Their penchant for seeking out delicious wines to suit any pocket is the stuff of wine enthusiasts’ dreams and their extensive wine list boasts some of the finest and rarest vintages in the land, just a click away. Wine Cellar is able to offer the largest allocations of South Africa’s most sought-after wines thanks to close connections to South Africa’s best wine producers and is often the first to release to market.
And with 30 years combined tasting and judging experience resulting in two vastly experienced palates, it’s no small wonder that Wine Cellar offers one of South Africa’s most comprehensive wine lists online, specialising in SA leading winemaking regions and Europe’s finest too, including French regions such as Bordeaux, the Rhone, Champagne, and Burgundy.
But what does it really take to curate and maintain such a devastatingly tempting range of rare, vintage and well-priced wines while remaining at the fore of innovation? We speak to Roland about the joys of being so deeply invested in the Nectar of the Gods while always looking to the future and moving with the times…
South Africa has exploded with new wines over the last five years. Vineyards that used to be blended away by large volume producers are now being harnessed by new-wave winemakers to produce exciting, new wines. Using social media, these small brands have often been able to launch their wines at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional media. The international wine industry is a relatively small community and using social media, new brands can find their way to new markets and customers. Social media is certainly not a substitute for a long-term marketing strategy, but this technology essentially allows you to access a database of interested wine drinkers with remarkable efficiency.
Wine Cellar also uses social media as an important part of its marketing strategy but most of the innovation focus is on our own database. By utilising buying habits and sales information, we are able to focus our sales strategy as well as save time and increase sales. Online penetration in South Africa is around one or two percent, compared to 10 percent in mature markets. Therefore our IT requirement has become a major part of our budget as we aim to capture more market-share. We also see big potential in investing in fine SA wines. So we’re working on a trading platform for customers to invest in South African wine which we feel will disrupt the fine wine market.
Players in the larger and more mature wine markets in the US and UK, for example, are harnessing databases on the internet to educate the customer and redevelop the supply chain. Wine-searcher and Vivino, for example, are extremely powerful databases, which are now being used to develop algorithms to increase sales promotion accuracy. This is set to disrupt many of the traditional wine channels.
