Smart Wine launches at 2008 Soweto Wine Festival

1 Aug 2008

Scottish novelist and poet, Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “Wine is bottled poetry.” No more is this true in the latest of wine trends created by Lynx Wines and the Cape Wine Academy in their ‘Did You Know' campaign produced to make wine more accessible to the public and to get wine drinkers the world over talking about wine and its origins.

The ‘Did You Know' campaign consists of 100 interesting facts that will be labelled on every bottle of Lynx Wine and launched at the 2008 Standard Bank Soweto Wine Festival on 5 and 6 September at the University of Johannesburg in Soweto.

The ‘Did You Know' facts are attention-grabbing, such as, “Did you know that wine descriptors such as ‘barnyard', cat's pee', ‘asphalt' or ‘petrol' are not negative about the wine”, or ‘Did you know that the standard bottle of wine is 750ml because that was the average lung capacity of a 19th Century glassblower”.

This campaign is the brainchild of Lynx Wines owner/winemaker, Dieter Sellmeyer and assistant Suzaan Alheit. Says Sellmeyer, “The campaign is meant to be fun and get people talking about wines thus breaking down the stigma around wine.”

Sellmeyer's aim to have 100 ‘Did you know' facts dried up at 54 and that's when they approached the Cape Wine Academy's Managing Director, Marilyn Cooper, who is also a highly knowledgeable Cape Wine Master.

Says Cooper, “This is a smart and inventive way to disseminate wonderful data about wine that even the most knowledgeable of wine connoisseurs will be sharing with their friends.”

Getting these facts was the easy part, explains Sellmeyer. He had to comply with tough regulations set by the Label Committee who's responsibilities are to consider and scrutinise all labels for use on certified wines and estate brandies. They could not use words such as Champagne and Bordeaux on the fact label as it is part of an agreement the Department of Agriculture has with the EU.

In this agreement, for example, one cannot mention on a label that a winemaker studied in Bordeaux. All these fact labels also had to have SAWIS approval otherwise it would be against the Liquor Products Act of 1989. SAWIS (SA Wine Industry Information and Systems) is a non-profit information resource company that manages and controls the wine industry's data.

Says Sellmeyer, “The hard work has been done and we look forward to sharing our wines and facts with the visitors at the 2008 Soweto Wine Festival.”