Martin Fuller from the Cape

News from the Cape Winelands
© by Martin Fuller
A Good 2002 Wine Harvest Expected
Greetings to all from Cape Town after far too long an absence!

The last year has been full of the good, bad and unfortunately, the ugly.

The good news has been mainly twofold: New wines being released have on the whole shown remarkable progress. This has occurred across the board and specifically, in my view, with the quality of white wines. More of that in my next release. The bad has had to do with the South African economy and our falling Rand, especially against the dollar. This has led to steep rises in costs for farmers and exporters, offsetting to a degree the cheapness of wines. The ugly came in the form of a severe and stormy winter, possibly the most destructive on record. The silver lining to this has been that the Cape wine farmers had low winter temperatures and good rains that filled previously stressed dam levels. Now though, time to tell you about the state of our industry.

The 2002 grape crop is estimated at 1,086,395 ton according to the industry's estimate of 30 November 2001. This represents an 11.3 per cent increase compared to the 2001 crop and is about the same size as the 2000 crop. It is expected that the 2002 wine crop will amount to 826.7 million litres at an average recovery of 761 litres of wine per ton of grapes.

The biggest increase is expected in the Northern Cape while an increase of almost 5 per cent is expected in the Western Cape. Factors, which contributed to the optimism for a bigger harvest, are inter alia the following:

• Good post harvest weather conditions in April / May which ensured good building up of reserves.
• A normal winter, which led to good and even budding. The Cape has been having short and warm winters for about 4 years now.
• The fact that the vines grew exceptionally well this year as a result of the cool and wet spring weather.

Factors, which thus far have influenced the harvest negatively, are the following:

• Isolated cases of hail damage in the Northern Cape, Little Karoo and Worcester.
• Cool and windy conditions in the flower period of especially the later varieties, which led to weak berry set.
• As a result of regular rain showers during early summer, the pressure for fungal diseases was exceptionally high and Downey mildew occurred which led to damage. At this stage it is very difficult to quantify this damage and estimate the eventual extent thereof.

Domestic sales of natural wine shows a 3,3 per cent increase for the twelve month period November 2000 to October 2001 compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. Exports of natural wine during the corresponding period showed a spectacular 15.1 per cent growth. During the same period brandy sales decreased by 1.4 per cent although an upward trend of 9,1 per cent was reported for the three months August to October 2001 compared to the corresponding period in 2000.

Above, together with an expected bigger market demand for juice, rebate and distilling wine, results in stock levels at co-operatives and cellars of an estimated 136 million litres on 31 December 2002 compared to 227 million litres on 31 December 2001.

In my next report I will focus on some of the new wines that have recently been released and also describe a recent trip to New Zealand where I put some of our best head to head with theirs.

I wish you all a very joyous Christmas and a successful 2002.

Dec. 20, 2001