So, without not even a whimper from the South African wine industry bodies, South Africa has withdrawn from the Great Wine Capitals, an important global network of wine tourism institutions. No communication here from the usual organisations who have over the past few years have – quite rightly – made a huge hoopla about the importance of the countries wine tourism sector, one that is a major contribution to the country’s vinous image. Yet a fact confirmed by international diplomats. South Africa pulled-out of the Great Wine Capitals in June, slyly deciding not to inform the industry players and public at large.

South Africa’s withdrawal from Great Wine Capitals (GWC) network is a move as perplexing as it is damaging. On the surface, it may seem like a bureaucratic adjustment or a budgetary trimming. In truth, it represents a strategic blunder that will undermine one of the country’s most dynamic and globally resonant industries, namely wine tourism. Wine tourism is not just about providing international visitors with experiences in the diverse and majestically scened winelands. It is about creating a relationship with these visitors, one seeing them lifelong proponents and supports of South African wine once they have returned to Idaho or Liverpool and Antwerp, Hong Kong Denmark and Cologne. And support, memories and conviction resulting from a South African winelands experience leads to continued wine purchases and sales. An emotional take-out.

Since joining the GWC in 2014, Cape Town and the Cape Winelands have enjoyed membership among a league of the world’s most celebrated wine regions incljding Bordeaux, Napa Valley, Mendoza, Verona, and others. The alliance offered far more than prestige; it provided access to shared expertise, marketing reach, and global recognition. Through initiatives such as the Best of Wine Tourism Awards and international networking events, South African producers found themselves on a global platform that consistently translated into real economic gain.

To put it plainly, wine tourism is not an indulgence for South Africa, it is a lifeline. The Western Cape’s vineyards attract more than a million international visitors each year, injecting around R36 billion into the regional economy and sustaining tens of thousands of livelihoods. From cellar-door sales in Stellenbosch to boutique hotels in Franschhoek and farm-to-table restaurants in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, this ecosystem thrives on the world’s curiosity about South African wine. GWC membership amplified that curiosity; it connected the Cape’s producers to global conversations about sustainability, marketing, and consumer trends.

The decision to walk away severs those connections at a time when they are most needed. Around the world, the leading wine regions are doubling down on collaboration and shared learning — from climate adaptation to digital engagement with younger consumers. South Africa, by contrast, risks receding into isolation. Without access to the GWC’s global forums and data networks, the Cape’s producers lose not only visibility but also the collective intelligence that drives innovation and resilience.

The implications extend well beyond prestige. Wine tourism operates as a multiplier: for every visitor to a tasting room, there are hotel bookings, restaurant reservations, and local art and craft sales. The loss of even a modest percentage of international visitors could ripple through rural economies, eroding job security and community development. For small producers already contending with the pressures of climate volatility, rising input costs, and a fragile currency, the GWC connection offered a bridge to markets that value authenticity and quality over volume.

One struggles to see the rationale. Whether the decision stemmed from administrative friction or funding constraints, it is difficult to reconcile with the broader strategic goals of South African tourism and export promotion. In an era when partnerships and global storytelling define competitiveness, the withdrawal reads less like prudence and more like retreat.

There is still time to correct course. The industry’s key bodies such as Wines of South Africa, South African Wine, Wesgro, and the Cape Winelands District Municipality must work together to reopen dialogue with the GWC and pursue reinstatement before the 2026 conference cycle. South Africa’s wine narrative, grounded in resilience and renewal, deserves a place at the global table.

To withdraw now is to silence a voice the world has only recently learned to hear. A voice shaped by centuries of craft, adversity, and extraordinary landscape. The world’s great wine capitals are in conversation; South Africa cannot afford to stop speaking.

Words: Lafras Huguenet

There’s no glamour in the Swartland. Just rock, wind, and a kind of hard light that makes you squint even when you’re not looking at the sun. It’s the sort of place where vines have to earn their keep, clinging to slopes of schist and quartz on Kasteelberg Mountain like they’ve made some long-term, bad-idea pact with survival.

