During its third decade, the Cape Winemakers Guild continued to find ways of remaining relevant to the South African winelands socio-economic environment in which the members found themselves.
One example was the fruition of an idea by member Philip Costandius, who served on the Guild management committee for four years as vice-chairman and chairman from 2005 to 2008. He saw an opportunity for the Guild to help bring about transformation in the wine industry by cultivating and nurturing winemaking talent among those from disadvantaged groups through a mentoring system.
In 2006 the Guild founded its Protégé Programme. It was established as a three-year internship in which students of viticulture and oenology spent either six months or a year with a different Guild member, being exposed to all sides of the wine business, from viticulture to winemaking to marketing and sales. The participating members were to mentor, support, advise and guide their protégés through their final year's studies.
Students, initially from disadvantaged groups, but in later years including anyone in need and judged worthy of support, who were in their final year at either Elsenburg Agricultural College or Stellenbosch University, were earmarked for consideration. With the assistance of government-overseen agricultural training body AgriSETA, the Guild started offering a certain number of bursaries to support final year students financially during their final year.
'The Protégé Programme actively seeks students who deserve to be in the wine industry.'
The Protégé Programme established a working relationship with the Nedbank Cape Winemakers Guild Development Trust, to which Nedbank also donated via the Nedbank Foundation. The Trust’s trustees during this period were honorary Guild member Francois Naudé, Guild member Louis Strydom, Gerard Martin of industry consultancy WineTech and Howard Booysen (the Protégé Programme’s first protégé who subsequently established his own eponymous label).
As it celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2012, the Cape Winemakers Guild undertook to continue to seek ways to provide a forum for all the country’s finest winemakers to raise the bar on producing quality wine. While it was obvious to be to their own individual benefit (and the ongoing delight of wine lovers the world over), the mission was cemented: to dedicate themselves to entrenching the Cape, which in 2009 had marked 350 years of winemaking history, as one of the modern world's pre-eminent wine regions.
For The Record
Joining the elite list in 2010 of honorary members during the Guild’s third decade was Lynne Sherriff. Based in London since the early 1990s, Sherriff studied winemaking at Elsenburg Agricultural College and Geisenheim in Germany and worked for Stellenbosch Farmers' Winery in the 1980s. She is a Cape Wine Master, Master of Wine (UK) and international wine consultant, educator and judge who has remained a champion of South African wine.
The Guild also honoured, in memorium, Ross Gower, during this period. Klein Constantia's award-winning winemaker when he was invited to join the Guild in 1992, Ross resigned in 2006 to focus on establishing a small family vineyard and cellar in Elgin. He passed away in 2010 shortly before the compilation of Cellarmasters in the Kitchen and Ross Gower Wines, continued by widow Sally and sons Robert, James and Douglas for some years, eventually went into abeyance.
The 21 winemakers who joined the Cape Winemakers Guild during its third decade and were part of the group of 45 who celebrated the CWG's 30th anniversary in 2012 were: Louis Strydom (2004); Bernhard Veller, John Loubser and Niels Verburg (2005); Jacques Borman, David Nieuwoudt and Louis Nel (2006); Adi Badenhorst (2007); Duncan Savage and Dewaldt Heyns (2008); Abrie Beeslaar (2009); Andries Burger, Boela Gerber, Pierre Wahl, Rianie Strydom and Frans Smit (2010); Coenie Snyman, Johan Joubert and Gottfried Mocke (2011); and Bartho Eksteen and Miles Mossop (2012).
Of this illustrious group, only two have since left the Guild. Bernard Veller retired in 2016, though remains dedicated to Nitida, his Dubanville family vineyard and cellar, assisted over the years by some of the Cape’s most talented young winemakers and vineyardists. Johan Joubert decided to step down as a member of the Guild at the end of 2020 to spend time on building his eponymous own brand. Having helped establish Kleine Zalze as a pre-eminent vineyard and cellar, he moved on in 2014 for stints as cellarmaster at Boland and Asara and consultant for various others.
Guild activities can be time-consuming and Adi Badenhorst withdrew in 2018 to devote his energies to growing and making his extensive array of award-winning AA Badenhorst wines, but accepted re-nomination and was back in the fold by the beginning of 2020.
Postscript: The Cape Winemakers Guild celebrates 40 years in 2022, the fourth decade seeing some of the Cape’s finest young vintners invited to join, to help further the cause of consistently top quality, sustainable, community-oriented wine production in South Africa. The 13 newcomers included Andrea Mullineux (2012); Gordon Newton-Johnson (2014); Sebastian Beaumont and Carl van der Merwe (2015) [the latter resigned in 2020 when he emigrated to Canada]; Bruwer Raats and Morné Vrey (2016); Warren Ellis (2017); Samantha O’Keefe and JD Pretorius (2018); Donovan Rall and Peter-Allan Finlayson (2019/20); David Sadie and Chris Alheit (2020); and Alex Starey, Erika Obermeyer and Richard Kershaw (2021).