It's one thing to argue that you knew that at some stage a pandemic would cut its swathe through our world. It's altogether another proposition to assert that you predicted that a SARS/MERS-type disease would descend upon us and prove impervious to all our containment strategies. Another Spanish flu, another bubonic plague - all these are possible and it would be naïve to deny the potential risk. But a virus which would bring all the economies of the world to a standstill in a matter of months (despite its relatively low death toll) – that couldn't have been on many futurists' screens.
If we had been able to anticipate 2020 – say in late November 2019 – what would we have done differently? We'd still have had our mortgages to pay, we wouldn't have changed our kids' schools. Wine producers would still have harvested the 2020 crop; they'd have tried as hard as ever to clear space for it. In South Africa all this would have happened in a catastrophically depressed economy. The combined effect of state capture and ANC mismanagement meant that we already had seats in the pointy end of the plane as it was flying into Table Mountain. Very little about 2020 was going to be like a balloon floating in a foam bath, even before an adventurous Chinese gourmet decided that pangolin sashimi served on a bed of deep-fried bats' wings was as good a way as any to celebrate life in the Year of the Pig.
So we were always going to be in the dwang, and the only real questions were “how deep?” and “does your seat cushion double as a flotation device?” What even the most prescient amongst us might not have anticipated was that the evil crone would manage to get her prohibition agenda to stick. Covid was always going to be bad news. Covid + NDZ is a tyrannosaurus on steroids. So here we are, polishing our begging bowls after a total of six weeks of domestic sales in the past four and half months, a truncated export season, tourism and the hospitality industry racing us for a slab in the morgue while sympathetic importers, retailers and wine writers try their best to save what remains of our once flourishing industry. Can we even afford to look this well-meaning gift-horse in the mouth?
At one level it has been truly gratifying: the response of the civilised world to our predicament has tanker-loads of feel-good to it. There's a recognition that our wines have grown up, that they are worthy of promotion, that we have a place at the high table of life. Journalists in our major international markets have been urging their readers to buy Cape wines and support an industry in domestic lockdown. Waitrose undertook a South Africa promotion off its own bat. Other retailers are talking up our wines in a way which can only be seen as positive. We should be grateful, and humbled.
But there is another side to all this, as much a by-product of the NCCC's malicious intent as the inevitable consequence of our predicament becoming known: it is that we are weakened, not only in the reality of where we find ourselves, but in the eyes of the world. There's a handicap element, the one-time Olympic athlete now competing in the Paralympics. While we haven't yet plastered the shop window with the “Liquidation” banners, the word is implied in “Urgent Stock Clearance.”
The unfortunate consequence of this is that the vultures are circling: the markdowns are assumed. A really reputable small volume prestige producer finds his overseas agent proposing that he offers him a special discount “just for this year.” Last year the agent was happy to pay full price, and grateful for whatever allocation he was given. Local customers, especially those shopping online, have also acquired the airs and graces of the financially entitled. Smelling the desperation of cashflow-constrained producers and distributors they are demanding deals they would never have expected a year ago.
It's hard to argue the logic: cash is king, and those who have it can exercise power over those who need it. Except – and this is an important exception – if you love fine wine, and love the wine industry and how it has evolved, presumably you need it to survive. When, to use an unfortunate but timely metaphor, you have your knee on its neck, do you really want to hear it say “I can't breathe” just before it collapses? You have to put a value to its continued existence, and hopefully, that's more than the 10% discount or free freight you're trying to haggle out of it.
We need our producers to be resilient, but resilience comes not only from surviving the seemingly endless hammering; it also comes from breathing deeply, from the moments of pause between one assault and the next. The economy which has been crumbling for several years has wrought its own attrition, the ever-increasing costs of doing business, the drought, the lockdowns – it's been pretty relentless. What makes the struggle worthwhile is the appreciation. When you've performed to the very best of your ability, and your achievements have been celebrated by the critics and the houses you played to on tour, a grudging and mean-spirited audience at home is an injury on top of an insult.
Domestic trade will re-open soon. The government has perfected the darwinian role of testing the fitness of those who are left – we don't need to do their work for them. Instead we need to give those producers who have survived the hammering a chance to catch their collective breath.
