This chapter provides a detailed analysis of efforts on the part of the main players in the wine industry to simultaneously embrace black economic empowerment, economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability. It notes that while this ironically led to the spinning of a new web of certification, with associated costs, the overall consequences were favourable. The cooperative sector underwent the greatest upheaval, while the number of producing wholesalers increased greatly. There was also a marked increase in the number of private cellars, before falling off again after 2008. The reinvention of Cape was also reflected in the introduction of many new cultivars and marked improvements in quality. The most obvious success lay in a quadrupling of exports by volume in the decade after 1997, which absorbed the wine surplus in a context where domestic sales remained sluggish. The chapter ends with a comparison of different types of empowerment deal and an asssessment of how far the industry has been able to deracialise itself at the level of production, distribution and consumption.

This chapter assesses the record of the KWV under C.W.H. Kohler in the performance of its initial mandate. It addresses minimum pricing, experimentation with innovative ways of disposing of the surplus, efforts to build exports and measures taken to improve quality. A partial return to preferential duties during the Great Depression ironically created more favourable conditions for maximising exports to Britain and the empire. While self-styled quality producers exported wine, the KWV developed a line in fortified wines. The role of A.I. Perold and Frank W. Myburgh in promoting a quality agenda at the KWV is explored. The chapter briefly relates the tale of a tour of France by Myburgh, Andre Simon and Manie Malan in 1932 that captures the optimism of the time. The chapter concludes with a salutary tale of a return to overproduction and low prices at the end of the decade. Although the KWV, which was internally divided, was blamed for a return to crisis conditions, the Wine Commission of 1937 backed away from advocating the return to the status quo ante. Hence, the government of Jan Smuts agreed to the extension of KWV regulatory powers to cover drinking wine in 1940.

The introduction sets out the main themes and provides a historical background to the core of the book. There is, firstly, a discussion of how the planting of the vine was shaped by larger imperial dynamics under the Dutch East India Company and subsequently under British rule. It addresses the transition from slavery to a form of labour that was nominally free. Secondly, there is an analysis of the relative importance of the domestic and imperial markets and the manner in which British duties shaped the Cape wine industry. And thirdly, the chapter provides an account of the increased importance of wine science concerned with managing the fermentation process and dealing with diseases. The phylloxera crisis is shown to be a turning point, not least with respect to South Africa’s engagement with international scientific opinion. The career of A.I. Perold unfolds as part of that story. The chapter concludes by identifying some of the challenges that were faced during the research and how the project evolved to take account of what was possible. The introduction alludes to work that deploys Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of fields, and justifies its decision not to go down that route.

This chapter deals with the tension between the need for producers to stay ahead of the competition whilst finding ways of cooperating. It begins with an account of the belated appropriation of the concept of terroir, which has been assisted by the flexibility of the Wine of Origin (WO) system. The chapter compares the very different approach to terroir in the Swartland, Stellenbosch and the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, and the quite distinct ways in which producers have sought to come together to market it. The discussion then turns to strategies to develop wine brands in a context where producers, whose farms are typically small, need to source grapes from further afield. Under the WO system, it is possible to play to the distinct terroir of where the farm is located, which is reflected in the branding, while creating second and third labels for wines made from grapes with a different origin. Hence the premium associated with quality is augmented by the volume that buying in grapes permits, thereby contributing to overall profitability. A brief discussion of black wine brands follows. The final section addresses a range of issues relating to competition and cooperation. There is a discussion of sensitivity to scoring within wine guides and wine competitions and how this influences marketing. A contrast is made between the collapse of the Cape Estate Wine Producers Association (CEWPA) and the success of cultivar-specific associations and the proliferation of wine routes.

This chapter addresses challenges to the KWV system as the overall surplus spiralled in the 1980s and cooperatives began offloading cheap wine onto the market in minimalist packaging. Independent producers and the SFW became increasingly critical of the KWV’s performance of its regulatory functions. The chapter provides an account of Tim Hamilton-Russell’s dogged campaign for the right to produce wine in the Hemel-en-Aarde and to market it as he saw fit. It also addresses the vine-smuggling scandal that broke in 1986, which culminated in the loosening of quarantine controls. The chapter then details how the end of white rule led to government scrutiny of the KWV. After a bitter struggle over the demands of the KWV to hold onto its assets as it converted to a private company, a political deal was struck that enabled part of them be reycled in support of a black empowerment agenda in the industry. The residual control functions were taken over by a set of new bodies. The chapter closes with a brief account of the arrival of international drinks companies and the full merger between Distillers and SFW to create Distell, in an effort to ward off potentially hostile competition.

