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Black People Breaking into Wine Industry, now Pressure is on to Succeed
k People Breaking into Wine Industry, Pressure is on to Succeed
Wire Service
WIne Producer and winery owner Carmen Stevens poses for her portrait at her Winery on September 20, 2022 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. – Black south Africans are starting to smash the barriers in the country’s renowned industry, transforming the landscape that was historically white.
(Photo by GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP)
Stevens Wines, which became South Africa’s fi rst fully black-owned winery when it launched in 2011 and released its fi rst vintage in 2014.
“The diffi cult part of winemaking is selling this product, getting [it] to somebody’s table and somebody coming back and saying ‘I want more’,” Stevens said.
The 51 year old is an unlikely winemaker, having grown up in the Cape Flats, an area marred by poverty and gangsters.
Her mother, a factory worker, would buy her Mills & Boon fi ction novels, many set in vineyards and involving wine.
South Africa was still under the apartheid regime when Stevens made her fi rst attempt to study winemaking in 1991. After being repeatedly refused, she was accepted at a college in 1993.
Her perseverance has paid off . This year she took home three gold medals at a South African wine and spirits award event for her sauvignon blanc and newly released rose, named after her mother Julie.
But like many black-owned brands, she procures her grapes from farmers, not yet having her own land to cultivate.
Land access is “the biggest barrier for black people participating in the wine industry”, Siguqa says.
“That’s very political”, because historically most black people – about 80% of the population – don’t have access to land.
Black people “are competing, with old
intergenerational, white rands”, as well as with foreign buyers who are purchasing prime land with US dollars, pounds and euros, said Siguqa.
The fi rst vineyards were established in the 1600s by French Huguenots.
Since then, land has passed down through generations and when sales do occur, it has often been to neighbours, leaving little opportunity for newcomers to enter the market, said Maryna Calow, of the Wines of South Africa industry group.
But for those non-white operators who have broken the barriers into the industry, it’s been a bitter-sweet journey so far, having taken so long to achieve and, once in, the pressure to not fail.
“We’ve been free for 28 years and one would have wanted to see a lot more black people participating in the industry,” said Siguqa, wine bottles lined up on a table next to him.
▲ Klein Goederust wine estate Images ◄ Carmen Stevents Wines logo and wines
Originally established in 1905, his farm scooped an award in Cape Town for off ering an authentic South African experience.
Out of the hundreds of winemakers in the country, only just over 80 brands are black-owned, according to Petersen. https://www.citizen.co.za/lifestyle/food-and-drink/ black-winemaking-wine-industry-south-africa/ Image credit: https://franschhoek.org. za/restaurant/klein-goederust, https:// carmenstevenswines.co.za