This is Roundstone, the Mullineuxs’ patch of seriously bold dirt. One hundred hectares of stubborn, stony hillside that’s been beaten into giving up some of the most honest, well-structured and quite frankly statuesque wines in South Africa. Nothing here is easy, nothing is dressed up. And that’s exactly the point.

Chris and Andrea Mullineux don’t do fashion or shortcuts. They farm like they cook:  with precision, patience and the heartfelt need to provide something tasty that is as good for the soul as it is for the sensorial apparatus. The kids also like offal, which is a good thing. Offal-detesters are hard people to trust. And winemakers need all the trusting they can get.

Since 2008 they’ve been pushing toward organic, regenerative farming, not because it’s cool but because it’s the only way the land makes sense long-term. The soil’s alive, the vines are tough, and the fynbos –  that wiry, aromatic bush scattered through the vineyards – is part of the system. It keeps things balanced.

The wind here is relentless, a local enforcer that scrubs disease out of the canopy and slows the ripening to a crawl. That’s why the wines have a taut, reverberating tension. Because they’re forged under pressure.

Known for Syrah and Chenin Blancs, the Mullineuxs recently off-loaded two new harmoniously blended wines onto the market.

The Roundstone Blanc 2023

If white wines were people, this one would be the quiet type who doesn’t talk much but always has the last word. It’s a mix of everything that shouldn’t work together but somehow does: Macabeu, Chenin Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Clairette Blanche, Roussanne, Verdelho, Vermentino, Assyrtiko. A Mediterranean fever dream that’s been through Swartland boot camp, caressed by the sleight hands of Andrea and the sinewy cool direct approach of Chris.

The grapes are picked at dawn, when the air still has a bit of mercy in it, and pressed whole into barrels. No lab yeast, no sterile stainless-steel babysitting, just wild fermentation doing its slow, slightly dangerous thing. Seven months on the lees, eleven in oak, and then it’s bottled without filtering. What you see is what you get.

The 2023 vintage was a long, cool ride, and it shows. This wine doesn’t shout. It hums. From the heart, through the belly and the tune is crystal and sweet. Think white pear, fynbos, chamomile, and that faint mineral whiplash you get from stone and salt. It’s textured and firm, like a handshake from someone who’s worked for a living, and it finishes clean and long. The kind of white that makes you stop talking mid-sentence because something on your tongue just clicked into focus.

Only 1 770 bottles exist. If you’ve got one, don’t waste it on a hot-tub crowd. This thing will age twenty years easy, maybe longer. But if you’re opening it young, decant it and let it stretch its legs.

The Roundstone 2023

Now for the red. This one’s got muscle and manners in equal measure being a blend of Syrah, Grenache Noir, and Cinsault, all raised on the same stone-cut slopes. It’s the kind of wine that smells like the landscape it came from, all dark berries, fynbos, pure-earthed dust and sun, and tastes like someone decided restraint was the real flex.

Everything’s done by hand. The grapes are picked in the cool hours, whole-bunch fermented in 500-litre barrels, stomped the old-fashioned way, just enough to keep the cap wet. No stainless, no pumps, no over-extraction. You could call it minimal intervention, but that makes it sound trendy. It’s really just winemaking with a conscience and knowing when to do nothing.

After six weeks of slow fermentation and maceration, the wine goes back into barrel for 22 months. That’s where it pulls itself together. The tannins smoothing out, the structure tightening, the fruit taking on that clean, stony edge that only quartz and schist can give.

When you finally pour it, it’s got presence and the kind of texture that grips your gums but never bites. There’s a flicker of wildness, but it’s contained, disciplined. Best served at 16 to 18 degrees, decanted if it’s young. You’ll get a better conversation out of it that way.

Only 5 040 bottles made. Again, not a wine for the masses, but a wine for people who like things that taste like somewhere, not something.

And Roundstone is somewhere. Special. It isn’t some manicured estate with a tasting room playlist. It’s a working piece of land, and it behaves like one. Every vine looks like it’s survived something. The Mullineuxs don’t hide that, they build on it.

That’s what makes both the Blanc and the Red so damn compelling. They don’t pretend to be perfect; they just tell the truth about where they come from. And in wine, that’s rarer than you think.

