Second labels
Flagship wines tend by their very nature to be small-volume lots - and often have an inflated price tag to match. There is great value to be had in the so-called "second labels", which means you can drink well for less than you'd expect. Jean-Pierre Rossouw reports. There was a time when all cars were Model T Fords and all were, famously, black. Now, should you walk into a car dealership as nonchalantly or as tentatively as your credit status allows, you'll have to negotiate a bewildering range of models, colours and accessories. To use one example: if you aren't in a position to buy the Mercedes Benz S- or E-Class - or even the quotidian C-Class - the A-Class awaits as a softer-priced entry into the world of Mercedes Benz. It's a world of reliable engineering, breeding, status and low road noise.
The concept is simple: you open the world of Mercedes to a larger market, you impress this market with your product, and you capture their hearts and (hopefully swelling) wallets forever. The promise is global - that all the models are a part of a high quality family, the three-pointed star your (consistent) symbol of peace of mind.
Many wine producers like to use the motor car analogy to describe their range, and to explain where and how their "second label" wines fit in. It is quite clear to most consumers that Kadette belongs to the Kanonkop family of wines in the same way that Mouton-Cadet belongs to Mouton-Rothschild. Likewise Buiten Blanc echoes Buitenverwachting and the Klein Constantia "KC" red alludes to the "family" brand.
But in many other examples - in fact in most cases - the family resemblance is not that easy to spot. Brampton has no ostensible connection to Rustenberg; nor Guardian Peak to Engelbrecht Els, Diversity to De Toren, Zondernaam to Tokara. It wouldn't seem that these producers are trying to hold these labels too close to the "primary" or family label, so what purpose do they serve? Are they simply places for wineries to send juice of inferior quality, with prices ramped up by association with a famous brand?
Perhaps we should first take a step back and clarify the term "second label," the catch-all that we tend to use to describe all the ancillary labels that come from a cellar. It clearly has its roots in the French tradition of winemaking. With their strict control of the specific varieties planted in each area, the producer has to make wine with a more limited set of variables - like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the case of Burgundy. For top producers, the rigorous sorting of fruit and wine quality would require barrels that are deemed of a slighter stature. The result is a second label, a wine at a lower price than the primary label, but clearly part of the family and labelled as such - your assurance that the grapes come from that site and have been made in that cellar. In other words a stamp of approval and the association of quality.
South Africa's most illustrious example of a pure second label is Kanonkop's Kadette, and the tweaks and changes it has undergone are instructive. For many years, the fruit that ended up in the Kadette was that which did not make the cut for the Paul Sauer, Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinotage labels. For example, owner Johann Krige relates how the tannin structure of fruit from younger vines is too rough to fit into the primary labels. Kadette is therefore a means of increasing the quality of the primary label by not having to send unready juice its way. At the same time, though, this juice from the same carefully tended vines, has become too valuable to sell in bulk.
Furthermore, Kadette is made in the house style. "It's extremely important," says Krige, "for the second label to 'piggyback' the primary and not become an entity on its own. "It's all about brand credibility and keeping it simple for the consumer. "Complex, with a dry finish" is how Krige describes all the wines.
He's also adamant that the label should belong to the house. "There are so many labels out there - you don't want to confuse people!" For this reason, Kadette's original blue label was abandoned for one in cream, similar to the other labels. And while it used to be called "Kadette" without explicitly stating "Kanonkop", the 2003 vintage label once again proclaims "Kanonkop Kadette" - and Krige is only a little surprised that nobody even noticed the change. It indicates for the consumer that the main brand is clearly Kanonkop - and that Kadette has its place within this family. "If I go to Japan, I sell Kanonkop. This guy knows nothing about the difference between Paul Sauer and Kadette! So I have to make sure he is happy with Kanonkop."
Kadette offers great value at more or less one-third of the price of the upper tier, plus it resembles them in flavour profile - drawing the consumer to try the latter on special occasions. With enough work marketing his one "Kanonkop" brand, Krige is surprised at all the wineries with all their alternative brands.
Yet it is currently far more popular for producers to create alternate labels, often with no or very little link to the primary label. They have names that are completely different to the cellar's "main" range and often only refer to the cellar where they are made in the fine print, often on the back label. The term "main" is used guardedly, since these alternate ranges usually outperform the primary range in volume and sometimes even in competitive environments.
A recent example of this was the Brampton Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 that won Best Cabernet Sauvignon and Discovery of the Show for Best Value in the 2006 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show. In doing so, it received a gold medal, while its more serious and higher-priced sibling, Rustenberg's John X Merriman 2004 could only gather a bronze medal. The comparison is, of course, unfair and uneven, because the Brampton is not wholly drawn from Rustenberg fruit and the Merriman is a blend. But more saliently, Rustenberg see the Brampton wines as a wholly separate entity, made to be very different in style.
