The blog Grapesmart.net, written by an American winelover, investigated the question first raised by “infamous” Jancis Robinson, according to the blog, as to “Why aren’t SA wines more appreciated in the US?”

Grapesmart came up with the following reasons for why wine sales in the USA are lower than they should be:

1.    At the time that Americans became wine drinkers, South African wines were banned from the USA, due to South Africa’s political stigma in its apartheid era, resulting in import embargoes, meaning that Americans learnt to drink Californian, French and Italian wines.

2.   Americans are “Xenophobes”, says the blog, meaning that the country’s winelovers struggle with brand names they cannot pronounce - German wines are drawn into this criticism as well, for also having difficult to pronounce wines, and therefore being equally unpopular.

3.   American wine labels look different to those from South Africa, and this can prevent Americans from buying local wines, as they “reflect a different culture of marketing & packaging design than ours.   What works in America doesn’t work in other places.   Other cultures have different aesthetics than ours and while other cultures like what we do, we shy away from what seems different than our ’style’ of doing things”.

4.   Americans associate wines from the Southern Hemisphere to be cheap wines, as the Australians have already learnt, especially driven by supermarket advertising of these wines in America.

More information is available here.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

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