If you’re lucky enough to stand on Kasteelberg in late afternoon, when the sun drops and the rocks turn gold, you get it. The wind dies down, the heat releases, and for a minute the place breathes differently. That’s the moment these wines are built on, a balance between beauty and struggle.

You don’t need to know the science of schist or the metrics of regenerative farming to feel it. You just need to taste. Because under all the talk of terroir and technique, what the Mullineuxs are really doing is simple: making wine that respects where it comes from, doesn’t fake a thing, and refuses to bore you.

There’s honesty in that. The kind of honesty that cuts through noise. Like good food, like hard work, like the Swartland itself.

The introduction of a new Sauvignon Blanc to the Diemersdal Estate portfolio is no longer a revelation, as proprietor-winemaker Thys Louw launches these with frequent regularity. A desire driven by curiosity, purpose and enthrallment with Sauvignon Blanc has seen Thys turn Diemersdal into something of a shrine for wines made from this variety, a place where the seemingly limitless potential and hidden secrets of Sauvignon Blanc are found in a startling array of wines.

The latest newbie is no stranger, in that it is a Diemersdal Eight Rows, a tried, trusted and adored wine on the local Sauvignon Blanc landscape. Yet, this latest release – only available in magnum – is the 2024 vintage that was left on the lees for 18 months prior to bottling, as opposed to the standard Eight Rows bottling’s six months. And what a wine it is, and what a difference a long lay on the lees makes.

This isn’t just a wine; it’s a disciplined, nuanced expression of the Cape’s most cherished variety, elevated by extended lees contact and an ode, perhaps, to the more contemplative, slow-burning traditions of fine winemaking found in France’s Loire or Burgundy, but with a distinctly South African soul.

From the moment this wine is poured, its pale gold hue shimmering with subtle confidence, the sense of purpose is unmistakable. A maritime whisper envelops the aroma: oyster shells, wet ocean rock, and a mineral freshness that immediately transports you to the cool, wind-buffeted slopes of the Durbanville terroir.

These vineyards, rooted in decomposed granite and clay soils, sit on south-facing slopes where proximity to the Atlantic imparts a signature salinity and mineral vibrancy. It’s a site of singular character, carefully cultivated through dryland farming, a method that, in my opinion, best captures and elevates the intrinsic qualities of Sauvignon Blanc in this cool, maritime climate.

The narrative of the Eight Rows is woven through history, beginning with Thys Louw’s humble yet ambitious start in 2005. Initially restricted to just eight rows of a single vineyard, Thys’s dedication proved that small can be significant. The first vintage in 2006 set a high bar, and decades later, this compact block remains the core of a wine that continues to evolve, revealing more layers each year.

To taste the 2024 in its extended lees-contact magnum is to witness the culmination of this meticulous stewardship, a wine that has matured into an elegant, complex icon, yet remains fiercely rooted in its site-specific essence.

It’s a testament to patience, an act of restraint in a world that often seeks instant gratification. This extended contact imbues the wine with a remarkable depth and a silky texture, integrating the vibrant acidity with a rounded, nectarine-infused palate that is simultaneously fresh and layered. Bottled unfiltered, the wine exudes a natural purity, its turbid, luminous presence a reflection of the vineyard’s pristine fruit and minimal intervention.

On the palate, the mineral core is immediately apparent. Flints and oceanic nuances set the tone for a lively yet refined experience. Touches of gooseberry, granadilla pips, kumquat, and persimmon evoke a tropical spectrum, but it’s the sea-salt finish – a surge of lemon zest and briny salinity – that truly captures the mood. Each sip feels like a gentle yet inexorable tide, ebbing and flowing with precision, evoking a coast where land and sea blend seamlessly. It’s a wine that commands attention without weight, embodying the spirit of modern restraint married to classical elegance.

In my view, the 2024 Eight Rows is more than a superb wine; it’s a statement. It challenges the notion that South African Sauvignon Blanc must be exuberant and fruit-forward; instead, it suggests that true elegance resides within a delicate balance of minerality, acidity, and subtle complexity. It bears the hallmark of a wine made with clarity, purpose, and respect for its origins and the provenance of one of the country’s great wine estates.

