Wine Auction: Award winning export wines to be sold online

A range of South Africa’s finest award winning wines will go under the hammer in a rare online-auction that will take place next week.

Among the wines that will be sold when the Online Cellar Door Wine Auction opens on Tuesday 15 June are approximately 12000 cases of wine from estates such as Nuiba Wines and Elgin Vintners, including double gold and triple platinum award winning wines that were traditionally headed for the export market. Du Toit’s Kloof varieties are also for sale on the auction catalogue.

Franschoek resident, Rob Steffanuto, of ClareMart Auction Group said he had originally come up with the idea for the online wine auction to assist his friends who are local wine farmers that needed to move their excess stock, some of which was destined for export to the EU, before the Covid-19 alcohol bans.

The real estate product development and property investment advisor, and former Sotheby’s International Realty managing director, said he had decided to move into the auction space to explore new market platforms for wine farmers and other local businesses.

“A lot of my friends were busy with the harvest and asking what are they going to do because there is no place to put all this wine with the government ban, and people were going to lose their jobs,” Steffanuto said.

“These guys were in trouble and had no platform to get their wine out to the market,” he said.

Streffanuto said cellar door sales had dried up during the Covid-19 pandemic, even after the opening up of domestic tourism, which is still feeling the impact of the sluggish economy.

“One of the key elements of recovering from Covid-19  is we are going to have to find new markets for our products,” Steffanuto said.

Some of the batches are small, including 50 cases that were intended for the export market in Germany.  He said much of the stock was export wine generally not sold on the local market.

“We are getting an incredible response from the public because the alcohol ban was one of the most hated regulations in the country. The public are saying ‘great here is an opportunity to get some wine we don’t normally get and be able to save jobs in the industry’. If we lose these jobs we are not going to be able to replace them,” he said.

Registration for the three day auction is open. The auction runs from Tuesday 15 June to Thursday 17 June.