South Africa: Sowing the Seeds for a New Harvest of Winemakers

Johannesburg — THE Cape Winemakers Guild, started in 1982, is widely regarded as creating the finest wines in the country. Membership of the guild - this year it has 41 members but the number fluctuates as new people make the cut and others don't or leave - is by invitation, and impressing your peers has always been notoriously difficult.

As membership lies with the winemaker, not the estate, a member who moves to another winery retains membership, provided he or she has produced "outstanding wines for a minimum of five years and continue to do so".

That is, produced outstanding wines specifically for the guild, for sale at the annual Nedbank CWG Auction (this year on October 2) and which will carry the exclusive CWG label.

Member Philip Constandius was guild chairman for 2007 and 2008 and is the maker of Solo Wines - "Nobody can pronounce my name, so I didn't think I should put it on the label." Constandius is responsible for initiating the trust's highly regarded protege programme in 2006.

"The guild was always looking at ways of addressing social responsibility," he says. "The trust was established with Nedbank, which supports the guild too, in 1999. Money was going to various worthy causes, but rather loosely organised. We still support those causes, but we realised the support wasn't bringing people into the world of fine wines."

The "worthy causes" the guild supports include supplementing salaries for additional teachers at Hoër Landbouskool Boland, an agricultural school for boys between 14 and 18, near Paarl and supporting Bloemhof High School for Girls in Stellenbosch.

BoE's David Knott is chairman of the trust: "All the individual winemakers had their own initiatives, but we felt we should consolidate things and make sure the trust was well run and well maintained. Right from the outset we wanted to make a big impact for previously disadvantaged people in the wine-growing areas. We've been paying for school teachers and donating computers, improving school facilities and equipment for 14 years, which is serious stuff, but we wanted to work towards having the first black winemaker to be invited to the guild. That's always been a long-term goal."

The question "Where are the black winemakers in the guild?" was an inevitable one, but getting the right people - people who would, like other members, be invited to join based on merit, not colour or background - was a problem.

"People would say 'Find worthy cellar hands' or 'Uplift worthy farmworkers'," says Constandius. "But a winemaker is a highly educated and technical individual with a professional degree, so we realised that looking for them wasn't the answer, we had to create them."

The first step in the guild's protege programme is becoming a bursar.

The guild currently awards bursaries, with the assistance of Agri-Seta, of R30 000 to cover the study fees of a final-year winemaking student at Elsenburg (the Cape Institute for Agricultural Training) or Stellenbosch University - but it is conditional.

As well as having completed two years of formal study in viticulture and oenology, with the intention of becoming a winemaker, having no employment obligations post graduation and being from a previously disadvantaged group - the bursars must have an academic aggregate of 60%.

"We are choosing people from a pretty small pool," says Knott. "And they've fought really hard to get into that pool. The bursary is really a way of validating the path they're already on."

The two most recent bursars are Chandré Peterson and Sifiso Mbhele. Peterson grew up in the wine-growing region of Paarl and loved wine from a young age - she just followed her nose. "My father drank wine and I used to sniff his glass, and I knew just from the smell that I wanted to know all about wine."

She also knew that despite being surrounded by wineries, she hadn't heard of any women winemakers.

"That became a huge challenge for me and I am determined to succeed as a woman in the wine industry."

She has a penchant for reds because "red wine has more character and involves a more intense process".

Peterson also has her eyes firmly set on making it into the guild's prestigious protege programme, which usually goes to one - but occasionally two - people, each year.

"The bursary has been a tremendous financial boost," she says. "But to become a protege and have a three-year internship and learn from winemakers of such high calibre would be a dream come true."

The guild's first protege, Howard Booysen, worked under Bruce Jack of Flagstone Winery and at Hartenberg Estate with Carl Schultz, then headed to California's wine region. On his return, he finished his internship at Jordan Wines with Gary Jordan and, rumour has it, he may be starting his own label. He's already a familiar face on many tasting and judging panels.

Praisy Dlamini, the protege for 2007 and the guild's first female recipient, interned with Constandius then at Glen Carlou, then moved to Edgebaston with David Finlayson, and is now completing her internship at Graham Beck with winemaker Pieter Ferreira.

Last year saw two female guild proteges, Sacha Claassen and Tamsyn Jefta, who are with Villiera and The Company of Wine People respectively.

Mbhele's path to wine is a little different to Peterson's; he'd never had a mouthful of the stuff until orientation week at Elsenburg, where he's specialising in cellar technology. Luckily, he had a taste for it.

Born in Bergville in KwaZulu-Natal, he comes from a family and culture of beer drinking and learnt about wine from his local library. On news that he'd been accepted for study, he resigned from his "unhappy" job at an appliance company and headed to the Cape.

Now, he declares, he's a wine lover: "I know how to enjoy it now. I understand the flavour and aromas. I like Pinotage and would love to become another Beyers Truter of Beyerskloof."

The bursary, he says, is "helping him a lot" and exposing him to new things academically and practically.

He is prepared to "start at the lowest step and grow" but being a cellar master at a good estate is the long-term goal.

However, application for the protege programme after graduation is a "completely new interaction" with a vigorously thorough screening that includes a written motivation and a tough interview with a tough panel.

Nedbank, says Knott, is committed to supporting the guild and its trust until at least the end of next year but will "likely continue after that".

He is in the process of putting together a renewed, formal proposal this month.

"The thrust right from the start was to encourage people back into the wine industry which meant identifying people with a love and aptitude for wine making, and pushing them up a notch."

Perhaps the guild and Nedbank will consider supporting a personal wine initiative Mbhele has diarised for later this year. "None of my relatives have ever had any wine," he says. "I have yet to introduce them to it, so I've decided that at my graduation party, I'm going to organise a family wine tasting ..."