With today’s trend of showering chefs and food personalities with praise and accolades, it is surprising that a rotund, moustached man from KwaZulu-Natal named Bill should remain in the shadow. Because the late Bill O’Hagan is still known among the British as the man who brought a “sausage renaissance” to their grey island.

Granted, delivering any form of “renaissance” to Britain’s drab cooking pots doesn’t sound like much of a challenge. But what makes Bill’s story compelling is that he took the Brits’ beloved pork sausage — the “banger” — and, with South African flair and good taste, transformed it into the kind of sausage the locals felt they had always deserved.

Bill, who passed away in 2013, was the son of the legendary Ebbo Bastard, the troublesome Springbok flanker who was part of the iconic team that defeated New Zealand on their own soil in 1937. Little Bill was still a toddler when his father was murdered. Later he took on his mother’s surname. After all, a name like Bill Bastard might well have been something of a millstone in later life.

During his school years Bill worked weekends in a butcher shop, where his love for and knowledge of sausage making began. In 1970, at the age of 24, Bill landed in London to pursue his journalism career, which he had started in Johannesburg. And he was so shocked by his first encounters with the local pork sausages at breakfast that he considered the great British breakfast “a fabrication and cultural deception.”

Since the wartime rationing years, British sausages had largely consisted of scraps of unidentifiable meat varieties and parts, padded out with mouldy bread and old grain, stuffed into a casing. For a sausage lover like Bill, this was unacceptable.

Working night shifts at The Daily Telegraph, Bill spent his days making sausages: proper cuts of meat, no with starches or artificial flavourings, and real pork casings to hold everything together.

For years he sold the sausages to friends and colleagues, but when Bill opened his first shop in Greenwich, London, in 1988, O’Hagan’s sausages quickly entered the national vocabulary. His culinary creations were sold in places such as the Dorchester Hotel and prestigious stores like Harrods and Harvey Nichols. With his frequent appearances in the media and on television in the 1980s and early 1990s as the man who had resurrected British sausage from the dead, Bill was likely South Africa’s first international food personality.

O’Hagan’s remains synonymous with quality sausages in Britain today, although the business itself appears to have been rather on-and-off since Bill’s death.

Little is known about his descendants or the carriers of Bill’s legacy. Yet he deserves to be recognised as an unsung South African food hero, the man who put back the bang in the British banger.

And a good old Bastard, at that.

A termite mound is usually associated with the parched, hard and hot regions of Southern Africa, a strange bulging citadel of soil with countless pale insects seething within. Despite no longer found in the Cape Winelands, this ancient builder of underground worlds may be one of the grapevine’s oldest friends.

We think of termites as inhabitants of the country’s northern savannas, those dry landscapes dotted with russet towers. But thousands of years ago, they thrived across the lands we now call the Cape winelands. Their trace, however, endures. In the remains of millions of insects themselves as well as in the quiet architecture they left behind.

My first encounter with this notion that termite activity once shaped the very soils of our vineyards, came from Danie de Wet of De Wetshof in Robertson. Robertson’s earth carries the highest limestone content of any South African wine region. Chalk and Chardonnay have always been intimate companions, and it is no coincidence that De Wetshof’s luminous Chardonnays found their natural home here. Danie believes the valley’s calcareous richness was forged by countless ancient termite colonies: generations of insects lived, worked, died, their remains enriching the ground, softening it, whitening it.

These fossilised termite mounds, it turns out, are scattered far beyond Robertson. Johann Smit, one of South Africa’s most seasoned viticulturists, known for his tenure at Spier and now at Perdeberg Cellar, has long been fascinated by them. Travelling between the vineyards that feed Perdeberg’s wines, Johann began to notice a pattern: circular patches, faintly discernible from the air, particularly between Malmesbury and Darling. To the farmer’s eye, they’re called heuweltjies or kraaltjies — little hillocks, or small enclosures, like ghostly livestock kraals waiting for a flock that never came.

