BEHIND THE LABEL

DECODING THE LABEL

AUTHOR DAN BROWN MADE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS THROUGH HIS BOOKS SUCH AS THE DA VINCI CODE, ANGELS & DEMONS AND THE LOST SYMBOL. READERS WERE TAKEN ON SPINE TINGLING AND HEART RACING JOURNEYS ACROSS CONTINENTS BY FINDING A KEY TO UNLOCK HIDDEN CODES AND MESSAGES. FIONA MCDONALD REPORTS.

They are all around us: signs, codes, subtle messages which mean something. Not all will lead to buried treasure or solve a mystery which has baffled the brains of academics for decades but some can and do. * (See sidebar.)

After reading Brown’s books it’s possible to start seeing symbols and messages on dollar notes, carved gargoyles on medieval churches and everyday objects. Some of these little codes and icons serve a practical purpose, such as those on South African banknotes. What look like random squiggles on the very edges of the bill’s sides are actually San rock art figures, only revealed when the note’s edges are rolled and put together! It’s actually one of a number of security features to prevent against counterfeiting, along with the embedded metal strip and watermark.

The icon of a camera on a shaded pink/blue background, a little white birdie or the letter f on a blue square are immediately synonymous with Instagram, Twitter and Facebook – if you know what the symbols mean!

Which is the point: knowing what the symbols mean and the message that is conveyed. How much do South African consumers know about the average wine label and neck seal? Do they even appreciate just how much information is available by unpacking what is right in front of their eyes?

A picture is said to be worth a thousand words but the average wine label can tell so much more than where it was produced and what kind of grapes were used. That’s the obvious info which most people will derive.

What can a label tell you? By law – the Liquor Products Act, to be specific – there are certain items which are mandatory. These are: the alcohol content; either the name and full business address of the producer OR the code number; the volume contained in the bottle (750ml, 1.5-litre); the expression or warning “Contains Sulphites” and an approved health warning. (There are seven to select from: Alcohol reduces driving ability, don’t drink and drive. Drinking during pregnancy can be harmful to your unborn baby. Alcohol abuse is dangerous to your health. Alcohol increases your risk to personal injuries. Alcohol is a major cause of violence and crime. Alcohol is addictive. Don’t drink and walk on the road, you may be killed.)

One other important piece of information is what the style of the wine is – natural sweet or sparkling, for example. But even with these scant details there’s a lot of information passed on to the consumer.

Even the specification of the grape doesn’t necessarily tell the full story ... By law the wine only needs to be a maximum of 85% of the predominant grape. So a Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon could potentially contain other

A great example of using the label architecture to best effect: clear, concise and containing all the info required by law. Style, vintage, volume, health warning, A number and producer address as well as the alcohol by volume percentage. And Villiera’s Dak Wyn is genuinely left on the roof while maturing!

grapes such as Merlot, Cabernet Franc or Grenache without any mention of them being made. The same goes for vintages. A 2017 vintage might also have a small proportion of potentially “fresher” 2018 wine blended in just before bottling and release to make it just that little bit more appealing to the consumer.

Has anyone ever noticed the A number? If they don’t contain the producer’s address, wine labels will always have an A number. These are numbers issued by the Department of Agriculture’s directorate of plant health and quality. So even if someone purchases a “buyers own brand” label, and it just states Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc, for example, it is still possible to track the producer down, based on that A number. A 1234, might turn out to be Sonskyn wine farm, for example. (Which, to my knowledge, doesn’t exist but is a name used for illustrative purposes only.)