The chapter begins with a paradox, namely that the liquor laws were liberalised in the early 1960s at precisely the moment when the apartheid regime was becoming distinctly illiberal. It argues that part of the reason was that the temperance movement had failed to reproduce itself generationally while its influence on the National Party government was marginal. Moreover, Afrikaner nationalists hitched wine to the bandwaggon of cultural nationalism. Successive commissions of enquiry targeted excessive drinking amongst the Coloured population, but attempts to extend the reach of racialised prohibition stalled. Indeed, the racial provisions of the 1928 Liquor Act were repealed in 1962, following the Malan Commission which maintained that the law was being routinely flouted. After a heated parliamentary debate the law was amended such that that wine could be purchased by all South Africans. Moreover, the distribution became freer with the creation of grocers’ licences for wine and promises of intervention to reverse vertical integration in the liquor industry. This outcome signalled a defeat for temperance interests and pointed to the greater influence wielded by the wine lobby.

The Conclusion recapitulates the ways in which the shifting balance of scientific opinion, economic power and bureaucratic intervention (which was inevitably political) shaped the trajectory of wine over the course of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. The lesson is that innovations in one field did not necessarily spill over into the others, which often meant that they stalled. Race runs as a thread through this history because its inscription in laws shaped consumption patterns, had a bearing on export possibilities, and led producers and merchants alike to set their priorities according to their reading of the market and where the profits lay. The Conclusion ends by speculating about whether the legacies of racial framings are finally being addressed.

This chapter addresses the rapid increase in the consumption of white wines in the 1950s. It traces some of the changes to the efforts of the wine companies to develop the consumer market through brand building. But the breakthrough came with the perfection of the method of cool fermentation that permitted the preservation of the aromatic character of white wines. Boosted by innovations in the cellar, in the form of temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, it became possible to produce wine of a reliable quality on an industrial scale. The chapter argues that while the KWV criticised the merchants, they worked with selected farmers to improve the quality of the wine. This was true of Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery (SFW) and Distillers. The greater costs involved, however, led many farmers to resort to selling their grapes to the cooperatives rather than making their own wine. The chapter focuses on specifc farms like Rustenberg where it is possible to precisely date the turn to cool femerntation The importance of brand development is underlined through an account of the meteoric wise of SFW’s Lieberstein, which was reputedly the world’s largest brand in the early 1960s.

The chapter begins with an analysis of the KWV, which mimicked the operations of the state bureaucracy but was formally distinct from it. An anatomy of the KWV regulatory system is provided In order to achieve a better sense of how the interlocking parts worked together. There is a detailed discussion of the documentation that producers were required to supply each year to comply with the quota system. This is followed by an account of minimum pricing and surplus disposal which involved the surrender of distilling wine to the KWV which it used to make brandy. There is also a discussion of the Wine of Origin (WO) system which introduced a system of appellations, and the efforts of the wine merchants to tempt aspiring independent producerrs with the offer of access to marketing channels. This leads to a discussion of the contention over the designation of ’estate wines’ and the rather more successful effort to launch the Stellenbosch Wine Route. Finally, an account is offered of KWV efforts to control access to planting material.

The first substantive chapter addresses the structural problem facing wine farmers at the Cape. Much like in France, there was a serious problem of overproduction of wines of indifferent quality leading to unstable prices. The chapter details the struggle between wine merchants and farmers, which led to the constitution of the Koöperatieve Wynbouwers Vereniging van Suid-Afrika (KWV) in 1918. It shows how the KWV successfully lobbied the Smuts government for devolved regulatory powers that enabled it to control the pricing for distilling wines from 1924. At the same time, the chapter shows that the market was constrained by low consumption amongst whites, including the Afrikaner wine farming community itself. This was compounded by the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its allies in the South African Temperance Alliance (SATA) to pursue local option for whites and a form of temperance for the black population. The former failed, but the passage of the 1928 Liquor Act prevented the majority of the population from purchasing wine or brandy. Hence the victory of the KWV over the merchants was tempered by the legislative success of the temperance movement.

This chapter focuses on the distribution of wine. It begins with a detailed account of the liquor wars that pitted Distillers against South African Breweries (SAB), which owned SFW, from the late 1950s. This culminated in a peace agreement in 1974 which left SAB with a beer monopoly and divided the wine and spirits market between SFW, Distillers and the KWV who owned shares in a new company, Cape Wine and Distillers (CWD). It is shown that the competition between SFW and Distillers remained intense. A detailed account follows of how the wine companies, and especially SFW, attempted to market wine to a black consumer market, initially through jazz promotions. It is argued that while the SFW invested in market research and advertising, it was trapped in a racialised way of reading consumer preferences. This is demonstrated with reference to high-, medium- and standard-priced wines. The SFW dominated the market for SP wines but because the real profits were in spirits, rather little of the advertising budget was directed towards black and Coloured consumers. This fed a self-fulfilling prophesy about the limits of the market for wine amongst ’non-whites’.