With the mind of a true soil scientist, Johann began to dig deeper, both literally and figuratively. What he discovered was astonishing: these termite “kraaltjies” have a fundamentally different chemistry from the land around them. For millennia, termites carried organic material such as leaves, stems, bark and animal dung into their underground fortresses. The surrounding earth, stripped of its organic surface litter, became poorer, while the mounds themselves grew rich with carbon and minerals. The termites, in their anonymous persistence, were the first tillers of the Cape soil.

The remains of their work still speak through the spade. The soil of a kraaltjie is soft, friable, almost yielding, while the earth beside it is hard as baked clay. Within the mound zones, levels of potassium, calcium, magnesium, boron, and carbon rise sharply, and the pH is markedly higher. What the termite once built for shelter has become, aeons later, a cradle for the vine.

And vines do respond. Johann, with enthusiasm of reverence awe, describes how plants growing on these circles are different: their foliage denser, their canopy casting more shade, their leaves persisting nearly a month longer after harvest than their neighbours. This, he notes, allows the vine to store greater reserves for the following season, a quiet promise of renewal written into the life of the plant.

Such reverence for these subterranean artisans found its natural expression in a wine: Kraaltjies Chenin Blanc 2025, made from 34-year-old bush vines rooted squarely in these ancient mounds. “You can see the difference in the grapes,” says Johann. “The bunches are larger, the acids brighter as the shade keeps the ripening bunches cool.” To preserve the purity of this termite terroir, the wine was left unoaked, resting four months on its lees before bottling.

Does the ghost of the termite truly whisper in the glass? Perhaps that lies beyond analysis. What can be said is that Kraaltjies Chenin Blanc is another shining example of Swartland Chenin, lovely broad-shouldered yet supple, fragrant with blossom, generous in fruit, and touched by something quietly primeval.

Wine, after all, is not only judged by what it is, but by the story that leads to it. The dialogue between earth and time. In this case, the story reaches back to an age before man, when the first architects of the soil were still at work. Their mounds have crumbled, but their legacy endures tasted now, centuries later, in a glass of Chenin Blanc.

Four Cape wine producers sat down at the Stellenbosch Woordfees to discuss the nature of family wine-farms. The following is an English version of the discussion, as reported on Netwerk24.

“If you want a happy family farm, post a copy of your will on the fridge. That way you’ll never have problems. Sort it out while everyone is still alive, and don’t try to rule from the grave.”

This is the advice Thys Louw, owner-winemaker of Diemersdal in Durbanville, received from André Oubaas Brink of Groot Phesantekraal regarding the dynamics of family farming.

Louw shared his experiences as the sixth-generation winemaker at Diemersdal during a discussion on family wine farms held at the annual Stellenbosch Woordfees. He started running the farm with his father in 2005 and described the transition as “fairly smooth” with his father Tienie today playing a limited role in the estate’s management.

Different Approaches to Inheritance

Not everyone shares Louw’s view on wills. Johann Krige of Kanonkop in Stellenbosch, who runs the farm with his brother, believes that no one should inherit directly: “Everything goes into a trust.” Krige is the fourth generation at Kanonkop, where his great-grandfather began making wine in the early 1900s. The first wine under the Kanonkop label was made from the 1973 vintage

At De Wetshof in Robertson, Johann de Wet is the third-generation owner and CEO. He says he is often asked what it feels like to step into the shoes of his father, Cape wine icon Danie de Wet. “My father was never intimidating, and we’ve always understood one another, seeing as I grew-up under the De Wetshof ethos,” he says. “For me it is about acknowledging that as the family farm’s new proprietor, your role is to make your own responsible mark on the business.”

De Wet’s family has been involved in winemaking in South Africa since the 17th century and has produced wine under the De Wetshof label since the 1970s. He explains that his grandfather, the second son in the family, was dissatisfied with the farm he inherited and subsequently bought De Wetshof. “Our early family history thus shows how complex farm succession can be,” says De Wet.

Discipline, Expertise, and the Family Brand

Krige believes family farms often stumble when there are “too many cooks in the kitchen.” His advice: appoint people based on expertise, not lineage. “If a family member wants to be a winemaker or play another role on the property, they have to make their own mark.”

