2006 Press Releases
South African Winemakers Apprentice in United States
U.S. wineries host interns in first exchange with South Africa
September 27, 2006
By Carolee Walker
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – Ten South African winemaking apprentices are studying their craft at California and Virginia wineries through a U.S.-South African partnership.
At the end of the eight-week program, sponsored by the newly formed United States-South Africa Wine Foundation in cooperation with the South African Wine Industry Trust in Stellenbosch, the apprentices will return to their country as accredited winemakers.
The 10 were honored September 25 at a U.S. Capitol reception hosted by Representatives Virgil Goode of Virginia, and Sam Farr, Mike Thompson and George Radanovich of California.
Jerome Likwa of Cape Town, at 23 one of the youngest of the apprentices, said that black culture in South Africa traditionally has been more interested in beer than in wine, partly because wine is expensive. "All that is changing; in another four to five years, we will have a large local market for our wines," he said.
Likwa, a cellar assistant at Rustenberg Wines in Stellenbosch, South Africa, is a wine apprentice at Hahn Estates/ Smith and Hook Winery in Soledad, California.
Since the fall of apartheid, South Africa has built a large export market for its new and improved wine industry. Now the seventh-largest producer of wine in the world, it has raised the profile of South African wines abroad through aggressive marketing, especially in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
“One of the strategies I’ll take home with me to South Africa is the way the wine industry works with the tourism industry in California,” said apprentice Veronica Campher, 38, of Koelenhof, who studied wine marketing at the Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association in Monterey, California.
“The way they plan events including tourism and wine put the region on the map, and they plan events year-round,” added Campher, who works for Bouwland Wines. The winery is owned and run by farmworkers who purchased a majority share in the property through a government empowerment project.
“In South Africa we have the same working and climate conditions as in California,” said Lifa Enock Tekiso, 22, an apprentice at Blackstone Winery in Gonzales, California. Tekiso, a senior cellar assistant at Weltevrede Winery in South Africa’s Robertson Valley, also produces his own wine on a small scale.
Like California, South Africa is a winemaking paradise, said Philani Gumede, 27, an apprentice at Scheid Vineyards in Greenfield, California, who is an assistant wine maker at Oranjerivier Wine Cellars in South Africa’s Northern Cape. “The California wineries are more like the wineries in South Africa than the wineries in Virginia,” Gumede added, because the Virginia wineries are smaller and have more environmental obstacles to deal with.
“I realize how blessed we are in South Africa,” said Elma Van Graan, 36, an apprentice at Jefferson Vineyards in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a quality control specialist at Cabriere Estate Winery in the Franschoek Valley of South Africa.
“The Virginia wineries have the odds against them – frost, hurricanes, beetles – and I take my hat off to them,” Van Graan said.
“Until you face adversity, you don’t know what you are capable of,” said Chad Zakaib, director of sales and marketing at Jefferson Vineyards and a program host. The apprentices bring their technical expertise and the hosts bring their experience, Zakaib said. “We learn from them,” he added.
The South African apprentice program is another way to expand the reach of winemaking to a previously disenfranchised sector of the community by training and encouraging blacks to have a business stake in South Africa’s wine industry, according to Judy Chambers, who organized the program.
“Ultimately the program aims to develop skills and create a new class of owners and entrepreneurs in South Africa’s wine industry,” Chambers said.
The interns, who are experienced in the practical workings of the wine industry in South Africa, have had little opportunity in the past for formal education and professional development, she said.
“Most of what I am learning is new,” said Harold Bailey, 33, an apprentice at Kluge Estate Winery in Charlottesville with a particular interest in aperitif wines and brandies. “Everything thus far has been the experience of a lifetime,” added Bailey, who works at Distell Group Ltd. in Stellenbosch.
Chambers said the U.S.-South Africa Wine Foundation hopes to continue the exchange with South Africa by sending American apprentices to wineries there.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov/)