Cape wine wins award in Sweden

South African wines have the biggest market share in Sweden, where they compete with some of the best-known wines from western Europe.

Now Cape winemaker Danie Malan of Allesverloren wine estate in the Swartland has been chosen as international producer of the year in the 53rd annual competition organised by Swedish lifestyle magazine, Alt Om Mat.

This is the first time a South African has won the award. All 4 200 wines available in Sweden through the retail monopoly Systembolaget competed and those from Allesverloren were chosen in competition with finalists from Italy and Germany after a blind tasting by a team of five Swedish wine writers.

Malan, who flew to Sweden to receive his award, the Golden Glass, was praised by the panel for the excellence of his wines in general, but particularly for his use of varietals normally used for port to make a natural red table wine.

A spokeswoman for Wines of South Africa (Wosa), the organisation promoting wine exports, said these Allesverloren red table wines were also highly rated in this country, with one of them recently winning a gold medal at the annual Veritas show.

She said the Swartland was currently regarded as one of the Cape wine-growing regions with the highest potential and was recently praised in Time magazine.

According to Michaela Stander, Wosa’s market manager for Europe and Asia, Sweden is South Africa’s third-largest export market for wines. “Our market share was 21.3 percent in the first six months of this year, compared with 16.3 percent from Italy, 14.5 percent from Australia, 12.4 percent from Spain and 8.3 percent from France.”

The UK is still this country’s largest export market for wine, despite the recent opening up of new markets in Africa, the Far East and eastern Europe.

Germany was the second largest export market between January and October this year, followed by Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, the US and Canada.