WO Stellenbosch, Coastal or Western Cape also has a story to tell. It’s the Wine of Origin certification which is the consumer’s guarantee that the wine was made in Stellenbosch, for example. South Africa’s production areas are divided into regions, districts and wards, something that was legislated in 1972. Wards are the smallest and most focussed areas of production so, by way of explanation, it’s possible to have a Sauvignon Blanc that is from the ward of Elim. Immediately, the potential buyer has an idea of where exactly the grapes were grown. The wine could, however, also be labelled as being from the Cape South Coast which is an umbrella region covering Cape Agulhas, Elim, Duivenhoks River, Overberg, Plettenberg Bay, Swellendam, Walker Bay, Herbertsdale, Napier and Stilbaai East. There’s a huge amount of distance between Elim and Plettenberg Bay ...

The website wine.co.za provided a handy example: “The hierarchy of classification is, in increasing order, a single vineyard wine, an estate, a ward, a district, a region and a geographical unit. Criteria like soil, climate, mountains and rivers are used for the demarcation of origin. An example of the different origin indications is ‘Oupa se Wingerd Muscadel’ which is made from a single vineyard (vineyard wine) on the Weltevrede Estate (estate wine) in Bonnievale (a ward) in the Robertson (district) of the Western Cape (a geographical unit).”

And the Western Cape designation? After all, it’s the biggest and least geographically distinct area. Brand owners frequently buy wine from different areas and blend them together. So, for argument’s sake, Sonskyn Chenin could be a blend of Chenin Blanc from Paarl, Worcester and Stellenbosch. It would thus go for an over-arching larger geographical origin: WO Western Cape.

“To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.” - New York Times, 1967

Winelovers are also in the habit of talking about wine estates – not fully appreciating that an “estate” is actually a specific entity, and not all wine farms are estates. To be registered as an estate wine the grapes must be grown, vinified and bottled on a specific property. Stellenbosch’s world-renowned Pinotage producer Kanonkop is an estate. Do yourself a favour next time you’re in TOPS at SPAR and look at the difference between Kanonkop Pinotage and any one of the wines in the same producers’ Kadette range. Nowhere on the Kadette label will it state that it’s an estate wine. That’s because the grapes and wine for this range are purchased from other properties –all within the Stellenbosch area, but they’re not grown on the physical Kanonkop land.

The little label which appears on the neck of the bottle also has a tale to tell. It could take one of two forms. The first is a simple square with a bunch of numbers and the second has a pretty, graphic line sketch of a protea flower and is accompanied by the words “Integrity & Sustainability”.

So what does that tell the consumer? The first – purely numbers – seal is an indication that the wine has been certified by the Wine and Spirits Board. So it has gone through a tasting exercise, its paperwork and production inputs have been checked and it meets the requirements of varietal typicity and the like. The second, sustainability, seal is more interesting because South Africa leads the world in this regard. It is a visual stamp of approval of the wine’s integrity, not just the origin, grape variety and vintage but also of the traceability of the wine and its sustainability. This Integrated Production of Wine (IPW) tracks and traces every input made on a particular batch of Sonskyn Chenin Blanc, for example.

It is possible to know precisely which vineyard in which area the grapes came from, the age of the vines, the date of harvest and precisely what chemicals (if any!) were used in its production. Joe Bloggs Consumer could go onto the Integrated Production of Wine website, type in the seal number and access that information. Again, this falls under the ambit of the Wine and Spirits Board who conduct audits and check all the paperwork of wine producers.

It’s a guarantee to buyers that farmers and wine makers have not used any harmful chemicals or engaged in practices which affect the environment or end users. Currently around 96% of all certified South African wines comply with this voluntary requirement.

And most people look at the label and respond to the picture of a coat of arms, a Cape Dutch gabled homestead or some funky typography ... Look a little closer!

MODERN TREASURE

American art collector Forrest Fenn buried a little chest filled with gems and gold coins in the Rocky Mountains – and then wrote a 24- line poem in his autobiography “The Thrill of the Chase” which provided clues to its whereabouts.

In June 2020 Fenn announced that the treasure was found. He’d been sent a photograph by its finder who wished to remain anonymous. The value of the find was estimated at around a million dollars (R17 million). It had taken more than 10 years and apparently been responsible for four deaths among the hundreds of thousands who had hunted for it.

