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Searching for the Soul of South African Wine

In April next year WOSA – the international marketing arm of the SA wine industry (www.wosa.co.za) will be hosting “Cape Wines 2006” at the Cape Town Convention Centre.

Buyers, agents and wine writers will be flying to the Cape winelands – the most beguiling and beautiful environment to taste and enjoy our wines.

One of our natural wonders is our mind-boggling biodiversity of nature. The Cape Floral kingdom is the richest floral kingdom in world, with over 9600 different plant species – more than the whole of North America. There are more plant species on Table Mountain than the whole of the UK.

This astonishing regional concentration of biodiversity is a reflection of the plethora of soil types, soil ages and the multiplicity of slopes and resulting meso-climates – all things that dramatically influence wine quality.

Through the “Biodiversity and Wine Initiative” (www.bwi.co.za) we are demonstrating how we are conserving the wondrous fragility of our corner of the earth by creating structures that limit viticulture in sensitive areas and encourage the vital rehabilitation of the indigenousness flora and eco-systems.

Because biodiversity reflects the diversity of the environment, vineyards are similarly influenced. This diversity creates complexity in our wines by offering us a treasure trove of grape-growing and winemaking possibilities. Our vineyards are naturally heterogeneous and our yields are naturally suppressed instilling in the bottle a level of complexity other countries can only dream of – particularly below the £10 a bottle level.

Of course this complexity comes at a price. The astonishing diversity of soils generates tough challenges in the vineyard and hampers profitability. As a result I suspect any SA wine selling in the UK for less than £4.29 is not a long-term sustainable proposition. The next step is harnessing the potentially unassailable advantage biodiversity hints at.

Biodiversity is nature’s way of being generous. This is why our customers get more for their money from our wines. Likewise, we South Africans are generous of spirit. We are generous with our time, our hope, our enthusiasm, our homes, our dreams, our renaissance, and our country.

Perhaps that is why we have embraced biodiversity so unequivocally and why I believe we will begin making even more exciting, complex and rewarding wines in the future.