The Cape wine industry is far larger than most enthusiasts realise, but also surprisingly small in terms of the truly successful brands. There are more than 500 wineries producing at least 7,000 different products: annually we make and sell the equivalent of over 1-million bottles of wine. But when it comes to cost-effective retail activity, fewer than 100 labels account for most sales.
These are the highly visible players, the names you see on supermarket and wine store shelves, the brands that dominate the wine lists at family restaurants. So the obvious question is: if they are so much in control of what lands up on the average dining room table in SA, how do the others survive?
Not all do, of course. At the grower level it’s been a long and continuous attrition: 50 years ago there were about 7,000 registered grape farmers; today they number around 2,500. Some of this is the result of consolidation, both within family holdings and as the less successful exit the industry. There’s also been a loss of vineyard land, from a peak of about 110,000ha to just more than 85,000ha.
Survival — if you are not among the elite 100 that dominate the market — comes from being fleet of foot. You seek out end-users and try to sell as much as possible into the homes and businesses of your contacts. To get to this happy state, you talk to people at wine shows, engage with wine clubs and visit proprietor-run restaurants whose wine lists don’t always focus on the better-known brands.
You also look for a distributor who believes in what you do. This reduces margins — not because distributors are avaricious but because logistics are expensive, and everyone (including the geeky retailers who allocate shelf space to relatively unknown brands that sell slowly) has overheads to meet and needs to survive.
Vinosity, a wine business trading out of 44 Stanley Avenue in Johannesburg, works to get some of the smallest brands into the Gauteng market, acting both as a distributor and a retailer. That’s a difficult tightrope to walk — though, judging from a tasting hosted there recently, it seems to work.
From the range on display, there were some real curiosities and a number of well-made, hand-crafted wines. Top of the “unexpected” list were two wines from Sani, a winery in Lesotho harvesting grapes from vineyards not far from Maseru. The 2022 chenin blanc was pretty good but might have been brighter with less time in oak. (The latest vintage spent only half the time in barrel and will be in the shops shortly.) The 2024 pinotage is old-fashioned and age-worthy, delivering good fruit and textural intensity.
The Harry Hartman wines have long been worth seeking out. This time round the Church chenin blanc (made by Chris Williams from The Foundry) is very fine: tight, luminous, succulent and dry. The Elgin pinot noir (made by Jean Smit of Damascene) is fragrant and elegant, and a relative bargain at less than R300.
There were several good syrahs and syrah blends. The Lelie van Saron 2021 made by Natasha Williams using Hemel-en-Aarde fruit is floral and fine; the Brunia 2023 is more savoury and saline (the grapes are from the Sondagskloof). Rudger van Wyk’s (ex Stark-Condé) lovely New Dawn Dark Leap Rhone-style blend is thoughtfully assembled, polished and food-friendly. His old vine New Dawn chenin blanc made with Bottelary fruit was also delicious.
Finally, there were some very good wines from Raats Family Vineyards. For me the standout examples were the two 2023 chenins: the very well-priced Raats Original and the more premium Old Vine bottling. I also really liked the Lone Wolf 2023 cinsaut (sold under the Bruwer label). Made from fruit harvested off 70-year-old vines on Bellevue, it’s one of the best (and most serious) current release cinsauts about: aromas redolent of red fruits, textural rather than weighty, juicy but not frivolous, and beautifully detailed on the finish.
- StandardBank WineX takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre on October 29-31, 5pm – 9pm. Tickets through Webtickets. Business Day readers qualify for a Friends-of-Winex discount for Thursday, October 30 when using the following code: SBWX25WINE.
