Austerity measures

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

I can’t help but think of a moment in The Shining when a manically grinning Jack Nicholson sticks his face around a door frame yelling: “He’s baa-aack!” Well, so’s the Nederburg Auction.
It was the 36th time the event was held at the historic homestead in Paarl and it was a welcome return to form. Nederburg is happy, buyers are happy at the prices paid and wine farmers are happy at the prices achieved.
The figures make for interesting reading – overall income jumped 41% over last year: R5 683 810 versus just over R4 million in 2009; 17 countries accounted for 30% of all sales, with the top UK buyer being Tesco, with R522 000 worth of purchases. Behind them were India, Denmark and Nigeria.
Locally, South African supermarket groups maintained their dominance with 36% of all lots being knocked down to SPAR (R830 940), Shoprite Checkers (R556 210) and Makro (R511 880), with Pick ‘n Pay trailing a few lengths behind the main field at R160 500.
But there was a significant improvement in average nine-litre case prices – R1 505 versus the R1 099 in 2009. Distell’s Business Director of Wines, Carina Gous, who did a masterful job of stepping into the breach when the former staffer tasked with turning the auction around jumped ship a few months ago, attributed this to taking some hard-nosed business decisions. Congratulations to all at Distell because it has patently paid handsome dividends. No doubt there will be more than a few sighs of relief at their Stellenbosch corporate head office!
‘Back to basics’ appears to have been the mantra. Focus on wine – make the line-up one which holds appeal (and resale value) for buyers, get the right buyers back … and spending, streamline the format and cut out all the non-essential frills and inject some new auctioneering blood. Holding the gavel was Anthony Barne MW of Bonhams who performed exceptionally well, eager and alert to all paddle movements in the hall.
While there were those muttering about the social programme – even down to the quality of the coffee and lack of oysters – I for one applaud the austerity measures. The Nederburg Auction is a wine auction, pure and simple. Over the years it developed into a bit of side-show – a very enjoyable side-show what with fashion parades by top SA designers – but it went too far, lost track of its core focus and foundered.
Well done to Distell for not consigning it to the scrapheap or reinventing it but for applying the necessary austerity measures for it to succeed once again. South African needs Nederburg to show leadership and it has.