No Whining about Wining

Just an hour’s drive from Cape Town is the Cape Wineland district, where a majority of South Africa’s wine industry is based. Lynn very much wanted to do some wine tastings. I agreed, but didn’t look forward to it much. Wine is for snobs, I thought. Me, I’m a beer drinker. I don’t even like the taste of wine.


Thank goodness Lynn wanted to go, because I fell in love with touring wineries. First of all, they were beautiful. We stayed in Franschoek, a small, touristy town nestled in a lush green valley between a craggy mountain. Everywhere we turned, there was another beautiful vista. Many of the wineries themselves were built on impressive estates, with ornate gates and immaculately manicured lawns.

Each had a distinctly different personality. Cabriere Estate, which made sparkling wine (a.k.a. Champagne), was high-class with a hint of whimsy. There we took a cellar tour, to see the bubbly aging in row after of French-made casks. Once out of the cellar, we tried the wines – which were just blah – and looked at the ginormous elephant bone which had a map of the valley carved on it.


One of my favorite wineries was Fairview Estates, which both had the best-tasting affordable wines and a great sense of whimsy. Approaching the main building, the first thing we saw was a jungle gym-like tower for goats. Inside, we got a good deal: try seven wines, plus a cheese tasting, for just US$2. This wine tasting thing was starting to look like a good deal.


We tried several wines just because we liked their names, such as “Goats Do Roam,” which is a pun on a type of wine called Côtes du Rhome, and “The Goatfather,” which pictured an old billy goat as a mafia Don. Ultimately I liked a non-punny wine, the 2005 Fairview Shiraz, and bought two bottles. I’m curious how much this wine would cost in the U.S., so if anybody sees it, please let me know. In South Africa, at the winery, it was under US$9.

One question that kept nagging at me while we toured the wine areas was, “Where are all the black people?” The town we stayed in was decidedly touristy, and although all the service staff were black or coloured, there was no way they could afford to live in town. So where did all the staff come from? Finally, I got my answer when I went out for a long run before our second day of tasting. About three miles down the main road out of Franschoek, behind a copse of trees, a small road led off to the right. Here, the houses were decidedly down-market, although they weren’t the shantytowns that we had seen in Cape Town. The population was entirely nonwhite. There was a grocery store, but I doubt it was as well stocked as the one in town. So that’s what happened to the blacks: just as in other parts of South Africa, they were shunted out of sight, to work for the whites but otherwise not to be seen or heard.

All the wineries we had toured so far were white-owned. Although they employed black workers, there were fewer black workers serving customers than there were working the fields. During the entire trip, only once did I see a black manager in a restaurant or bar. Even though South Africa now has majority rule, how will it ever correct the inequality in income and capital that are the results of apartheid? Approximately 13% of South Africa’s population is white, but they control 87% of the land and capital in the country. As long as the rule of law prevails, how will nonwhites ever come to parity with whites who hold the purse strings, farms, factories, ranches, and bank accounts?

The last winery we visited, Solms-Delta, answered this question in an interesting way. It was one of a few wineries in which the employees have become partial owners and managers of the estate. At Solms, the white owner of the estate takes 50% of the profits, and a trust to benefit the employees takes the other 50%. The trust has been used to build good accommodation for workers, to provide health care, and to pay school and university fees for workers’ children.

Out of more than 100 wineries in the region, there are perhaps half a dozen that have schemes similar to this one. It’s a promising start, but the scale is far too small to bring about a substantial shift in capital ownership from whites to nonwhites. How South Africa can achieve any sort of income parity between whites and blacks is a critical question that remains to be answered. If it allows the invisible hand of the market to lead the way, generations may pass with little change. If it takes white farms and wineries and redistributes them to poor blacks who have little knowledge of farming or capital, as Zimbabwe is doing, South Africa will no longer be an economic success story. What is the middle ground that preserves South Africa’s economy while enabling its citizens to share in its wealth?

These are all important questions for South Africa, but after three wine tastings this day, Lynn and I were in no condition to answer them!