Christo Pienaar, chairman of Veritas and Leon Witbooi, director of CTP

Those coveted Veritas Gold and Double Gold medal winning wines and brandies will now be available for easy ordering and delivery on your doorstep thanks to a new, specially developed app for online wines sales – a first in the world of wine competitions by Veritas, South Africa’s oldest and most trusted competition for market-ready wines and brandies.

This giant leap for the country’s top wine competition has been made possible by ground-breaking collaboration between the organisers – the SA National Wine Show Association (SANWSA) – and its long-standing financial partner CTP Packaging  (through its divisions SA Litho Label Printers and CTP Cartons & Labels,) with the well-established Getwine portal for online services and the Johannesburg-based Cognition FoneWorx app-developer.

It is a most significant wine industry development that comes at a most opportune time, when the South African consumer has shown a major swing in favour of online purchasing, including wine, as a result of Covid-19 restrictions and realities, as well as a need to recover the wine industry’s lost sales momentum.

“This is a proud moment in the 30-year history of Veritas that we can launch such a unique app that will benefit both the South African wine industry and the consumer,” said SANWSA chairperson Christo Pienaar.

“This milestone has been achieved despite the difficulties that the wine industry has encountered during the Covid-19 pandemic and there will already be a direct sales benefit for all the cellars and their Double Gold and Gold award-winning wines and brandies this year. The focus of Veritas from the beginning was to provide the consumer with a guide to the top wines and brandies entered in the competition and the top achievers can now be ordered from the comfort of their home.

“We have thus succeeded in changing a negative situation into a huge positive that will greatly benefit the South African wine industry during these trying times, also with long-term benefits for all concerned,” added Pienaar.

The wine- and brandy-buying public can hereby download the dedicated VinoVeritas App on their smartphones or PCs, access the results and immediately order of the 198 products that won Gold or Double Gold at the 2020 Veritas Awards.

A prerequisite to entering for Veritas by wineries is that a minimum of 300 bottles of wine and 120 of brandy have to be available for purchasing – but access to these has often been logistically challenging through liquor outlets countrywide. The collaboration with Getwine and its streamlined distribution network will now radically improve this situation.

A prospective wine buyer will henceforth (from today)  be able to simply download the app, register and then place orders from 20:00 on the evening of 14 November  – when the Veritas results are released at a scaled-down awards luncheon at the Val de Vie residential estate’s polo complex in Paarl.

The online purchasing transactions, for wines and brandies that will feature the relevant Veritas bottle stickers, are deals between the consumer and Getwine. This with regards to the price, payment and delivery involved in the transaction. Free delivery countrywide is part of the deal for orders of 12 bottles or more.

An attractive accompanying promotion for wine and brandy lovers that register on  the VinoVeritas app is that on a daily basis from 4 – 14  November, one lucky winner will win a six-bottle case of the Veritas winners, as well as a grand prize of two seats for the Veritas award luncheon on 14 November.

In view of the Covid-19 restrictions on public gatherings, the usual countrywide public tastings of Veritas winners will not take place this year. At the same time, the full Veritas results will be available online on various sites of the various role players – Veritas, CTP/SA Litho, Getwine and Cognition – supported by information in widespread social and other media. These channels will replace the customary results booklet published over many years through sponsorship by SA Litho – which remains a generous financial partner of the Veritas Awards.

To download, search for and register on the VinoVeritas app, go to Google Play or the Apple App Store on your mobile to explore the awards, search the wines and order them straight from the App. You will also have access to social media feeds and be able to browse further relevant information. The Veritas website will also feature two icons to click on for direct access to the App for registration.

SANWSA’s VinoVeritas partners are:

• CTP Packaging, through its divisions CTP Cartons & Labels and SA Litho Label Printers – a long-standing financial partner of the Veritas Awards, whose director, Leon Witbooi, said, ”The strength and continuity of our partnership with Veritas can be attributed to a shared vision of excellence – Veritas in its celebration of excellent South African wine and us in our commitment to producing packaging of the highest quality for the South African wine industry. Over the decade during which CTP has remained an enthusiastic financial partner of the Veritas Awards, we’ve remained committed to finding new ways to benefit the wineries entering the competition. The launch of VinoVeritas by CTP, an industry first, bears testimony to this.
• Getwine – a South African wine portal that allows consumers to easily buy their favourite South African wines online. “We focus on offering great quality wines from the best South Africa wine producers at affordable prices”, says Johan Wegner, CEO of Getwine. “We are super excited to be part of the Veritas team, seeing that they are the longest running and most prestigious wine and brandy competition in South-Africa, being synonymous with excellence in wine and brandy.”
• Cognition FoneWorx – a listed company which developed the App is part of the Caxton CTP family. With well over 20 years in the industry, Cognition has designed, hosted, and managed thousands of different consumer journeys with direct consumer interfaces, focusing on digital consumer engagement solutions. It is the only JSE-listed WASP in the country (Wireless Application Service Provider).

For more information, contact the Veritas office on tel 021 863 1599, e-mail info@veritas.co.za

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