Stockholm Food and Wine Show,  10-13th November 2016

For the second time WOSA participated in the Sydafrikanska Vinpasset (The South African Wine Passport) consumer show. The aim of the Passport is to drive traffic to the various stands by guiding the visitors to the South African wines that are displayed throughout the venue. 

The Passport is designed similar to a normal travel passport, but inside is listed all exhibitors with South African wines. Each page has the name of the importer, a list of their wines (incl. price, name and vintage), the importer’s logo and the stand number. 

To furthermore incentivise the visitors to taste our wines we included a competition element into the concept. Each visitor’s Passport is collected from our stand and then the passport holder has to collect stamps by tasting wines at the various exhibitor stands. When they have collected five stamps (i.e visited five different importers), they return with the Passport to us, fill in the necessary contact details and then they hand in one page from the Passport to enter the lucky draw, giving them a chance to win a 15,000 SEK gift card for a trip to South Africa! 

This year we managed to secure a main sponsor for the passport – KWV Roodeberg. The mechanic for this saw to it that every person participating in the competition had to get his or her VISA by tasting at least one Roodeberg wine. This turned out to be a major success since the wines from KWV almost ran out by the end of the show – something which has never happened before - according to their importer. 

This year, the show had a bit of a slow start. Stockholm was hit by the worst snowstorm in 15 years. The busses were not driving at all and the night before saw thousands of people stuck on the highways for up to 9 hours due to the bad weather conditions. It was hectic! So, the Thursday was slower than usual, but then by the Friday and especially Saturday the footfall increased significantly. 

We handed out approximately 1,250 passports and counted 474 completed ones in return. A quick calculation gives us an absolute minimum of 2,370 wines tasted through the passport. We also know that almost everyone carrying a passport tasted more than one wine at the stands, sometimes as many as four wines, so I think we could easily double the amount of tasted wines stated above. Then we also have a large number of passports that was never completed (and therefore never handed in), so we should also consider that we might have a large number of passports with only two or three stamps. 
I believe a more correct overall figure for tasted wines would be approximately 5,500. 

Looking at these figures I´m really happy with the result. When a visitor buys a ticket to the show, it includes five tastings of wine. To be able to complete our Passport they needed to use all their tasting tickets on just South African wine, which we now know at least 474 people did. Some of the feedback received by talking to the visitors furthermore confirms this.   

“I usually never taste South African wines, but this time I used all my money on wines from South Africa”, said one of the participants in the competition. 

Another one stated:
“What a great initiative. I have never tasted so many South African wines before on a show like this.”

But this is not the only positive experience. Many people visiting a show are of the opinion that they don´t know what to taste or where to begin. The Passport provided the visitors with a tool and a purpose for their visit.

One visitor said:
“It´s great to have a mission when coming to a big show. Now we know what to taste!”

Then we have those visitors who specifically look out for South African wines and for them the Passport works like a guidebook so they can know where to go to find their favourites.

“Perfect. I love South African wines and now I know exactly where to find them”, said a couple who had just been on a trip to South Africa.

Since the Passport is of high quality and contains a lot of information, we have experienced that many visitors just want to take the booklet home without completing  the competition pages. 

“This was really fun! And I also have a great little booklet with South African wine recommendations to take home.”

This year the Passport contained eight different importers with a total of 48 South African wines. The winner of this year´s competition was Kerstin Bark. She will receive a pack with information, books, Platter 2017, gift cards for free tastings and lunches from participating producers, and of course, the 15,000 SEK voucher for her trip to South Africa!

- Maja Berthas, Wines of South Africa Sweden – December 2016