Jan 15 2010
A story of winemaking from South Africa
In our previous articles we discovered many countries and continents where people produce wine, except Africa and Antarctica. Of cause as for Antarctica now we have not any facts about winemaking industry there, but as for Africa we have got a lot of information to tell you about it and it is even some kind of shame we didn’t tell you about it before.
So let us start our conversation about this continent with wine making history of South Africa. It starts in 1652 and it is connected with the arrival of settlers from Europe to this continent. Three years later the head of company in India, Jan van Riebeck, planted first grape in the Table Bay area. And in 1659 he was very happy to report that first south africa wine was produced. At that time the only region of grapes growing in Africa was located in Cape.
Then primacy came from Jan van Riebeck to Simon van der Stel. Simon van der Stel took seriously the point of wine making in South Africa and organized wine industry in Cape region. While Simon was on the chief position, he designed Constantia farm and built Stellenbosch town. These places still stand for noble centers of quality wine making of South Africa.
In 18 century dessert wine from Constantia became very popular and Cape area was noble in Africa and outside of it. In 1925 Stellenbosch town became some kind of experimental center of wine, there scientists combined two grapes kinds: cinsaut and pinot noir, to receive grapes type that will perfectly suit for South Africa nature conditions.
By the end of 19 century like in all world of wine South Africa wine making was in depression which happened because of phylloxera disease. In 1918 they decided to organize a center to control production and to monitor position of South African wines in the market, the KWV. In 1925 in Africa was organized Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery, which in 2001 joined Distillers Corporation. Nowadays Distillers Corporation is one of the most famous South Africa Wine companies in the world market.
Of cause years of apartheid couldn’t leave something new to South Africa world. During these years world trade of african wine decreased because of various sanctions. In 1994 democracy finally came to African wine industry and wine producers had no other choice then to adapt.
The KWV was changed in 1997 into a commercial enterprise and with help of other wine producers they organized South African Wine Industry Trust, the main purpose of which was help in the process of transformation African wine industry.
Surely most of owners of African wineries were still “white”, but every year the number of “black” producers increased. In 2001 they provided a project with help of Vineyard Academy the matter of which was teaching future workers of vineyards what they need to do and to know to make wine.
Despite the fact that the demand for wine didn’t change during last years, there are some positive moments in South African wine industry, among which they decided to look for users in the national market of Africa.
