Growing Up ‘n Getting Wiser: South Africa in 2022

BY NEAL MARTIN | SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Makeba sings the joyful Pata Pata in my headphones as the plane banks right and Cape Town swings into view below, suburbs draped around Table Top Mountain, False Bay arcing towards the Helderberg Mountains that tumble into the ocean. This is such an isolated wine region. Five-thousand miles directly north, European regions huddle together for company. Chile and Argentina are South America bedfellows. Australia can wave to New Zealand across the “ditch” (to borrow Angus Hughson’s term.) South Africa sits alone at the tip of a vast mysterious continent. An oft-repeated anecdote that attests its geographical vagueness goes something as follows…

“Which country in South Africa are you from?” a distributor enquires.

“South Africa,” a winemaker replies.

“No, which country in South Africa.”

“Erm….South Africa?”

The distributor looks blank and is about to ask again whereupon the winemaker digs out his Smartphone, opens a map to prove the existence of the 1.2 million km² country that produced its first wine on 2 February 1652. It’s not an exchange one would expect if the subject had been France or Italy.

One of countless panoramas. This was taken from Capensis. To the left is Stellenbosch; to the right is Franschhoek.

My coverage of South Africa continued during the pandemic; pallets of samples arriving from beleaguered producers coping with draconian restrictions. The first COVID case in South Africa was reported on 5 March 2020. Just 21 days later, the government introduced a total ban on domestic sales and exports of alcohol, freezing the entire industry mid-harvest, two further bans introduced during a tumultuous period of government shilly-shallying. Thankfully, COVID is in the rear-view mirror partly due to South Africa’s medics’ prompt identification of Omicron, hence my return after four years away, because here, you need to get dirt on your boots.

South Africa is a visceral country. It gets under your skin. You don’t go to South Africa, you experience it. It’s not for those seeking some kind of Elysium. Heart-stopping beauty rubs up against perturbing grimness within minutes of stepping outside the terminal. The trunk road from the airport to Stellenbosch follows the boundary of a sprawling Township, higgledy-piggledy shacks hammered together from plywood and corrugated panels, piled up by poverty behind a concrete fence. No visitor can avoid seeing the extreme inequality of two dichotomous cohabiting worlds. My driver notices my gaze out of the window. “I know what you are thinking,” he tells me with palpable wisdom. “Don’t judge a book by its cover. Those shacks might not look like much from the outside, but you’d be amazed how clean and tidy they are inside.” Of course. Self-pride is not commensurate to wealth or human value.

It is allegorical to how South Africa is misconceived. Negativity tends to cloud this country, whether it derives from racial inequality (according to the World Bank, 10% of South Africans own 80% of its financial assets), corruption (radio airwaves commentating upon the trial of its former President) and crime (no trains run between Cape Town and Stellenbosch because overhead cables were stripped during lockdown. Andrea Mullineux told me that one night last year, 80% of their oldest Cinsault was stripped of fruit on the eve of harvest and would have happened again had armed security not been waiting). Less reported is the infectious positivity of its people in the face of adversity, the spectacular landscape, home to breath-taking flora and fauna, and the enormous strides it has made over the last two decades, not forgetting the emergence of South Africa as a serious player on the global wine scene and its constant reinvention.

It takes around thirty minutes to reach Stellenbosch, the heart of the Cape’s wine industry, a quaint, pretty town of lime-washed buildings teaming with students that throng around innumerable bars and cafés. Many winemakers commence their viticultural journey at Stellenbosch University or at Elsenberg, the Cape’s own “Roseworthy”, either by design or accident. These academic institutions constitute a wellspring of winemaking talent, as well as forming bonds that are the bedrock of a community-driven wine industry, one I cannot help compare with some Burgundy villages where neighbours barely acknowledge each other.

Freshened up and with no delay, I hit the ground running with the first of many visits, though my itinerary is less packed than usual to accommodate face-to-face conversations and tour vineyards, neither possible during lockdown. My focus on what might be described as the cream of South African producers does not infer that those excluded is by dint of inferiority, instead, the prosaic fact there’s only 24 hours in a day.

With a set of outstanding wines under the Scions of Sinai label, winemaker Bernherd Bredell is an emblem of a revolution underway in Stellenbosch.