Once every three years, despite pandemics, the SA wine industry hosts an international showcasing jamboree targeting buyers, critics and wine writers active in our key export markets. Cape Wine is at one level like many comparable events that take place all over the wine-producing world. The Italians host Vinitaly, the French Vinexpo and the Germans ProWein.
While all these other shows initially served to promote local wines, they swiftly morphed into platforms for wine producers everywhere. Vinitaly, for example, is now the world’s largest exhibition of its kind: it receives 150,000 visitors from 210 countries annually, hosting 4,000 exhibitors and 2,600 journalists from 46 countries.
Cape Wine’s point of difference is that it is an exclusive platform for SA wine. Buyers and wine writers who travel to the southern tip of the African continent make the trip because they want to visit our vineyards and cellars.
This distinction is significant: visitors to Vinexpo are able to discover regions whose wines are unfamiliar to them. They might, having sampled wines fermented in qvevri in Georgia, decide to engage with producers from that country and become specialists in that region. If so, they are likely to follow up that initial contact by visiting the country to learn more about its wines and culinary traditions. Cape Wine is a destination in itself: you don’t just happen to be passing SA en route to Antarctica.
Since a marked premium is paid for organic produce in international markets ... it’s crucial to share with overseas influencers — through a show-and-tell — the passion and rigour that goes into Cape organic wine production.
This is a virtue and a limitation. With no “walk-ins”, Cape Wine is preaching to the converted. Yet, having gathered its congregation, it can apply the precept of St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and use the exposure to capture the minds and hearts of the faithful forever. In the few days that the average visitor to Cape Wine stays in the country, he is likely to attend several focused tastings, in addition to visiting the producers he represents, or those he aims to include in his portfolio.
This year saw the formal launch of the Organic Wines of SA Association, which gave the growing number of organic wine producers a chance to share the secrets of their craft with more than 60 importers and writers. It’s not as if there aren’t a great number of organic growers and wineries (there is a distinction, and both need to be separately certified) in Europe. But given the growing importance of the category, the chance to show the viticultural strategies applied in SA, with the dedication of the producers, is worth countless emails and brochures.
Those who attended saw first-hand the role played by certain cover crops in producing natural nitrogen enrichment of the soils (so no need for artificial fertilisers), the value of farm-produced manure and compost, the benefits of farm animals grazing between the vines, and the obsessive attention to detail required for winery organics certification. Since a marked premium is paid for organic produce in international markets (partly driven by the cost of the certification process), it’s crucial to share with overseas influencers — through a show-and-tell — the passion and rigour that goes into Cape organic wine production.
The same is true of the event that lined up the laureates of the Standard Bank Chenin Top 10 and some of the most spectacular examples of wines made from certified old vines. Of the top-10 winners, I was really impressed with the 2024 Alvi’s Drift 221, plush yet textural; likewise all of the Stellenrust examples (there were three in the top 10: Stellenbosch Manor 2024, Stellenbosch Manor Barrel-fermented 2024, and the Stellenrust Special Edition B28 Barrel-fermented 2024) and the Roodekrantz Die Kliphuis 2024.
Other chenins that caught my attention included the Kaapzicht Kliprug 2024 — splendid and generous — the Bellingham The Bernard Old Vines 2024, Coen Snyman’s Rock of Eye 2023 and the quite extraordinary 2024 Chamonix Old Vines (from a vineyard planted in 1965).
For more information on organic wine in SA click here.
This article was first published in Business Day.