The now 90-year-old Fenn said he was “halfway kind of glad, halfway kind of sad because the chase is over”.

“It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” Fenn wrote. “I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries.”

MARTELL, THE BEST, WITHOUT ARTIFICE.

A LEGACY WAITING TO BE DISCOVERED.

Over 300 years of passion and audacity has built the legacy that is Martell, the oldest of the great four Cognac houses.

From Jean Martell’s initial search for the world’s finest eaux-de-vie in 1715, to the 2005 release of Martell’s trailblazing XO, the audacity of a great house never rests.

Today, Martell stands as one of the most celebrated and awarded Cognacs in the world with a plethora of impressive achievements as vast as its great history. Most recently VSOP Red Barrels, VS Single Distellery, Cordon Bleu and XO all took Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2019.

As such there is no better time to explore the vast audacious world of Martell than now, from home. Martell prides itself on its varied and colourful history, there are a few notable mentions in the line however, one’s worth savoring neat, or in a cocktail.

A cognac with subtle aromas, the Martell VSOP Aged in Red Barrels is a perfect harmony of luscious fruit and refined wood overtones that blends smoothness with boldness. The warm copper colour has glints of gold and is

a perfect companion on a cold winters evening. Aromas boast ripe yellow fruit, Mirabelle plum, greengage, apricot and vine peach.

The ‘Red’ is a reference to the reddish colour of aged oak. These barrels are carefully crafted from fine-grained oak and have already been used to age eaux-de-vie having reached the perfect stage of maturity before being selected for this cognac.

Martell VSOP Aged in Red Barrels perfectly highlights Martell’s unique ageing style, one that celebrates the beautiful and historic transformation and help it develop the last stage of its aromatic and audacious personality.

VSOP Aged in Red Barrel’s is just one of the bold cognac’s in the Martell library, and each cognac has its own unique story to tell, from the timeless Cordon Bleu to the esteemed XO. Explore the different styles, individual tasting notes and find your own way to enjoy them this winter, at home.

An audacious experience awaits, and much like Rachell Martell who took over Maison Martell in 1753 following founder Jean’s passing, we invite you to savor ‘only the best, without artifice’.

Available at selected TOPS at SPAR stores

SING A SONG OF COGNAC

WHAT DO EMPEROR NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, JAZZ AGE GREAT JOSEPHINE BAKER, SNOOP DOG AND STORMZY HAVE IN COMMON?

FIONA MCDONALD

SAVOURS THE TALES ASSOCIATED WITH FRANCE’S FAVOURED DISTILLED SPIRIT.

It’s the ultimate aspirational product – with the marketing budgets to prove it. Music mogul Jay Z has been snapped swigging directly from the bottle, clutching his Grammy award in the other hand, while Bonaparte demanded that his troops have rations of it while fighting wars. Million rand deals are signed and celebrated in Johannesburg’s finest restaurants by captains of finance and industry and a bottle of Cognac on the table is de rigeur.

But that’s not the full picture: of the millions of bottles of Cognac produced in France each year, an embarrassingly scant 3% gets consumed in France. The biggest thirst for Cognac of late has been the United States. There was a period in the 80s and 90s when it thrived in the East but then it hit rough times. The Asian Tiger economy boomed and so did the sales of Hennessy, Martell, Courvoisier and Rémy Martin with it. Cognac was massive from Beijing to Tokyo, Singapore to Seoul – until the economy plummeted, with predictable consequences for Cognac. At one point apparently eight years’ worth of stock lay in warehouses, unsold and with no natural market presenting itself.

And then in the early 2000s something completely left field happened: rap musicians took to the golden liquid, not just drinking it but singing about it and quite obviously being photographed and captured on social media.

