Wine makers fume amid tender debacle

The tender, worth R600,000, calls for 948 six-bottle cases of red wine priced between R40 and R70 a bottle, and 1137 cases of white wine for between R35 and R60 a bottle. The booze is for the tournament's official hospitality programme.

Match Hospitality, FIFA's catering, food and accommodation authority for the Confederations Cup and the 2010 World Cup, has given South Africa's wine exporting association, Wines of South Africa (Wosa), the job of supplying wines for the matches.

But some wine producers were fuming after Wosa released news of the tender on Thursday, leaving them only five days in which to submit their wines for consideration.

Also angering them was the stipulation that the wines had to be “rated three-and-a-half stars or better in Platter's [wine guide],” South Africa's best-known guide, with over a million copies sold.

Wosa's communications manager, Andre Morgenthal, said the association did not receive the tender details from Match Hospitality until last week, which was why it had given the producers short notice of the tender.

About using Platter's wine guide as the benchmark for submissions, Morgenthal said: “Platter's is the most internationally recognised wine guide. It is the easiest guideline, as we had to have a certain standard of wines submitted.”

But wine critic and writer Neil Pendock said many producers had problems with this arrangement and that “quite a few refuse to have their wines rated by Platter ... and they are automatically excluded by this requirement”.

Spar supermarkets' national liquor executive, Ray Edwards, who does not participate in the Platter publication, also believed the stipulation was unfair.

“There will be some wine producers, and some very good wines, that will be sidelined and disadvantaged because of this process,” he said.

But Morgenthal said “anyone can submit their wines; this is just a guideline”.

He said the wines selected would be served only during the Confederations Cup. The process would be repeated for 2010 “depending on how this goes”.

Match Hospitality will sample tenderers' wines at a blind tasting on 15 May 2009. Successful bidders will be named on 27 May.

For more information on the tender, see the Winegoggle blog post.

Source: The Times

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