How To Develop The Next Audacious Wine: Takeaways From Pangaea

We’ve all felt it at some point.

Stagnation in our work, that is, or frustration with the problems of our industry, and an acute desire to break free of it.

For Travis Braithwaite of Cape Town, South Africa, “breaking free” has meant developing one of the most audacious wine labels in recent memory: Pangaea Estates, whose components are sourced from five different countries on four continents, and is made by none other than Michel Rolland, arguably the most influential consulting winemaker on the planet.

(Suffice it to say that not all “breaking free” moments are created equal.)

For Braithwaite, Pangaea seems to provoke the wine industry to engage the challenges and opportunities of globalization in a way that other industries already are. “Cars are manufactured using the best leather,” he said during a Zoom interview. “The best chips, the best software, all come from different countries. We never really did that with wine, where the concepts of the individual components are challenged.”

Those individual components, following the traditional model of five grapes that comprise a Bordeaux blend, are Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa, Merlot from Bordeaux’s Right Bank, Petit Verdot from Dehesa del Carrizal “Vino de Pago” in Spain, Cabernet Franc from Helderberg in South Africa, and Malbec from Valle de Uco in Argentina.

Given the vast distances between those source regions, an immediate question arises about the environmental impact of Pangaea, and putting together a wine of such geographical breadth. Braithwaite said that the biggest footprint comes from shipping the juice (as an unfinished product) to Napa, where the wine is blended and bottled according to Rolland’s specifications. The juice is shipped as bulk in stainless steel containers that, unlike plastic, will be used multiple times.

That doesn’t erase the environmental impact, of course, but supply chain logistics is just one of several challenges that Braithwaite confronted during the decade-plus duration of building Pangaea. Here’s a look behind the scenes at five more takeaways from the development of this audacious – and successful – concept.

First Thought, Best Thought

Braithwaite had been considering the concept since 2010, with deliberations gaining seriousness around 2012. “Pangaea” as a name came to mind early for Braithwaite, though he set it aside for six months as he brainstormed other names and ideas. Nothing else stuck, he said, until one day a friend pointed out that Pangaea was a perfect name that also represents the concept. It was an observation that, although it seemed too obvious for Braithwaite to realize at the time, ultimately won his approval for the wine’s name and its brand.

Ethos Beyond Language

Braithwaite took the time to travel to wine regions with deep local history of viticulture and a dominant grape from the traditional Bordeaux lineage. He also found a third common denominator in the ethos of the land above all as the driving force for the creation of the wine. “Everyone is speaking the same language without speaking the same language,” he noticed. “They wanted to do very similar things all over the world.”

Sometimes Cold-Calling Works

After his visits to Napa and elsewhere, the shape and vision of the wine began to coalesce for Braithwaite, particularly in terms of all of its component parts. To put those parts together, he was convinced he needed to involve Michel Rolland. “You create a list of wants, desires, benchmarks and goals,” Braithwaite said. “I thought, I can’t make it without him.”

Braithwaite literally cold-called Rolland’s laboratory and convinced his assistant to put him through. Rolland’s response at the time? He advised Braithwaite to call him back in a year’s time when he had figured out some logistics, such as tying down the Napa component with its wide variance of costs, and also limiting points of potential failure in the plan. Which Braithwaite did, and a year later he called Rolland back.

Rolland’s response after this second call? “Come to Argentina,” where Rolland was staying at the time.

Which Braithwaite also did, and walked away a few days later with an agreement (including Rolland’s ownership of 25 percent of the business) and a firm vision for the path forward. The first blending session, with all of the component samples, took place in South Africa soon after.

Document the “Furious Pace” of the Process

A month ahead of time, Braithwaite arranged for the samples from the five different regions to be sent to South Africa for the blending session with Rolland. He also enlisted a film crew to document the session. “Michel moves at a furious pace,” Braithwaite said, smelling, tasting and taking notes as he goes along. “Each of the varieties is so strong and so bold,” yet they need to work in harmony. After Rolland’s initial review of the samples, the group tried four initial blends from the 2015 vintage. They discussed the elements of each, revisited the ratios, and blended a fifth and final wine.

The entire process took about an hour and a half.

The Value of Knowing Your End Consumer

Braithwaite and his team were crystal clear on the profile of their end consumer – think collectors, creatives, wine lovers, the inquisitive, those who gravitate toward innovative concepts – and they structured their business model accordingly. “We had an idea of price point, our end user, and the distribution/allocation ratio,” he said. “From there we’ve moved into more of the running of the business, working with private client companies and different groups in Switzerland, Germany, the UK and the US.”

The results are on point: The inaugural release (2015 vintage) is pretty much gone, Braithwaite said, with small allocations to the US (45 to 50 percent of production), Asia (10 percent), and Europe (25 percent). The team also allows for library stock to keep for themselves and other opportunities that arise.

I will be interested to monitor the two topics of the Pangaea story that, from the start, interested me the most – the environmental impact and the wine industry’s “take” on global sourcing of component parts the way other industries already do. Both are thorny, controversial topics that, in Pangaea’s model, provoke immediate pushback. That pushback isn’t a reason to stop trying or iterating, however, regardless of how audacious the concept seems at first.