Along with the grills, the chunky gold chains and diamond encrusted watches Cognac became cool because Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dog said so! Nearly 20 years later and British rapper Stormy STILL says so – as his 2019 Vossi Bop

hit showed, with Vossi being slang for Courvoisier, one of the most historic of the big four Cognacs on the market.

Just four big names dominate the field, accounting for 90% of all sales: Hennessy, Martell, Rémy Martin and Courvoisier with 8 million, 2 million, 1.8 million and 1.5 million bottles sold annually respectively.

So what is it about Cognac that it manages to have more lives than a cat?

The French owe the Dutch a debt of gratitude because it was they who brought the tradition of distilling wine into spirit to France in the mid 1600s. (The same Dutch traders who established themselves at the Cape and also gave South Africa its distilling tradition of “gebrande wijn” – brandewyn or brandy.)

“Along with the grills, the chunky gold chains and diamond encrusted watches Cognac became cool because Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dog said so!”

The story goes that it was foreign merchants who were subsequently responsible for the establishment of the major Cognac companies. Richard Hennessy was Irish and Jean Martell was from Jersey ... which also serves to explain why the categorisation or quality level explanation of Cognac is English. (The main designations are VS – Very Special which is aged for a minimum of two years, VSOP – Very Superior Old

Pale with its minimum age of four years, and XO or Extra Old has had a minimum of 10 years in cask.)

Martell has as its official foundation date 1715 while Hennessy started towards the middle of the same century. Travelling the region extensively allowed Jean Martell to taste a range of eaux de vie and to be able to source great bottles and create relationships with the best producers and growers. His widow, Rachel took up the reins on his death in 1753. But it took another 30 years before the first significant commercial success was chalked up: in 1783 the Treaty of Paris recognised the independence of the United States of America. The French had been helpful to the Americans in severing ties with Great Britain so the newly independent Americans were happy to receive the first shipment of Martell Cognac.

The Napoleonic wars took place between 1803 and 1815 and it’s rather amusing that although the British were bankrolling many of the countries Napoleon was trying to subjugate, King George III signed a special import license for Martell Cognac to be imported to slake their thirst! (Martell was also featured at the coronation of King George V in 1911.) Five years ago, the House of Martell celebrated its tercentenary, 300 years of making the remarkable spirit, with a gala event for just 300 guests at the Palace of Versailles.

Hennessy was founded by Richard Hennessy, the Irishman, in 1765 – and has a proud 255-year history of perfecting eaux de vie. According to South African brand manager Khomotso Ledwaba, Hennessy played a pivotal role in the quality classification of Cognac.

“Hennessy introduced the Very Special (VS), Very Superior Old Pale (VSOP) and Extra Old (XO) categories we know today,” he said.

And unlike other forebears who preferred Martell, Ledwaba said the Prince of Wales and future King George IV was the inspiration for the Very Superior Old Pale classification after he personally requested something special in 1818. South Africa got its first taste of this historic Cognac in 1866 when it was imported from France.

“If life is a birthday cake let my face be smeared with its icing of Cognac and kindness.” – Aberjhani

Hennessy’s Master Blender, Renaud Fillioux de Gironde, assembles his team of tasters on a daily basis – at 11am sharp! – to taste and grade the eaux de vie which go into the various products in the range. Rémy Martin also takes its name from its founder, a winegrower by trade who started his Cognac business in 1724. It remained in the family and underwent a noticeable growth spurt in the mid1800s when Paul-Emile Rémy Martin was in charge.

As its entry in Wikipedia states: “All Rémy Martin cognacs have the Cognac Fine Champagne appellation, meaning that they come exclusively from a blend of eaux de vie from the Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne crus, with at least 50% of Grande Champagne. Thanks to chalky soils, these eaux de vie have great ageing potential and a particular aromatic intensity.”

And then there is the one that rap singers have favoured: Courvoisier.

The Cognac famously called “Vossi” by British rap phenomenon Stormzy, differs from other brands in that it didn’t start in the Cognac region – but rather in the French suburb of Bercy in Paris in 1809.