De Wet agrees. “The best person for the job should be appointed,” he says. “A lack of discipline is often the biggest obstacle. A family farm needs corporate-like discipline where everyone knows their role and responsibility.”

He also emphasises the importance of owner-winemakers attending wine shows and events themselves, rather than sending only marketers. “Consumers need to see the face behind the brand.”

Louw partly agrees, adding: “Your brand must be stronger than the person behind it. The wine should continue even if the individual is no longer involved.”

In a time when wine consumption is declining, De Wet believes family brands have particular value. “Wine will not disappear, just make sure your brand remains trusted and visible.”

Emile Joubert, who moderated the panel discussion, added that consumers often gravitate toward family brands because “they are assured the people on the farms know what they are doing, have been doing it for generations and accordingly have gained the trust of the consumer”.

Long-Term Vision and Community Building

Liesl Clüver Rust of Paul Clüver Wines in Elgin, part of the fourth generation in the family business, said they recently added the term “family wine” to their labels. “People need to know this is not just another Elgin wine.” She believes family farming brings a unique long-term perspective: “Some decisions may seem unprofitable in the short term, but the benefits show over decades.”

Clüver Rust also explained how her grandmother established a school for farmworkers’ children in 1957, long before SEB and corporate social responsibility systems existed. “She believed you must care for your community and environment.” The school now accommodates around 1 300 students.

Change and Transformation

Louw, Krige, and De Wet agree that each generation brings change. For example, Louw experimented by producing the Diemersdal Eight Rows Sauvignon Blanc upon his arrival on the farm, a venture that has achieved significant success. Krige focused Kanonkop on Pinotage and Cabernet Sauvignon, while De Wet increased De Wetshof’s Chardonnay plantings from 60% to 80%.

Krige says he has a bee in his bonnet about the obsession with affirmative action, believing that it is about doing the right thing in creating opportunities for your workers. He financially supports individuals if he believes they have the ability to advance.

“The pressure for transformation will never disappear,” he says, “but it has toned down in the wine industry as the government has begun to realise the wine industry is not a pot of gold.”

Despite changing consumer preferences, Louw remains committed to his principle: “No, I’m not going to switch to de-alcoholized wine. Wine should still have a bit of kick!”

KWV has done it again – with another historic performance at South Africa’s biggest wine and brandy competition, the Veritas Awards. For the third consecutive year, this Paarl-based wine and spirits producer was named Best Wine Producer with 11 or more entries, underscoring its exceptional consistency and unrivalled performance across categories. The evening’s highest honour, the Duimpie Bayly Veritas Vertex Award, was also bestowed on KWV The Mentors Perold 2022, recognised as the best wine overall from a “mammoth 1 205 entries”. This marks the third time KWV has claimed the coveted Vertex Trophy – more than any other cellar in South Africa.

In total KWV was awarded a record-breaking eight Double Golds and thirteen Gold medals for its wines and two Double Golds and six Golds for its brandies – outclassing all other brandy competitors on the evening. A historic performance that will no doubt further entrench KWV as pioneers of the South African wine and spirits industry.

KWV’s victory is especially symbolic: the Vertex-awarded wine is named after Professor Abraham Izak Perold, the founding father of Pinotage who worked in KWV’s cellars in the 1920s – and this triumph comes in a year dedicated to celebrating 100 years of South Africa’s homegrown variety. The KWV The Mentors Perold 2022 is a Cape Blend of Pinotage, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec. It is the producer’s flagship red blend and underscores the cellar’s deep commitment to the ongoing evolution of Pinotage, both as a single-varietal and as the backbone of its acclaimed Cape Blend.

“Winning this award once in a winemaker’s career is an unparalleled highlight, but to achieve this three times… there are no words,” said Izele van Blerk, winemaker for The Mentors. “I am profoundly proud of our extraordinary team – from the dedicated grape growers and meticulous viticulturists to our talented winemakers, and especially the remarkable Mentors team. This award represents 15 years of relentless passion, precision, and belief. It also pays tribute to Professor Perold and the incredible 100-year legacy of Pinotage.”
This remarkable hat-trick follows KWV’s Vertex wins in 2020 (The Mentors Orchestra 2018) and 2024 (The Mentors Perold 2020), marking KWV as the only producer in Veritas history to have achieved such sustained excellence.
KWV’s performance at Veritas 2025 cements a year already defined by excellence, with the past week showcasing the cellar’s strength and mastery with Pinotage. Following its recent victories at the Absa Pinotage Top 10 and Absa Perold Cape Blend competitions – where The Mentors Pinotage 2022 and The Mentors Perold 2020 & 2022 all ranked among South Africa’s top wines- KWV once again demonstrated that consistency is its signature.

