Editorial: SA wine and the great rightsizing

South African wine is entering a phase it has never properly confronted before: life after the revolution.

The winemakers who defined the late 1990s through the early 2010s – the so-called “Young Guns” and later the “New Wave” – are no longer insurgents. They are now in their late 40s and early 50s, internationally recognised, commercially established (to varying degrees), and a well-entrenched presence in the industry. The counterculture has become the culture.

This matters because revolutions are energising precisely because they oppose something. Once that opposition dissolves, the industry must decide whether it evolves – or simply ossifies.

At the same time, the South African wine industry finds itself in a challenging phase: the cyclical nature of production, weak domestic consumption, tightening export markets, rising costs, labour pressures, and globally declining wine consumption. These are not temporary irritants; they are structural realities. They collide uncomfortably with a generation of winemakers who built their identities on independence, experimentation, and optimism.

No next wave – and that’s the point

There is no obvious next cohort waiting in the wings. And that isn’t a failure of talent or ambition; it’s a failure of conditions.

The early 2000s offered cheap old vineyards, a weak rand, low barriers to entry, and international markets eager for discovery. A talented winemaker could rent space, buy fruit, bottle a few thousand litres, and find an importer with relative ease. That world no longer exists.

Grape prices remain a perennial point of contention, even though they have risen significantly at the top end over the past two decades. Compliance is heavy, and consumers are cautious with their spending. Distribution – both domestic and international – is conservative: retailers and importers favour established brands, reorder what already sells, and are slow to trial new entrants. In this environment, the idea of another large, loosely connected group of young winemakers launching brands en masse is fanciful.

What replaces it won’t be romantic. It will be pragmatic. Fewer new brands. Better planned. The next generation of leaders will likely be less mythologised but more commercially adept. Success will not come from embracing unrelated disciplines or side projects; it will come from combining technical mastery in the vineyard and cellar with a deep understanding of pricing, export dynamics, brand positioning, and market storytelling. Those who can navigate these pressures – making wine that is both true to site AND commercially viable – will survive and thrive.

The era of the winemaker as folk hero is quietly ending.

Succession: the awkward middle chapter

Succession is now unavoidable, especially at family-owned estates.

Many founders remain emotionally attached but financially constrained. Their children are often better educated, digitally fluent, and globally exposed – and far less willing to accept poor returns in exchange for tradition. The result will be friction, compromise, and increasingly creative restructuring. Consider: who runs Sadie Family Wines when Eben Sadie retires? Who takes over Rall when Donovan Rall steps down? Savage after Duncan Savage? Will Kanonkop be the same without Abrie Beeslaar?

Expect more partial exits: selling brands rather than land, handing over management before ownership, and bringing in silent partners focused more on balance sheets than birthright. Some famous names will survive only as brands, separated from the people who built them – as seen with Ken Forrester Wines under Advini or the previously family-owned Villiera now part of Grand Chais de France.

For independent winemakers, the picture is starker. Most New Wave producers are asset-light, owning brands rather than vineyards, operating on thin margins and reputational capital. Their options narrow with time: scale up (capital intensive and risky), sell brands to larger players, plateau gracefully, or exit quietly. The idea that every respected winemaker brand will survive intact for decades is comforting – and almost certainly wrong.

The Heineken question

If there is a single event that could accelerate this transition, it is the potential offloading of Heineken’s South African wine portfolio (including everything from 4^th Street to Nederburg).

In the short term, it would be destabilising. Grape contracts could be renegotiated or dropped, bulk prices might fall dramatically, and job losses would be likely. Growers already under pressure would feel it most acutely.

Strategically, a Heineken exit could force a long-delayed reckoning. Beer logic has never aligned comfortably with wine economics. A disengagement might finally allow capacity to correct, remove a player whose incentives were never truly wine-aligned, and open space for more focused ownership.

The risk, of course, is asset stripping: brands sold without vineyards, vineyards without brands, and skills lost in the process. That would be the worst outcome – and one the industry should actively resist.

Wine doesn’t disappear in these moments. It becomes smaller, tighter, and more honest.

Inevitable consolidation

Look ahead a decade, and the likely shape of South African wine is clearer than we might like.

There will be fewer producers, and a clearer distinction will emerge between ethos-driven, narrative-led brands and commercially-focused, export-oriented businesses. Both have a place, but the industry benefits when it is explicit about who is what: David & Nadia, for instance, embodies a purist, site-driven philosophy, while Graham Beck is a highly successful business operation. Each approach is valid, but clarity helps consumers, trade partners, and even potential successors understand a brand’s purpose and trajectory.

Talent will remain abundant – that has never been the problem. Survival will depend on adaptability: controlling costs, understanding markets, communicating clearly, and knowing when to collaborate, when to hold firm, and when to sell.

The next chapter won’t be driven by rebellion. It will be defined by succession, consolidation, and realism. Less glamorous than a revolution, perhaps, but it is the work that mature industries must eventually do.

South African wine is not waiting for another uprising. It is learning, slowly and sometimes painfully, how to grow up.