It didn't begin that way. Brampton was launched as a true second label in the mid-1990s to "make a clean start and mark a shift in quality for Rustenberg reds" - in the words of owner Simon Barlow. The Rustenberg label was taken off the market for a few red wine vintages, but when Rustenberg returned, Brampton didn't die off but began to thrive, gathering other varietal wines to the range, including whites, and restyled to be earlier drinking and softer, with (for example) more use of American oak. "It's where we can experiment and have fun," says winemaker Adi Badenhorst, "but is still a bloody good drink". Barlow explains Brampton as the varietal wines, while Rustenberg represents what the farm, as a site, is all about. With Brampton typically less than half the price of Rustenberg, it's significally more affordable, and regarding its show performance, Badenhorst wryly points out that you have to look at what stands out in most competitions: upfront, showy fruit, more obvious oak and softness - which sounds like Brampton.
Similarly, Klein Constantia's KC Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot 2003 was also released as an alternate label while the quality of the top tier was being rebuilt, and by the second (2004) vintage a Shiraz joined it - now owner Lowell Jooste is aiming to separate it further from the "motherbrand" (it is already sold into a different market sector). KC winemaker Adam Mason sees this label as a platform that "allows you to pull out all the stops with the top tier". Like most lower-priced ranges, it's about business sense and cash flow as much as added quality for the top tier wines. These wines are released earlier, have had less expensive wooding, and sell in greater volumes due to their softer price.
For Ernie Els winemaker Louis Strydom, the Guardian Peak wines offer similar economic leverage, released after 30 months instead of the 48 months that the Engelbrecht Els wines are held back. He points out that all grapes are treated as though destined for the Engelbrecht Els range; it is only later that certain lots are moved into the Guardian Peak range, "so the quality always exceeds the price". Guardian Peak is often called a second label but, with a vibrant life of its own, its own markets and different fruit sources, proprietor Jean Engelbrecht calls it an alternate label.
He points out that it is important to separate the ranges in every way, including stylistically, so that Guardian Peak can utilise other grape varieties and go into new markets. This range now even has its own tier system, with the blends like Frontier and SMG positioned above the varietal wines.
Engelbrecht admits that in Guardian Peak's eight-year history they learnt a great deal. Originally they made it to satisfy a price point. Now they make sure that it over-delivers on quality, and have deliberately created for it a life of its own - even with its own cellar and winemaker, ex-Distell man Coenie Snyman.
De Toren's Emil den Dulk also sees their Diversity wines as a completely different entity, even though the grapes that make it come from the same farm. They go by "Diversity" because they constantly change in their varietal make-up from year to year, while Fusion V and "Z" stay constant. Den Dulk describes this as an exercise in raising the quality of the primary labels. "Roughly 30% of wine that we make in our cellar never goes into De Toren, and this becomes Diversity." And it retails at less than half the price.
While Diversity was always a part of the plan for De Toren, Miles Mossop explains that Tokara's Zondernaam had a haphazard birth. They simply had a new cellar and were waiting for the right grapes to fulfil GT Ferreira's brief to "make one of the best wines in the world". They made wine to test the cellar and the resultant "practise run" wine ended up too good to sell in bulk, so they created Zondernaam with the idea to phase it out sooner rather than later. But again, it quickly became apparent that the label had a following, and now it's here to stay. As with the previous examples, all grapes are treated as if they may be for the Tokara range, so the value added is great (they retail at a third of the price). Echoing Rustenberg's Simon Barlow, Mossop explains the difference in the ranges as Tokara being site driven, while Zondernaam is variety driven. Karin Alant, the marketing manager, adds that they are also sold to completely different markets, so much so that many customers didn't know that there was a place called Tokara with its own wines.
It seems to boil down to plurality, or perhaps Wines of South Africa's diversity. The wide variety of grapes that most of our cellars can choose from, our "New World" legislation which allows a wine to contain grapes from areas geographically far apart, is an important kernel in the genesis of the alternate label. Very few of these labels will contain fruit solely from the farm where the wine is made. The cellars have capacity, there is good quality out there, and there are new markets, so another label makes business sense. More importantly, South Africa is a young winemaking nation, and even in those pockets where winemaking heritage is strong, new varieties are constantly being experimented with. Then there are all the new areas that are being planted to vine. We are in a process of exploration, mapping and consolidation - the alternate label is a useful proving ground and the natural place for something new.
But besides the thrill of the new, what many of the top-end producers offer the consumer in these "second" labels is a "quality seal" that the grapes have been grown and the wine made with the same attention to detail and the same technical expertise as the "premium" wine - but at a much friendlier price, typically a half to a third of the top-end wine. You could say that all the engineering and manufacturing proficiencies, plus the hard-won knowledge of all those crash test dummies, are to be found in the alternate labels, much like the entry level Mercedes Benz.
Other "alternative" labels
Boekenhoutskloof - Porcupine Ridge o Buitenverwachting - Buiten Blanc
Capaia - Blue Grove Hill o Cape Point Vineyards - Scarborough
Graham Beck - Railroad Red & Waterside White o Glen Carlou - Tortoise Hill
Jordan - Chameleon and Bradgate o Kanu - Escape
Ken Forrester - Petit Pinotage & Chenin o Linton Park - Capell's Court
Môreson - Pinehurst o Morgenhof - Fantail o Rijk's - Iceberg
Saxenburg - Guinea Fowl o Slaley - Broken Stone o Stellenzicht -
Golden Triangle and Hill & Dale
Vergelegen - Mill Race Red and Vin de Florence o Vergenoegd - Terrace Bay
Vriesenhof - Paradyskloof o Waterford - Pecan Stream
