Four young South Africans are showcasing a new generation in the world of local wine.
Pemla Makanda
Wine steward at One&Only Cape Town
After completing an electrical engineering certificate at Port Elizabeth College, Makanda moved to Cape Town in 2007. After working in administration for an estate agency (where they’d often celebrate a sale with wine), she applied for a hostess job at One&Only Cape Town.
“Unfortunately, the job was taken,” says the mother-of-two. “But they offered me a waitressing job, which I accepted.”
In her first month, she was voted best waitress. Then it happened again in the next two months. But although the hotel wanted her to move to the front office, she was more comfortable in her role of pairing wine with food so that both could be served in the best way.
The hotel offered her wine training, facilitated by Wines of SA and sponsored by Glenelly, a Stellenbosch winery that sponsored further courses for her. And as time passed, her love for wine began to grow. “I love cabernet sauvignon,” she says. “But the more I taste wine, the more it keeps changing.”
Looking ahead, her goal is to work in sales. As she likes the variety of wines from different farms, she’d like to “be out there talking about wines” and perhaps making sales as a rep.
“I didn’t know how beautiful wine is. There are so many ways of enjoying it.”
Phelisa Moni
Wine advisor at Spice Route Winery
After matriculating, Moni worked in one of Shoprite’s retail warehouses for about two years. But money was tight. So one of her colleagues suggested she apply to the Pinotage Youth Development Academy, which prepares young and previously disadvantaged South Africans for employment within the wine industry (or related hospitality and tourism sectors).
“I used to work on table grape farms during the school holidays as a teenager and once worked with grapevines for three weeks during harvest,” she says. “The application form took me back to those experiences. I was interested in learning more about the wine industry.”
Moni left her job to study at the Stellenbosch-based academy for a year. “We learnt about sales, marketing, hospitality, winemaking, and wine tourism,” she says of the practical and technical skills she acquired during the course.
After working at KWV (winemaking), Spier (hospitality), Simonsig (sales and marketing) and Nooitgedacht (vine production), Moni applied for an exchange programme that was facilitated by Elsenburg College. She was accepted on a trip to France, which let her spend six weeks in Burgundy, two weeks at a college, and time with a winery family at Domain Dubois in Côte du Nuits.
“It was lovely,” she says. “I worked in the vineyards and winery during harvest. The language was difficult, but I learned more about the traditional way of winemaking by hand.”
Now she works at Spice Route Winery. Her job requires her to host tastings and explain the wines. “I deal with local and international guests. The internationals enjoy the sessions more, though only buy three or four bottles. Locals aren’t as much fun, but they buy more wine.”
Praisy Dlamini
Assistant winemaker at Zonnebloem
Dlamini grew up in Empangeni and, in a pilot programme for top schools in the area, was accepted to study on a Department of Agriculture bursary. She chose winemaking, partly to challenge the belief that people in KwaZulu-Natal like unqombothi (Xhosa maize beer) more than wine.
“I worked in the cellar during the last year,” she says of her bachelor of agriculture (viticulture and oenology) degree at Elsenburg College. Once she completed her studies, she was the Cape Winemakers Guild’s first female protégé to receive a three-year internship, a mentorship initiative for winemaking graduates who show exceptional talent (and an opportunity for disadvantaged people to further themselves).
One of her mentors was Glen Carlou’s David Finlayson, who had moved to his own farm in Edgebaston. “From David I learnt perseverance. When you start a wine farm, it’s frustrating. He had only a few barrels and five tanks.”
Another mentor was Pieter Ferreira of Graham Beck Wines. He taught her the importance of training and working as a team. “Spending a year with him was the best of everything,” she says of the man she describes a good teacher who oozes passion all over the place. “That year I got to make my own barrel: a cabernet from one of his blocks.”
In 2011, Dlamini acquired a full-time job as assistant winemaker for Fleur du Cap. She then moved to Zonnebloem in 2013. And while she admits that’s she’s more of a “cabernet sauvignon girl”, she doesn’t want to limit herself to just making red wine. “I feel I’ve got white wine experience and now I’m busy with red,” she says. “If you do each cultivar separately, you give attention to each of them.”
Heinrich Kulsen
Assistant winemaker at Nederburg
Perhaps it’s not surprising that Kulsen ended up working at Nederburg. After all, he grew up with a view from the Paarl estate’s vines and still lives two minutes away from the cellar.
Kulsen studied agriculture at Elsenburg College on a full-time bursary. He applied for the Cape Winemakers Guild Protégé Programme.
“It was a vigorous process to be accepted,” he says. “But you get exposure to so many types of wine and exposure to so many big names in the industry. And you get to work with and learn from these people who make South Africa’s premium wines. That’s why I applied and spent three years as a protégé.”
Kulsen spent time at Ernie Els in a cellar focused on red wines and got experience with bubbly at Villiera Wines. He spent his last mentorship at Hermanuspietersfontein, which gave him experience making white wines. This proved useful when he joined Nederburg in October 2014 as assistant white winemaker, after which he moved to making reds in August.
Although it’s challenging to work with established and lesser-known varietals, he enjoys learning about making a range of different wines. One of the “life-changing” highlights of his protégé programme was the time he spent working at a cellar in France. As a winemaking intern in Burgundy, he worked with chardonnay and pinot noir. He even got to make a wine blend for the annual Cape Winemakers Guild Auction, which was sold to raise funds for other protégés.
“I have to up my game every day,” he says of his job. “It’s important to keep abreast of new developments in wine in South Africa and other parts of the world. The more we learn, the more we know what there is still to learn.”
Eugene Yiga, Sunday Tribune