Editorial: South African wine has a South Africa problem
By Christian Eedes, 14 September 2026
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Mike Ratcliffe of Vilafonté recently posted a fascinating account of a trip to Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. His key insights: fine wine remains commercially viable when buyers are engaged and properly introduced; South African wine has the quality, but availability and recognition lag; and sustained market presence, stronger government support and tourism all have a role to play in accelerating exports.
What makes Ratcliffe’s piece interesting is that it is not wrong. Much of it is almost certainly right. The problem is less whether the observations are true than the story we tell ourselves about what they mean. He has returned from the market with evidence, enthusiasm and orders. Good. But the text also reveals how the wine industry habitually converts anecdote into diagnosis, commercial success into reassurance, and complexity into a story about “opportunity”.
Believe the evidence, interrogate the conclusion
The most persuasive thing in the piece is also the least ideological: I went there, I poured wine, people responded, and they bought it. That is useful evidence.
Ratcliffe is also right to resist generational determinism. The wine industry’s obsession with Millennials and Gen Z often involves treating enormous, internally diverse demographic categories as coherent consumer personalities. The fact that Millennials are now 30–45, and occupy very different economic and social positions from the Millennials imagined by wine marketing a decade ago, is a useful corrective.
Likewise, his observations about Canada are valuable precisely because they are concrete: enthusiastic buyers, inadequate availability, Pinotage as an overdetermined signifier of South Africa, Chenin under-recognised, and innovative producers insufficiently represented. That is substantially more useful than another conference presentation announcing that “young consumers want authenticity”.
My instinct, however, is to ask: what follows from the evidence, and what doesn’t? People that were “pleasantly surprised” is evidence some people were pleasantly surprised by Vilafonté. It isn’t necessarily evidence that fine wine has solved its generational problem. Orders demonstrate commercial opportunity, not necessarily a structural shift in consumer behaviour. These distinctions matter.
Who gets to define the problem?
As ever, I’m inclined to ask how the wine industry creates and reinforces the stories it tells about itself. Who has the authority to say what the wine industry’s problems are, and what counts as legitimate evidence?
The industry has a remarkably elaborate vocabulary for describing itself: generational change, relevance, accessibility, premiumisation, authenticity, sustainability, education, consumer engagement. These terms appear descriptive but are also regulatory. They tell producers what kind of consumer supposedly exists and therefore what kind of wine they should make.
Ratcliffe subtly participates in this discourse while also challenging it. He says, correctly, that “we need to understand what makes [wine] relevant to them”. But notice the pronoun: them. The consumer remains an object of investigation. We – producers, trade, commentators – observe them, understand them, introduce wine to them, explain wine to them.
The more interesting question is whether consumers need to be introduced to wine by an industry that takes its relevance and importance for granted.
Another of Ratcliffe’s phrases is revealing: “we must explain how wine can improve the occasion”. It sounds innocuous, even sensible. But it contains an implicit hierarchy of knowledge: the industry possesses wine knowledge; the consumer possesses an occasion; the professional explains how the former can enhance the latter.
Perhaps. But perhaps consumers are already perfectly capable of deciding what improves their occasions.
The most interesting implication of Ratcliffe’s experience is therefore slightly different from his conclusion: perhaps the industry has been too busy deciding what consumers want from wine rather than giving them the chance to discover what they actually want.
The binaries start to wobble
There are the oppositions embedded in the argument. Young versus old. Fine wine versus ordinary wine. Industry versus consumer. America versus South Africa. Established identity versus innovation. Reputation versus reality. Availability versus demand.
Ratcliffe’s observations depend on these distinctions while simultaneously destabilising them. The “young consumer”, for example, turns out not to be particularly young. Millennials are approaching their strongest earning years. Gen Z is approaching 30. The binary between youth and maturity therefore starts to collapse.
And the most revealing opposition is perhaps reputation versus quality. Ratcliffe says South African wine quality has moved faster than its reputation. That is probably true. But reputation is not some unfortunate cloud floating above objective quality. Reputation is produced through distribution, marketing, tourism, critics, importers, retailers, history and repeated consumer encounters. In other words, reputation is infrastructure.
The slightly uncomfortable conclusion
The danger in wine commentary is not optimism. God knows the industry could use some. The danger is converting an encouraging experience into a reassuring narrative. Ratcliffe’s experience tells us something important: sophisticated buyers and consumers are open to South African wine; excellent wine can surprise them; commercial opportunity exists. It also tells us that availability, communication and sustained market presence matter enormously. But it doesn’t prove that the wider fine-wine market is healthy, that the generational challenge has been overstated, or that government funding will necessarily solve our export problems.
More importantly, it points to a bigger challenge. South Africa doesn’t simply need to be available internationally. It needs to be recognisable. It needs more cachet. Because being a good alternative to American, Australian or Chilean wine isn’t quite enough. An industry can make excellent wine, offer compelling value and still remain an also-ran if consumers don’t instinctively understand why South Africa is somewhere they should look.
We have some of the ingredients: extraordinary places, old vines, distinctive varieties, ambitious producers and a wine culture with genuine depth. The question is whether we can turn those ingredients into something bigger than a collection of individual success stories.
In other words, the task is ultimately to make South Africa itself mean something in the mind of the international wine drinker. Getting listings takes very real graft. Pounding the pavement and showing up are necessary but they aren’t sufficient. It’s not simply about getting more South African wine into the market. It’s to make South Africa harder to forget. And that’s another reason to be so, so grateful to the Springboks.
