The second decade of the Cape Winemakers Guild’s existence was largely influenced by the opening up of world markets to a newly democratic South Africa.
1993-2002
There was huge international interest in the Cape as one of the leading wine-producing regions in the emerging 'New World' of wine, which included other southern hemisphere countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Chile, as well as the United States.
It resulted in a wine boom, almost overnight, with local producers scrambling to meet burgeoning demand for South African wine while updating themselves on international consumer tastes and trends, export requirements, and trading conditions. Wine exports more than tripled over this period.
Extensive local and overseas investment in the Cape Winelands saw the number of new wineries and brands skyrocket. Development and growth were further aided by the abolition of the quota system in 1992.
It opened up the Western Cape to exploration and cultivation of virgin, quality vineyard terroir and the rediscovery of prime old vines.
Improvement in the quality of vine plant material and the availability of new clones stimulated growers and inspired winemakers to constantly up the ante on excellence.
By 1996 the Cape Winemakers Guild membership figure stood at just 16, remaining constant and relatively small as new winemakers were invited...
Carl Schultz is a team player. Though you’d never hear it from him, he chose to share his prize money with his vineyard and cellar team af...
A spirit of independence has always marked the way Jeremy Walker has gone about things, despite his chatty nature. Jeremy selects specific g...
The irrepressible Kevin Grant is a thoroughly engaging storyteller. His life in wine has been rich. But for him, it's perhaps less for his a...
David Finlayson grew up running around the vineyards and cellars of his father Walter and uncle Peter, two of the Cape'sWoodlands Farm forem...
'My career has just started,' says Nicky Versveld contentedly. After 25 years at some of the Cape's most renowned big cellars and historic w...
Danie Steytler is tied to the soils of Kaapzicht, his family's Bottelary Hills wine estate near Stellenbosch, by a strong spiritual connecti...
Charles Hopkins was to become particularly renowned for his work with Bordeaux red varieties and shiraz and pinotage, as well as sauvignon b...
Vintage 1992 was David Trafford's first 'official' vintage if wines made for the market is the criterion applied, but this qualified archit...
Gary Jordan is one half of a whole that is Jordan Wine Estate, the other is wife Kathy. When the couple first introduced themselves to the w...
Everything about Marc Kent, even if he doesn’t say it in so many words, clearly states: 'I don’t like pretension.' Then again, in Marc's...
Bruce Jack is the universal man of modern Cape winemaking. His intellectual curiosity and broad tastes have accepted no geographic or philos...
The names of Teddy Hall’s wines evoke some very colourful characters from the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cape Dutch colony....