Wine for alcoholics

Catholics believe in transubstantiation: that through the miracle of Holy Communion, wine becomes the blood of Christ. When believers drink this transformed wine, souls are saved. But can a label transform a bottle of wine into art, especially if drinking the artwork destroys its value?

This seems to be the Faustian compact wagered by those prepared to pay R3 500 plus change for the five-and-ahalf bottles in Eben Sadie’s Ouwingerdreeks. Although Michael Fridjhon writing in Business Day says, “I don’t believe that the Ouwingerdreeks is just about money,” how many of the 250 cases on offer will be drunk by the initial purchaser?

What price if the wine were supplied in unlabelled bottles? Apart from Michael, the only other person I know who admits to buying a case is a PR practitioner who said she planned to invite William Kentridge, the artist responsible for the six labels, to lunch and would ask him to sign each bottle. She didn’t say what they’d be drinking.

Assuming William acquiesces, where does the value now lie? In the wine, made by the Platter’s Producer of the Year for 2010, even though that process relied intimately on the discredited sighted tasting procedure employed by the guide, an assessment further discredited by Michael in some broad-brush comments on Eben’s wines?

Or in the label, transformed into an artwork and collectible icon by a signature? If the latter, value surely remains when the bottle is empty and given that fi ve of the six wines are made from white cultivars, this is a situation on the short- to medium-term horizon. If drinking destroys value, then Ouwingerdreeks is the perfect solution for alcoholics on the wagon.

What happens to value if the wine is corked? Can the bottle be returned to Messrs Sadie and Kentridge for a replacement? But of what: wine alone or will another bottle (and label) be supplied? Given that there are only 250 cases on offer and the hefty price attached, Ouwingerdreeks is unlikely to be rated by Platter’s. But if assessed, who would dare score the Kentridge images on a 5-star system and what criteria would be applied? Would his lack of colour be a negative? Or are labels irrelevant? Of course, this is one occasion in which even I would not insist on a blind assessment.

Then there’s the whole thorny issue of droit de suite, the status quo in Europe which entitles artists to a share of prices fetched for their work on the secondary market when a work is resold.

As Germaine Greer explains in The Guardian, “If the artist is alive or less than 70 years dead, he or she or the artist’s legatees can expect 4% of the first €50 000 reached in a secondary sale, 3% of the next tranche to €200 000, 1% of the next to €350 000, and so on in descending increments as the price gets higher. After the price reaches €2 million, the artists can claim nothing; €12 500 is the maximum they can receive.” With Irma Stern oils, favourites among estate owners GT Ferreira and Dave King, denominated in the millions, how much for Ouwingerdreeks in the next generation?

The week before the wines were launched, the Mail & Guardian hailed the event, “One of the more significant releases in modern Cape winemaking” while post-facto Business Day claimed the affair, “... is hardly an event to cause even a ripple on South Africa’s wine lake”. Clearly Business Day was out of the money as more was written about Ouwingerdreeks than the launch of the first SA icon wine, Kanonkop Black Label 2006, earlier this year, with a very plain label indeed.