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Emile Louw Joubert | 14 September 2026
Well, this piece is a bit of alright. And an apt ending, to boot. The Boks: one of the world’s great brands. Point. How relevant would it not be for South African wine to – generically – align our geographical and physical fabric with el Bokke? The Greatest Rivalry series would have been an apt start. See the global mileage the series got? Why no taste-off between Kiwi and Cape Sauvignon Blanc, booted out to the world, with keen banter and inter-nation insights
Japanese importers tell me interest in SA wine went Nagasaki ballistic after Boks won World Cup there in 2019.
Why can’t SA wine bodies lighten up, and connect wine through a broader South African channel? So many opportunities. Look on the lighter, fun side. If you don’t believe in promoting wine through fun, humour and whimsy you should not be promoting it at all.. .but first, another walk-about tasting in another hall, in another country. .
Louis | 15 September 2026
I agree that South Africa needs to mean something more distinctive in the mind of the international consumer. But SA wine isn’t facing these challenges in isolation. Other producing countries and regions are grappling with the same shifts in consumption, distribution and recognition and developing their own strategies to defend or grow their share of the market.
Ultimately, South Africa is competing for the same space on shelves, restaurant lists and in consumers’ minds. Understanding what others are doing, and where SA can genuinely differentiate itself, seems essential.
wiebo anno van der meulen | 15 September 2026
Christian i get the feeling throughout this piece that you are saying Ratcliffe’s observations are correct ,but that he doesn’t quite understand what they mean. There is an odd intellectual condescension in that. you accept his evidence, but repeatedly position yourself as the person who understands its deeper significance. am i reading you unfairly?
Christian Eedes | 15 September 2026
Hi Wiebo, I don’t think you’re reading me entirely unfairly, although my intension certainly wasn’t meant to be condescending. I have huge respect for Mike Ratcliffe, and I think it’s genuinely valuable that an industry figure of his stature is putting substantive ideas into the public space for stakeholders to engage with.
My aim was to interrogate the implications of his observations rather than suggest that he doesn’t understand them. There’s inevitably some interpretation involved in any piece of commentary, and I’m happy to stand behind mine.
The reason I’m pushing quite hard is that, while there’s no shortage of debate in wine, there is a shortage of debate that actually leads to meaningful progress in solving the fundamental problems facing South African wine. An industry that continues to struggle to be profitable, while the national vineyard has declined in size every year since 2006, needs its assumptions challenged. That applies to all of us, Mike included, but I’m certainly not singling him out.
I’d much rather have a slightly uncomfortable argument about the substance than have everyone politely agreeing while the underlying problems persist. What I was gunning for was less “I understand this better than Mike” and more “let’s push the thinking a little further”.
Trevor Gray | 15 September 2026
I have been exposed to the wine industry for virtually all of my adult life in different facets. I have also represented international brands( Chile and Italy) so have seen the different approaches.
I now operate in the wine tourism space and can attest to the enthusiasm and general appreciation of our wines.
The overall arguments and arising are indeed prescient. My caveat / observation is possibly simplistic in that the average international visitor could easily come to love our wines and develop an affinity for our great country. So far so good! Then reality bites with the availability factor. Our distribution footprint is nowhere near the point where we can demand meaningful shelf or wine list presence.
Yes, distribution partners and marketers like Tim are integral to the ecosystem however we are not maximizing our opportunities. Dare I suggest that Brand SA should be the tip of the spear?
Mike and numerous others are doing sterling work and their order books hopefully reflect this. We talk a big game regarding premium messaging however does the premium market actually have the ability in the short term to drive demand? I have come to learn of something called reassuring pricing which the consumer settles on rather than the two extremes.
If we were to do a benchmark blind tasting of the market leaders from the new world at the volume drivers where would we rate?
It is easy and fashionable to lob grenades at our governing bodies decrying budget vs outcomes or targeted campaigns.
My 5 Cents would be a proportionate budget spend on brand SA pushing whatever positive messaging is relevant.
The tip of the spear is Brand SA and wine and all the other components that make up our USP is the bevelled cutting edge?
Jenna Coetzee | 15 September 2026
“Ratcliffe is also right to resist generational determinism. The wine industry’s obsession with Millennials and Gen Z often involves treating enormous, internally diverse demographic categories as coherent consumer personalities. The fact that Millennials are now 30–45, and occupy very different economic and social positions from the Millennials imagined by wine marketing a decade ago, is a useful corrective.”
FINALLY!!! YES!!!!!
Donald Griffiths | 15 September 2026
I would guess that part of the attraction to foreign investors in investing in SA wine is that the distribution and sales networks in those foreign markets already exist and can then be exploited? Why then are the SA brands owned by these foreign companies not performing better internationally? Or are they? I see Heineken recently cleaned up awards at Michelangelo…are we to expect a spike in demand internationally and resultant sales for their wine brands? Has anyone done any analysis on this particular section of market? This may go a long way to answering some of these questions. Its not so much about quality vs price, sustainability and having a good story but more about being backed by a globally recognised company who already have the distribution and sales networks established and entrenched across various markets. The pragmatics of actually getting your wine to international markets at the required scale trumps all other considerations?
Stanley Edwards | 16 September 2026
We’ve got everything, Great wine. Inspired people. Amazing winemakers. Awesome wine estates. What is seems we don’t have is enough money.
A two week trip to Switzerland, Belgium & Canada is very expensive. How many wineries could realistically afford this?
Mike mentioned that WOSA achieves a great deal with limited resources. How do we get them more budget? What more could they then achieve?
Mike also called for ‘stronger government support for international marketing’ and that he ‘intends to take that argument more directly into conversations with government.’ Let’s hope he can make some progress where many other have not succeeded.
Yes, wine tourism has great potential but it needs more support from government – which is a very tough task.