For years the Cape wine industry has been muttering about the need to expand the market for our excellent products.
We’ve entered our wines in competitions in Brussels, London, Chicago and New York with excellent results.
It’s only been at home that we have neglected the market.
Until quite recently wine has been marketed as an almost exclusively “white” product.
Our advertising tends to show gracious Cape Dutch farmsteads, where white people sip wine in front of log fires. It’s shown as elegant, essential to gracious living, refined… and white.
At last the industry is realizing the market potential closer to home.
The Soweto Wine Festival has proved a resounding success for the past couple of years. Wine producers who have exhibited there ave been amazed at the interest among black wine lovers.
Now the spotlight falls on Gugulethu in the Cape, where the TOPS Gugulethu Wine Festival will be held of May 27 and 28.
Nederburg will sponsor the festival’s wine lounge, with their white wine maker, Tariro Masayiti, as host.
Marilyn Cooper, head of the Cape Wine Academy and co-founder of the Soweto Wine Festival, says the Gugulethu Festival has huge potential for local winemakers.
“This is an important festival for all wineries to attend. This market has the potential to quadruple over the next three to five years,” she says. “It is an opportunity for wineries to develop one-on-one relationships with an influential audience as was seen at the Soweto Wine Festival.”
More than 2000 people are expected to attend during the two days of the Gugulethu Festival, which will take place on the rooftop of the Gugulethu Mall.
I do hope there will be a fair sprinkling of white faces among the Gugs festival goers. Wine could serve as a good bonding agent between our communities.
For more information, contact Lungile Mbalo at lungile@mzolis.co.za

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