The South African wine industry is hardly a homegrown affair. Its first vines came with Jan van Riebeeck. It profited from a foreigner’s (Simon van der Stel) written guidelines for grape-farming as well as the practices he implemented at Constantia. The arrival of the French Huguenots contributed to the overall wine-making competence of the colony; the European settlers of the 18th and 19th centuries added to these skills sets.
Imperial Preference created (and then destroyed) the 19th century export market, while the Anglo-Boer War gave the industry – struggling to recover from the devastation of phylloxera – a new (admittedly temporary) but important consumer market.
The role played by the so-called “flying winemakers” in the immediate post-apartheid era served to fast-track the modernisation of cellar technology, compromised by years of isolation, while the export boom of the past couple of decades has helped the country's over-enthusiastic growers find markets for their surpluses.
Today foreign investment in the industry is a visible sign that we are part of the international world of wine. The first wave of modern-era buyers dates to the early 1980s, when adventurous speculators who were not put off by South Africa’s pariah status took advantage of the perceived property discount. As it turns out, the money they spent pales in comparison with what is being invested by the more recent crop of French, German, Indian, Czech, American, Ukrainian, British and Italian buyers.
There are so many folk whose deep pockets have made a difference that it is almost impossible to compile a complete list:
- Analjit Singh, the Leeu of Mullineux & Leeu, one of the best of the Cape’s craft wine cellars;
- Hubert de Bouard and Bruno Prats (from Chateaux Angelus and Cos d'Estournel respectively), who are now shareholders in Klein Constantia;
- Laurence Graff, who has transformed the once virused vineyards and run-down buildings of Delaire into one of the world’s most striking wine properties.
- But there are also smaller, equally thoughtful investments (Marianne and Springfontein, for example) as well as more corporate ones, such as Advini’s acquisition of L’Avenir and Le Bonheur and, lately, a chunk of Ken Forrester (the business, not the man).
Most have been visionaries: Paul Boutinot established Waterkloof high on the Schapenberg, with an extraordinary view over False Bay, building a winery and restaurant which have become iconic statements of place, form and function. With the convenience of an established route to market via his UK-based distribution business, Boutinot was content not to push the brand too hard into the SA market, at least while he was waiting for the vineyards to acquire some age.
Now, with a great winemaking team under Nadia Barnard, he has wines worth showcasing and a restaurant so extraordinary that even Capetonians, spoilt for choice in the Mother City, dutifully undertake the pilgrimage to Greg Czarnecki’s eyrie to rediscover the food and service that Cape Town’s jaded chefs have long forgotten.
The story of Giulio Bertrand at Morgenster is no less impressive, but palpably less rational: in the early 1990s, and aged about 65, he bought the property from the Cloete family (of legendary Vin de Constance fame). At that stage the fabulous 18th century homestead needed some serious investment, while the farm, in Somerset West, alongside Vergelegen, was as neglected as its neighbour had been before Anglo bought it from the Barlows a few years beforehand. It needed a complete planting programme, as well as a winery.
Not frightened off with what this was likely to cost, Bertrand set out to produce olive oil to rival the best of his native Italy. He imported the finest clones and created a nursery from which most of the country’s leading olive producers now source their planting material. His Morgenster oil consistently wins international awards while his wines, made since 2010 by Henry Kotze under the thoughtful but long-distance eye of Pierre Lurton and the team at Chateau Cheval Blanc, have acquired an aesthetic and maturity of their own.
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