SA wine marketers turn up the electronic heat

International aficionados visiting South Africa for the 2010 Soccer World Cup extravaganza will have ample opportunity to focus on la dolce vita pursuits – other than boots, balls and goals – not lost on Wines of South Africa as it moves to capitalise, big time. Wosa, the country’s international wine marketer, is in the process of revamping its website (www.wosa.co.za) to include information in as many as 20 languages, the accent on languages spoken by many of the world’s major football enthusiasts. Says Wosa CEO Su Birch: “Currently we are offering some information in the major European languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and French, also spoken in Africa and Latin America, as well as German and Italian, but we are also focusing on Filipino, Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, to reach a broad spectrum of international football lovers. “Despite the global credit crunch, we are making good headway with foreign sales, and are listed on Virgin Online in the UK, shipping wines to Sweden, Finland and Canada and hoping to secure orders from Asia.”