Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James
most areas land values were greatly depreciated. No longer was there a labor shortage. The commission remarked that “the wages paid have decreased considerably, and . . . the condition of the labouring classes generally is a deplorable one . . . ; the grower has been forced to confine himself only to the most necessary of work on his farm.” It quotes a farmer in Paarl saying, “It used to be very difficult for us to get coloured labor, but now if you hold up your finger you can get hundreds.”
But production was, as ever, excessive. The average harvest in 1907 and 1908 yielded nearly 45,000 leaguers. The 1909 harvest was apparently a very poor one, however—“a decided blessing in disguise, seeing that, as far as can be ascertained, considerable stocks of wine and spirits of the previous vintage were still on the hands of merchants, farmers and certain of the Wineries at the commencement of this year.” In fact, there is some evidence that the area of the colony’s vineyard had decreased. The commission noted that census returns for 1904 had given the total area under vines as 16,610 morgen (a morgen being about 0.85 hectare), while for 1909 it appeared to be 10,120 morgen. This major decline doubtless reflects the depredations of the assiduous phylloxera: in 1904 there were some 19.25 million grafted vines and still 58.5 million ungrafted ones—presumably many of the latter had succumbed by 1909 and not been replaced.
But more than the total production, perhaps, it is interesting to note the proportions of the different varieties given for 1909. Greengrape was still by far the largest contributor to the total, but down from its near-monopoly to 40 percent. Steen (Chenin Blanc), White French (Palomino), and Red Muscadel (Muscat) were high on the list, but Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc now featured (Syrah was not listed, but was planted at Groot Constantia in the 1890s). More significant was the rise of Cinsaut (called Hermitage). It appears to have been brought into the country about 1880 and in 1909 was third only after the two popular white grapes. The commission in fact specifically connected Hermitage to a factor it identified as contributing to excess wine production, the racial prohibition that had grown up in southern Africa: “Before the imposition of restrictions on the sale of liquor to Natives in the Transvaal, a large demand existed among the Natives on the mines in that country for Hermitage, sweetened and slightly fortified”—thus accounting for the growth in those plantings. The commission noted that in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, “the sale or supply of liquor to any coloured person is prohibited”; an essentially similar situation prevailed in Natal, and “in most districts of the Cape Colony itself restrictions prevail against the sale of wine and spirits to the aboriginal native.” These were all British colonies, and it hardly needs pointing out, of course, that racism did not leap forth new from the head of the National Party when it came to power in 1948 and formalized apartheid.
One response to the severe crisis was producer cooperation. The 1905 government inquiry had recommended the establishment of cooperative wineries to enable more effective use of machinery and lower costs, as well as to realize the benefits of collective marketing. With substantial government financial support, nine cooperatives were established, the Drostdy in Tulbagh being the first in 1906. Four of them, however, were not to survive long in the continuing conditions of slump and overproduction. But a man called Charles Kohler was already starting to work on his conviction that only a centralized, unifying body could resolve the crisis. The organization that was born from the crisis and Kohler’s work was to change fundamentally the course of Cape wine production. “South African wine production” we should call it now, in light of the political uniting of the two defeated boer republics (Transvaal and Free State) with the two British colonies (Cape and Natal) as the Union of South Africa in 1910. That unity was to also affect the wine industry, which was henceforth, after its earlier central importance in the Cape’s economy, to be just one struggling agricultural sector among others in the eyes of a national government—all needing, at this period, to capitalize in order to survive.
THE KWV YEARS: SOUTH AFRICAN WINE TO 1994
For the greater part of the twentieth century the character and conditions of South African winemaking were shaped by the organization that came to be known simply as the KWV. Its origins were in a particularly severe episode of the Cape’s perennial overproduction that hit the wine industry in the early decades of the twentieth century. The initial aims of the organization were limited to resolving that problem, but its ambitions grew, and it was granted progressively more regulatory power by a succession of governments. Particularly close ties with the National Party and other forces of Afrikaner capital ensured that it was something more than influential in any legislation concerning the industry. This centralized power did have positive benefits for the industry (apart, that is, from guaranteeing an income for wine farmers), such as allowing a relatively smooth transition to an effective appellation and certification system. On the other hand, its strategies did much to discourage the making of fine wine, and left some crucial aspects of the industry very weak by the time its grip was fully relaxed in the 1990s, almost simultaneously with the collapse of the apartheid state.
Desperation, rather than visions of power, was behind the first steps toward producer unity in the early twentieth century. A few of the new cooperatives were surviving; others had collapsed. Joint action also came about at different times in protest against government increases in excise duties. In 1916, after representations on this issue failed to move the authorities, Charles Kohler, who had been for some years active in organizing wine farmers, presented plans for an industrywide cooperative that would control supply and thereby regulate the prices at which wine and brandy would be sold to wholesalers. A draft constitution was put forward, and a Viticultural Union held its first meeting in Paarl in December 1917; the following year it was floated as a company under the name the Koöperatieve Wijnbouwers Vereniging van Zuid-Afrika Beperkt (Cooperative Winegrowers’ Association of South Africa Limited). The KWV, as it became universally known, was registered as a “mutual cooperative society” in 1923. Its aim was to “direct, control and regulate the sale and disposal by its members of their produce” in order to “secure or tend to secure for them a continuously adequate return for such produce.”
The overwhelming majority of wine farmers signed up—with just a few in Constantia and Stellenbosch opting out on the grounds that they had no trouble selling high-quality wine. Deals were made with “the trade”: the merchants would buy only from the KWV, which would not compete with them in the local market, but rather concentrate on exports. The prices paid to farmers rose significantly for a year or two, with the KWV at that stage converting the surplus into ethyl alcohol, but soon old patterns of overproduction were on the rise again. The system was not working well, but government intervention created a turning point for the KWV’s fortunes. Against the objections of the wholesalers, the Wine and Spirits Control Act of 1924 gave the KWV the power to fix annually the minimum price to be paid to farmers for distilling wine; for the time being, “good wine”—that is, wine not intended for distillation—was not included. This was just the first step in the arrogation to the KWV of great power.
At the same time, the KWV made plans to develop and improve the brandy industry by centering its distillation on the production of mature, pot-stilled brandy; it was, in fact, to become one of the world’s largest brandy producers. Quality of winemaking, too, began to improve. No doubt the support of the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of Stellenbosch (it was founded in 1917, though teaching in these subjects had been undertaken for nearly two decades already) was useful. The department’s first director was the eminent Dr. Abraham Izak Perold, who had already made a useful contribution to Cape viticulture by importing a number of new varieties and doing a good deal of viticultural research. That research was to lead to his publishing a Treatise on Viticulture (in Afrikaans in 1926 and in his own English translation a year later), as well as to the almost incidental creation of Pinotage, the most significant new variety produced in this country. Perold became the KWV’s chief research scientist in 1927. Among other activities he wrote numerous articles on improved winemaking techniques in the Wine and Spirits magazine founded for the benefit of wine farmers.
Perold was later joined at the KWV by another scientist, Charles Niehaus, who was responsible for establishing the local sherry industry, which was to be very important for some decades. The making of table wines also benefited, though at a very basic level: there is