“KWV’s string of back-to-back awards reinforces KWV’s characteristic dependability, a cellar whose winning quality has become a trademark consumers can count on,” said KWV’s Chief Winemaker, Justin Corrans.
KWV Brandy continues to blaze its own trail of excellence, following its recent triumph at the International Spirits Challenge (ISC) in London, where it was named Brandy Producer of the Year for a record-breaking seventh time. This year, with Veritas Double Golds for its KWV 12 Potstill Brandy and KWV 15 Alambic Blend Potstill Brandy, along with six Gold medals across the rest of its brandy portfolio, the results further affirm KWV’s status as the world’s most decorated brandy producer.
KWV Master Distiller Pieter de Bod commented: “It is an incredible honour to receive this level of recognition from South Africa’s most respected wine and brandy competition – especially on the back of KWV Brandy’s latest international success.”

KWV CEO John Loomes said the achievement reflects the company’s unwavering pursuit of excellence: “KWV has had a truly exceptional year. In a market increasingly defined by uncertainty, consumers look for brands they can trust, and KWV’s hallmark is consistency. With this performance at Veritas, we once again demonstrate that across our entire portfolio, we will always overdeliver on quality. It’s a commitment that has guided us for over a century, and one we remain steadfastly dedicated to.”

KWV’s Winning Results:
Double Gold – Wines

• KWV The Mentors Perold 2022 (Vertex Award)
• KWV Roodeberg Dr Charles Niehaus 2022
• KWV Roodeberg Reserve 2022
• KWV The Mentors Canvas 2022
• KWV The Mentors Petit Verdot 2022
• KWV The Mentors Perold 2021
• KWV The Mentors Canvas 2021
• KWV Laborie Cap Classique Blanc de Blancs 2017
  Double Gold – Fortified Wines
  • KWV Classic Collection Cape Tawny NV

The wine world’s lavish offering of scores, ratings, judgements and trophies has led to two distinctly different sets of wine criticism: the traditional and trusted assessment of wines in a blind-tasted, unsighted environment, and the scores from celebrity wine media components who assess their subject with full knowledge of the bottle’s contents in terms of producer, appellation and personalities behind the brand.

This has resulted in a discernible rift in wine assessment. When it comes to guides, tomes and missives promoting wines that are tasted sighted, one will find a plethora of producers whose names will hardly ever feature as having entered competitions and platforms where the blind, unsighted judging model is employed. Much of the reason being that many producers do not have the confidence to subject their wines to objective scrutiny, being assured that their reputation and backstories will assist in swaying the judge who commits to sighted assessment in reaching a more holistically assumed score.

On the other front, one has the competitions where wines are judged purely on what is offered in the glass. Not a label, reputation or warm smile from the producer in sight. Fair to say that entries to these objective, unknown judging events are less representative of the wine industry than are the reports and special features where the identity of the assessed wines are known by the assessor.

Blind-tasted, or sighted?

For me, there is only one answer: to honour both the wine and the craft of criticism, wines must be judged unsighted. Only by tasting blind can we approach the elusive goal of objectivity, freeing our palates from preconceptions and our pens from bias.

The tyranny of the label

The wine world is awash with information before the first sip is even taken. A label, a region, a vintage, a producer’s name… how can they but not conjure expectations? A famous château or an acclaimed winemaker primes us for greatness before the cork is pulled. Conversely, an obscure appellation, a young, unfamiliar producer or large-scale corporate, volume-orientated winery might quietly lower our expectations, even before the first swirl.

