Recalling my innocent consumer era thrill of a fine wine at
a bargain price I dashed off to buy multiple Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show winner
Secret Cellar Chenin Blanc 2015 Selection No 235 for a mere R32.99 from Ultra
Liquors - Secret Cellar is their buyer’s own brand or BOB as it is known in the
trade. In this case Bob is Mark Norrish and the wine garnered no less than
three trophies including International Judges’ trophy (highest scoring trophy
on the international judges’ ballots).
I first asked Ultra liquors on Twitter about price and where
the wine was available and their reply (since deleted) referred to the price
and that it was limited to three per customer without mentioning which branches
had stock. Goodwood branch is the nearest to Stellenbosch, which is where I
managed to buy what I assumed was the award winning wine.
When I tasted it that evening (1 June) it seemed very ordinary,
particularly for the standard of judges assembled by Michael Fridjhon, so I
wondered if there was more than one bottling - Ultra Liquors responded on 3
June as follows:
‘The Secret
Cellar Chenin Blanc 2015 has 2 bottlings so far. Both of these bottlings have
been from the same tank which was SAWIS approved.
The first
bottling certification number on the seal starts with 7525.
The second
bottling, which is the winning OMTWS wine, has the seal number starting with
7660.
We are
currently not sure what which bottling each of our 16 stores that have in
stock. There is a strong possibility that they could be mixed between the
above mentioned seal numbers.
Both
bottlings are under the same Selection number which is Selection ‘235’.
Just to
mention we are not putting any of the stickers on the winning Chenin as we are
sure that most, if not all stock will be sold out by the time we receive the
stickers.
The wine
will be on show at the CTICC this evening.
I hope that
this answers your question.
Regards’
Rather miffed that I had the ‘wrong’, rather ordinary wine,
I set off, on 3 June, to their Green Point branch where I found many incoming cases
of batch 7525, none of 7660, with floor staff insisting it was the Trophy
winner and that I could only buy three bottles.
Off I headed to the Wynberg branch, where I was confronted
by an empty shelf with a temporary sign again regarding the three per customer
limit for the trophy wine. My first request for the wine produced bottles of 7525, but my second
request for 7660 to a more senior staff member yielded three bottles from their
backroom storage.
That night when comparing them side by side, it was apparent
that they were very different wines – yet being retailed as the same
award-winning wine – so on Monday 6 June I had them analysed by the Cape’s
leading wine lab which yielded some interesting results - 7525 has a residual
sugar (RS) of 1,71 g/l while 7660, the trophy wine, has 4,53 g/l of RS. Other
marked difference included extract of 20,73g/l v 24.05g/l and hue (420nm) of
0,06au v 0,10au – no question these are different wines yet Ultra Liquors is
clearly retailing them at multiple stores as the same award winning wine.
Following email correspondence with Dale Louwsma and Mark
Norrish starting on 2 June, I gained sight of an email dated 8 June to all the
stores instructing them to display a sign (including an image of a bottle bearing
the correct seal) as follows:
Dear Valued Customer:
Please note that the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show Trophy
Winning Chenin “ Secret Cellar 235” has the seal number as shown on the below
picture. The seal number starting 7660---
Any other Seal number is not the Trophy winning wine.
Thank you for your understanding.
Yours Sincerely
Ultra Management Team
Then, this morning Mark Norrish wrote:
‘The day after the Award announcements, we checked our stock
holding of the total Chenin stock in Stores and our Depot. I must mention that
the Trophy wine stickers had not been received at that time to place on the
wines for correct identification purposes. Also, based on my experience of
sales on a winning wine at this price, I expected all our Chenin stock to be
sold out by that same weekend.
There was very little stock of the 1st bottling left
in Stores at the time, so I immediately allocated the new "award winning
"stock to the Stores on Wednesday 1st June ( 180 x6 cases)on a 3 per
Customer basis.
In hindsight, I fully acknowledge that I should have removed
the remaining stock of the 1st Chenin batch to avoid confusion with Managers
and Customers, as they automatically accepted that all the Chenin 2015 was
" trophy" wine.’
One wonders why they didn’t add this information to their original signs limiting customers to three each? Is this a case of sloppy stock control, intentional fraud to mislead customers into buying ordinary wine or the reality of FMCG retail?
Although winners can order additional bottle stickers indicating their accolades, Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show organisers print stickers in advance, in anticipation of the first batch of orders. Anybody want 3 bottles of 7525?
At the time of publication the writer was awaiting Ultra Liquors
permission for SAWIS to corroborate their claims that both 7525 and 7660 came
from the same tank while the Green Point store apparently had stock of 7660.
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