drinkers, the opportunity to sample over 1 000 of South Africa's best wines is an occasion not to be missed.