KUILSRIVIER, South Africa (dpa) – Patting a large full tank in his wine cellar, Adrian Buehrer expresses satisfaction with the 2001 harvest that has just been completed on his wine estate not far from Cape Town.
The relatively dry weather over the year is expected to make 2001 exceptional for red wines in particular.“This year will be excellent. We can say that with some confidence,” says the wine grower, who recently crowned the successful harvest with a Millennium Dinner in Cape Town’s historic castle.Buehrer, a winemaker of Swiss origin, has settled in the Cape after buying an old estate in 1989 that was founded by the Swedish adventurer Joachim Sax in 1693 at Kuilsrivier.This estate is an example of a new trend that, along with additional capital input from abroad, has given fresh impetus to wine growing in the Cape.“It’s incredible how much foreign money is flowing into the region at the moment,” says Sylvia Doehne, a German who has been involved in the real estate business at the Cape for the past 20 years.Buyers are no longer looking only at generously proportioned properties, but also at vineyards and wine estates. As a result the area under vines in South Africa has expanded from 101,000 hectares in 1998 to 105,000 in 1999.The boom started at the end of the 1990s, when some of the white wine growers were losing confidence in a peaceful future. The prices were low, and the potential is huge in this wine growing region with its tradition of more than 300 years.Some investors took the opportunity to realise a dream, displaying more enthusiasm than expertise, even before the country’s political change.Others, like Anne Huchon-Cointreau from France, had considerable knowledge of the industry as their start-up capital. Huchon- Cointreau, a scion of the cognac dynasty, has been running Morgenhof since 1992.The final demise of apartheid, and with it the ending of the international sanctions, found South Africa ill-prepared for the needs of the world market, but also brought a fresh wind blowing through the industry.During the years of apartheid, wines from the Cape, that once eased Napoleon’s lot on St Helena where he ended his days, found takers primarily in Germany.“Previously German oenologists had set the tone here for decades, but with the current boom in red wines we are seeing mainly French, Australian and Spanish winemakers,” Nico van der Merwe says. One of South Africa’s best known winemakers, he learned the business in Germany.Combining his expertise with Buehrer’s organizational talent, he is breathing new life in Saxenburg, an estate that had seen better days before they started.“This estate is now producing one of the top five great wines in South Africa,” says German wine importer Hajo Coelle, long a fan of South African wines.These wines are in the mainstream of global wine trends in his view. “They are easy to appreciate, inexpensive and have the aura of something new,” he says.Increasing interest in South Africa as a tourist destination and constant improvements in quality also favour this development, which is shown in rising sales.