With founder Emmanuel Courvoisier and partner Louis Gallois soon realising that trading other producers’ products didn’t necessarily guarantee supply or quality, so they relocated to the source. More than 200 years ago they located themselves in Jarnac near Cognac and became producers in their own right.

Now owned by Japanese spirit giant Suntory, Courvoisier has long celebrated its Napoleonic connection, after all, the self-proclaimed Gallic emperor supplied his troops with their Cognac, reputedly shipped barrels of it to St Helena to tide him over during his exile and his heir, Napoleon III personally requested

the spirit in 1869 – and also deemed Courvoisier worthy of the title “Official Supplier to the Imperial Court”.

Smacking of the Gordon Gekko/Wall Street school of marketing, Courvoisier flighted a commercial in 2004 which possibly epitomises the reason for Cognac’s desirability among the rap and music fraternity. Just seven words accompanied the Courvoisier XO visual: “Don’t just stand there drooling. Get rich.”

Cognac is one of those products which bestows a glow on those whose tables it graces: the message being, “Check out the luxury product I can afford. I’ve made it.” In May 2020, auction house Sotheby’s sold a 258-year-old bottle of Cognac for $144 525 – or R2,75 million. One of only three bottles still with original labels, the Gautier Cognac 1762 was touted as “the oldest vintage Cognac ever to be sold at auction”.

WHAT IS COGNAC?

Cognac is a distilled spirit made from grapes. Like Champagne which is recognised worldwide as the only product of its kind because of its geographical uniqueness, this French brandy can only be called Cognac if it is grown and produced in the region of Cognac, 100km north of Bordeaux on the west coast of France. Grapes used for Cognac tend to be slightly bitter and acidic, and the main variety is a grape called Ugni blanc. A simple base wine is made from the harvested grapes and this is then distilled twice in copper potstills to make the clear eaux de vie spirit. Much like the other “water of life” (whisky), the spirit has to undergo a period of maturation in oak (bare minimum of two years) – but the production laws stipulate that it must be Limosin or Troncais oak. (And it is during this maturation that around 3% is lost annually through evaporation – the so-called Angel’s Share.) Interestingly, in spite of the fact that Cognac has been produced since the 1700s, it was only granted delimited appellation status in 1909. This designated which were the superior (Champagne) areas, based on the soil types the grapes were grown in. Of special importance is the role of the blender in ensuring that each producer maintains its consistent House Style. This master blender has to magically weave together different batches, barrels and parcels so that consumers are given a product that tastes the same from year to year.

AND THE JOSEPHINE BAKER CONNECTION?

Josephine Baker, (1906 to 1975) was born in St Louis Missouri but renounced her US citizenship and became French, a bold symbol of the Jazz Age of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. She was not only the most famous of the Folies Bergère dancers but was the first black woman to star in a movie and a noted civil rights activist. Website Slate.com reported the following in 2013: “Cognac’s relationship with African-American consumers started when black soldiers stationed in southwest France were introduced to it during both world wars. The connection between Cognac producers and black consumers was likely bolstered by the arrival of black artists and musicians like Josephine Baker, who filled Paris clubs with jazz and blues during the interwar years, according to Dr Emory Tolbert, a history professor at Howard University. France appreciated these distinctive art forms before the United States did. For African-Americans, the elegant Cognac of a country that celebrated their culture instead of marginalizing it must have tasted sweet. Back in the States, the more common option was whiskey, a spirit made by companies that named brands after Confederate leaders or appealed to southern nationalism with labels such as Rebel Yell.

It’s no wonder many African-Americans found that Cognac left a better taste in their mouths.”

The shape of things to come – Courvoisier’s sought after XO in its distinctive, voluptuous bottle.

What does a multimillion rand Cognac taste like? Liquid history! This bottle from 1762 sold for nearly $150 000 earlier this year.