A variety of factors have stunted South African wines’ growth in the U.S. market, but professionals believe there’s no time like the present for getting to know what this country has to offer.
For a select group of dialed-in wine professionals, it’s common knowledge that the South African wine industry is booming. Today, the wines aren’t just good, “the wines are some of the greatest values ever,” says Aaron Meeker, the national sales manager for Vine Street Imports in New Jersey. “I firmly believe that South Africa is the most exciting place on the planet making wine.”
Hadley Douglas, the co-founder of The Urban Grape in Boston, agrees. “[South African winemakers] aren’t bound by a lot of rules so they’re able to play with their wine, which means that there are these great, interesting, unique wines coming out of [the country].”
But in the minds of many American wine drinkers, South Africa remains a little-known wine country, or worse, the land of burnt-rubber Pinotage—assuming they can conjure an image of South African wine at all. While other far-off countries like Australia can quickly summon thoughts of cheap and cheerful critter wine, South Africa remains more of a mystery.
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“I think the most obvious reason is proximity, both physically and imaginatively,” says Robert Lozelle, a sommelier at Angler in San Francisco. “Imaginatively, for most of us, myself included, we know very few South African people … and very few [Americans] have traveled there.”
This lack of awareness is also reflected in the data. Compared to other major non-European wine-producing countries, South Africa commands the smallest volume share of imported wine to the U.S. at less than half a percent, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis data from 2022. This is significantly below other major non-European wine countries; the next-smallest volume share is Argentina at four percent.
With South Africa producing such exciting, high-quality, value-driven wines, why aren’t more American wine drinkers—and buyers—paying attention?
A complex history
“One of the interesting things about selling South African wine is you have to learn a lot about politics,” says Molly Choi, the New York City-based SVP of marketing for Broadbent Selections.
In many ways, the current state of South African wine sales in the U.S. can be traced back to apartheid. Next year is the 30th anniversary of the end of apartheid, but “it is still one of the first things that we think about,” says Douglas.
Apartheid, a system of institutionalized racial segregation, was instituted by the South African government from 1948 to 1994, when the government transitioned to a democracy. In 1986, as a response to South Africa’s political system, the U.S. passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which imposed sanctions on the South African government—and prohibited, among other things, exports of agricultural products to the U.S., including wine.
During that time, South Africa’s wine industry also operated under a heavily regulated system. “The South African wine industry, for a lot of the 20th century, was controlled by the umbrella cooperative organization KWV,” explains Jim Clarke, the U.S. marketing manager for Wines of South Africa. The KWV was founded in 1918 to fix the wine industry’s production problems, but because the organization developed close ties with the government, it became a controlling force in the industry and ultimately stifled its growth (KWV privatized in the 1990s, so today they are a different entity). “In the 1970s, KWV was focused on protecting grower prices. They kept trying to raise prices, whereas South African Breweries aggressively cut prices to attract the South African market. So wine really lost out,” says Clarke.
As a result, the South African wine industry struggled in both domestic and international markets. “Even though there was a very rich history of South African winemaking, everything really fell apart during apartheid,” says Douglas. “The quality of the wine during that time really went down. They just weren’t able to keep up with new techniques, new ways of thinking. They weren’t able to get new grape clones. Everything [was affected].”
Meanwhile in the U.S., “We were supposed to boycott everything from South Africa,” says Douglas. “It takes time to change those buying patterns.”
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