Why Do Some South African Wines Cost More Than Others?
You can buy a bottle of South African wine for R80. You can also spend R200, R500 or considerably more.
But what changes inside the bottle as the price goes up?
There isn't one simple answer. The grape variety printed on the label is only part of the equation. Where the grapes come from, how vineyards are selected, how much wine is produced, what happens in the cellar and how long the wine takes to make can all affect its price.
To make this less theoretical, we can look at three white blends made here at Boland Cellar.
Our Sixty-40 White costs R80, One Formation White costs R150 and Reserve White costs R195. All three are South African white blends. All three contain Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc.
Yet they are made quite differently.
It starts with the grapes
One of the first differences can be where the grapes come from and how they are selected.
For One Formation White, the Chenin Blanc comes mainly from shale soils, with some fruit from granite soils in Paarl's Drakenstein area. The Sauvignon Blanc comes from Lutzville near the West Coast, while the Grenache Blanc comes from shale soils on the slopes of Paardeberg. These vineyards are selected specifically for the One Formation range.
Selection becomes even more specific with Reserve White.
For this wine, Boland Cellar selects vineyards that have shown a track record of producing high-quality fruit over several years. The vineyards include decomposed granite and shale soils, which provide different components for the final blend.
This kind of selection matters. Instead of simply asking which grapes are available, the winemaking team is choosing particular vineyards because of what they can contribute to a particular wine.
Oak costs money - but that isn't the whole point
Oak is one of the more obvious reasons some wines cost more.
But simply saying "expensive wine uses barrels" misses quite a lot.
The One Formation White is partially wooded. Its Sauvignon Blanc and Grenache Blanc spend three months in older small French barrels. After blending, the wine spends another two months on the lees with regular bâtonnage.
With Reserve White, the Chardonnay and Roussanne components spend five months in older small French barrels. The Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc ferment separately in stainless steel and remain on the lees for seven to eight months with regular lees stirring. Once the final wine is blended, it spends a further two months on the lees before bottling.
So the additional cost isn't simply the barrel.
There is more time, more handling and more cellar work involved before that bottle can be sold.
Time has a cost too
This part is easy to overlook.
A wine that can be prepared and bottled relatively quickly allows a producer to sell it sooner.
A wine that spends months in barrel or on its lees remains in the cellar. The winery has already paid to grow or buy the grapes, harvest them, ferment the wine and store it, but cannot sell the finished bottle yet.
That extra time becomes part of the economics of producing the wine.
It can also change the wine itself. Lees ageing and barrel maturation can add texture, weight and complexity, which is exactly why those techniques are being used in One Formation White and Reserve White.
So what are you paying for?
Compare the three wines and the price difference begins to make more sense.
At R80, Sixty-40 White is deliberately made as an accessible, fresh white blend.
At R150, One Formation White involves more specific vineyard sourcing, an additional grape variety, separate vinification, partial French oak maturation and time on the lees.
At R195, Reserve White uses selected vineyard parcels with established quality records. The grapes are hand-harvested, varieties are handled in small separate batches, different fermentation and maturation methods are used, and some components spend considerably longer on their lees.
The higher price reflects a different approach to producing the wine.
Is expensive wine always better?
This is where price becomes less useful.
Paying more can buy you more selective fruit, additional cellar work, longer maturation and more expensive production methods.
It cannot guarantee that you will prefer the wine.
Someone looking for a fresh bottle to open with fish on a Friday afternoon may get exactly what they want from Sixty-40 White. Someone looking for more texture and complexity may prefer One Formation White or Reserve White.
Those are different reasons for buying wine.
How much should you spend on a good South African wine?
Spend according to what you want from the bottle.
For an everyday wine, you may not need the additional vineyard selection, maturation and cellar work that goes into a more expensive bottle.
When you want something with more complexity, or you are curious about what additional time and attention in the vineyard and cellar can do, moving up in price starts to make more sense.
So instead of asking whether an R195 wine is "better" than an R80 wine, there is a more useful question:
What went into making it cost R195?
The back label won't always give you the full answer.
But now you know where to start looking.
