Mark Twain once said (something along the lines of) "There are lies. There are damn lies. And then there are statistics." I'm sure that statement can be proven to be statistically true some percentage of the time. Hopefully this is NOT one of them…

There have been a lot of people proclaim that South African wine is about to explode on the US scene for the last 15 years. I'm not going to do that here. But there are some undeniably positive trends for SA wine sales, and some of those figures are below.

More interesting is that I found a quantifiable way to explain why those sales are taking off, and why sales are likely to continue to grow (enough growth to move SA's market share from less than 2% of US sales to the 4% of global market share they have, perhaps?).

The first numbers are from the 2010 Gomberg-Fredrikson Report of wine sales in the US. This data shows two things:

1. South Africa's commitment a few years ago to shift their focus from a higher-volume, lower quality "bulk wine" strategy to a higher-quality bottled wine focus has had an impact. Total 9-liter volume was down when bulk wine is included.
2. Also seemingly as a result of this shift, total sales of BOTTLED South African wine have grown for multiple years, and in 2010 were up substantially more than average.
3. The DOLLAR VOLUME of SA bottled wine sales were roughly 6X the average for all imports.

This is great news for the American market – there have been far too few categories with that sort of quality-driven, dollar volume increases over the past few years.

So the question becomes why is this happening. And for that, I turn to the folks at Wine Spectator…

Arguably the largest and most influential wine publication in the world, they likely taste and professionally review more wine from more countries than any group of people in the world. The result of a years' worth of wine tasting there is what statisticians would call a "statistically significant sample size." In their March issue, Wine Spectator had a section called the Year in Review in which they showed the hard numbers behind all of that sipping and spitting and judging and rating. The chart below is mine; I made it from the data that was included in that report. It only shows two data points:

1. The percentage of all wines submitted that were rated 90 or higher, by country.
2. The average suggested retail price of all the wines that rated 90 or higher, by country.

The results are striking:

• "Old World" producers Germany, France and Italy had highest percentage of reviewed wines rate 90+. Not surprising.They were also among the most expensive.
• Of the "New World" countries, California is tied for the highest percentage of reviewed wines that rated 90+ at 29%. And their 90+ rated wines are pretty expensive.
• South African wines were tied with California and ahead of every other country, also with 29% of their submitted wines rating 90+. And, they had the lowest average price for 90+ rated wines.

That is pretty strong data to suggest that SA is clearly among the best countries in the world at delivering a good bit of high quality wine at very reasonable prices. Which is exactly the wine for which the American consumer is searching.

Now, these are statistics, and there are some important points that could be made, such as SA submits a far smaller number of wines to Spectator than California, Australia, etc., and those are very valid points. But, they do nothing to undercut the idea that South Africa is now producing a lot of high quality wine at reasonable prices. It is real data that gives a solid and sustainable reason as to why sales of South African wines should continue to grow and that more Americans will continue to try and adopt South African wines.

Shameless plug: Our portfolio includes more than a dozen wines rated 90+ that retail for less than the Spectator SA average…

Cheers!

From the beginning we could tell it was going to be a special evening. We had gathered from South Africa, Boston, Atlanta, Long Island, and Westchester County, to taste wines at a favorite restaurant out in New York. Five of us with a cumulative 120+ years of experience in the wine industry: Peter Ruggie and Dominico Spagnolo of Liberty Wine Selections, Judy Lebel of Best Year Ever, me, and Rijk Melck of Muratie Wine Estate. We had gathered that evening to taste the Muratie wines.

The wines were showing well, and having Rijk there to give us the history, explain the terroir, and describe that year's harvest and the winemaking process for each wine really added to the tasting. Then we got to his Dad's wine – the Ronnie Melck Shiraz – a tribute to his late father.

This wine had already received a Cellar Selection earlier in the year from Wine Enthusiast Magazine, and in short order is building a great reputation. As we all tasted the wine, formed our thoughts, and asked Rijk questions about the special lot of vines from which the wine is made and the unique open barrel fermentation technique used, nothing could have prepared us for what came next.

As we went around the table giving our critiques, there quickly became a groundswell toward a score none of us had ever experienced before – a 101.

Shocked at the result we'd come to, we wondered aloud whether it was right, or even possible for a wine to get a 101 score. We knew wine rating is done on a 100 point scale, but the four point scale for grading school students has an A+, and students now get credit for AP classes, allowing some of them to graduate with a 4.1+ GPA, so why not a 101 rated wine?!?!

So, after a few more sips of the amazing Ronnie Melck Shiraz from Muratie, and a few more sips of a few other wines at the table, and a return to sip a bit more of the Ronnie Melck Shiraz, we all happily agreed that we had, indeed, experienced our first 101 rated wine.

We ended the special evening with a train ride back into Manhattan, Rijk as proud as he could be, and all of us nearly giddy knowing we had now done what no one else had ever done – rated a wine 101 points on the 100 point scale.