Psychologists call this the “halo effect”, i.e. the tendency to let prior knowledge influence sensory judgment. The same principle applies whether one is tasting a Grand Cru from Burgundy or a newcomer’s Paarl Syrah. To pretend we are immune to these cues is naïve. Even the most experienced tasters are human, and humans are suggestible creatures.

I have seen it countless times: the hush that descends when a wine of grand provenance is poured; the polite murmur when a lesser label is unveiled. Suddenly, the same aromas seem more complex, the same texture more refined, when attached to a name of prestige. This is not deception: it is psychology. But it is precisely why blind tasting matters.

Blind tasting as a leveller

Tasting unsighted does more than remove bias; it restores democracy to the glass. It gives all winemakers a fair hearing, and established names and seemingly untouchable reputations a fair challenge. In a blind lineup, a wine must justify its standing not by the narrative it carries, but by the liquid in the glass.

It is often said that blind tasting strips wine of its story, that it reduces something romantic and cultural to a sterile exercise. I would argue the opposite. When one tastes blind, one truly listens to the wine. Free of distractions, one hears its voice more clearly. The fruit, the structure, the balance. These are what speak: not the marketing copy, the cool, endearing personality of the winemaker and his or her hospitality, nor the price tag.

And how revealing such exercises can be. History is littered with examples of blind tastings overturning assumptions. The 1976 Judgment of Paris remains the most famous: Californian wines, unknown to the European elite, triumphed over Bordeaux and Burgundy when tasted blind. Such moments are not mere curiosities; they are reminders that excellence can come from anywhere, and that even experts can be swayed by reputation.

The illusion of “context”

Those who argue for sighted tastings – like Tim Atkin, Neal Martin and Team Platter’s – often appeal to the notion of context, that understanding a wine’s identity allows for deeper appreciation. There is merit in this sentiment, but it confuses understanding with evaluation.

Context enriches our appreciation of wine as culture, yes. It tells us why a grower farms this slope, why this soil imparts that mineral tang. But when assigning scores, medals, or ratings that influence markets and livelihoods, we step into the realm of judgment. And true judgment – the kind that matters to the consumer – demands impartiality.

To score a wine sighted is to invite bias. Even subtle associations such as price, rarity and vintage can nudge a score up or down. Blind tasting removes that temptation. It insists that a wine’s worth be measured by what is in the glass today, not by its history or ambition or the cosy, personable relationships the producer has kindled with the judge.

The human factor

Of course, blind tasting is not perfect. It can, if mishandled, encourage a certain clinical detachment or overemphasis on surface features such as aromatics, extraction and power at the expense of charm and longevity. But this is a fault of calibration, not of concept. The solution is not to abandon blind tasting, but to refine it.

Truly skilled tasters can reconcile the rigour of blind tasting with sensitivity and experience. A great critic can assess a wine unsighted, then, once its identity is revealed, contextualise their impressions within the broader narrative of terroir and tradition. In this way, we achieve both fairness and understanding.

Integrity in the modern wine world

In today’s hyper-connected, influencer-driven era, where reputations rise and fall with the click of a post, the need for blind evaluation has never been greater. Consumers rely on critics not merely for description, but for trust. If our judgments are to carry credibility, they must be visibly independent of hype, personality and heritage alike.

Blind tasting safeguards that credibility. It assures the reader that when a critic praises a bottle, it is not because of its label or legacy, but because the wine itself deserves it. For producers and consumers alike, it offers reassurance that their wines will be judged on merit alone. And this calls for strictness and discipline. To halt the slide from true merit to mediocrity, something that wine ratings and scores are becoming due to the plethora of guides and scoring narratives where stories are judged to be as important as the quality in the glass.

In an age when transparency is the new currency of trust, blind tasting is our most transparent act.

The wine deserves it

At its heart, blind tasting is an act of respect for the wine, the winemaker, and the consumer. It acknowledges that each wine deserves to be heard before it is judged, that greatness can emerge from unexpected corners, and that humility is the critic’s first virtue.

Wine is, after all, about discovery. And what greater joy than discovering beauty where we least expect it? When the label is hidden, surprise becomes possible again.

To taste blind is not to strip wine of meaning. It is to see it more clearly.