The Cape wine industry cannot claim to have been in the forefront of transformation. A combination of factors, some structural, some political, and regional inertia — to describe it most kindly — have played a role in this sorry state of affairs. The very nature of the business makes it resistant to change: while the owner’s immediate family can live off the operations, not enough surplus is generated to fund the dividends required for the traditional “transformation-through-profits” model.
If no-one is going to give away family farms, the alternative involves the brand ownership model. Here there has been some success, not all of it visible in the places where fine wine consumption takes place. This too is a problem: it’s one thing to own a wine brand, it’s an altogether different challenge to get that wine to market. There are now dozens of black-owned brands but only a handful with any visibility.
It’s easy to put a label on someone else’s ready-made production. It’s much tougher to develop a sustainable business; the few who have succeeded have done so through a combination of connections, hard work and persistence.
The Proudly South African show hosted recently in Sandton presented an extensive array of wines, mainly brands conjured out of the opaque space of broad-based BEE regulations: a winery seeking the necessary credentials collaborates with individuals or community trusts. It contributes the product while the sales become the responsibility of the brand-owning partners.
It’s not a formula for those in pursuit of an easy buck, and many have succumbed along the way. Those who have survived for longer than a season or two have either plugged into their own networks — the Tupperware party route — or have benefited from commercial partnerships facilitated by the established wine businesses. A few — really very few — have acquired an air of secure permanence without dollops of outside cash or political connections.
Epicurean (well enough connected to source its wines from Rupert & Rothschild) celebrates two decades in 2023. Others have been around for less time but seem here to stay: Tinashe Nyamudoka’s Kumusha wines, which is doing particularly well in the US, and compatriot (and co-star in Blind Ambition) Joseph Dhafana’s Mosi Wines.
A few involve real property ownership — such as M’hudi in Stellenbosch and Paardenkloof in Botrivier, the latter established by former environmental affairs minister Valli Moosa. More recently there has been the amazing story of Klein Goederust in Franschhoek: Paul Siguka, the son of farmworkers, who returned to buy a farm close to where he grew up.
Many of the most successful operations profited from extended mentoring: Diemersfontein’s Thokozani brand began as an empowerment project in 2005. It has been so successful that the community now owns a controlling interest in its Diemersfontein parent. Others — Ntsiki Biyela’s Aslina Wines and Carmen Stevens’ eponymous brand — have grown out of the winemaking competence of their proprietors. This was a skill set acquired over a lifetime in the wine industry, with the hard yards travelled in the deeply untransformed days when SA was being dragged into democracy.
There are many wines worth seeking out — hard though they may be to find. Aslina’s Umsasane is a beautifully assembled Bordeaux blend worth its R260 price tag; likewise Thokozani’s 2021 Cabernet Franc — which was the Trophy Wine Show best Cab Franc this year (a previous vintage won in 2021). Carmen Stevens’ Nemroc 2020 Red blend (Bordeaux varieties plus some petite sirah) and the cellar’s 2021 merlot are both worth the effort of tracking down; Paardenkloof’s Ataqua 2019 Ancient Shales Syrah as well as the estate’s Fijnboshuis Sauvignon Blanc (available at Woolworths) should be on your shopping list, together with the more widely distributed Epicurean — both the red blend and the chardonnay.
All have in common the authenticity that comes from a deep emotional investment by the brand owners: to hear their stories of the long and sometimes difficult trajectory from dream to crystallised reality is to know that the best wines have more than a whiff of real passion to them.
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