Wine educator to develop SA course

RAY SMUTS
AIMING at a meaningful chunk of what is set to soon become the world’s biggest wine market – the United States – Wines of South Africa (WOSA) has commissioned a leading international wine educator to develop a course on this country’s wines for US distributors, agents, retailers, the on-consumption trade and consumers.
Award-winning Robin O’Connor, president of the Society of Wine Educators and a man who previously promoted the wines of Bordeaux in the US, Canada and Mexico, will be working in concert with WOSA’s US office to create the education material on South Africa.
The US-born former winemaker and sommelier, who serves as a wine judge and is active in a range of international food and wine societies, paid his first visit to South Africa last month, spending 10 days with a number of independent and corporate producers in all the Cape’s major winegrowing regions.
He pronounced those wines he tasted to be “consistently accessible across all price points and styles, from entry-level examples to the more sophisticated and specialist products”.
Summing up his impressions, O’Connor says: "Unlike some of their New World counterparts, South African winemakers are constantly able to capture the essence of ripeness in their wines, not falling into the trap of overripeness often evident in warmer winegrowing countries. The wines here have good acidity and a fresh, lively zip.”
Says WOSA’s CEO, Su Birch: "As we advance our campaign to promote South African wines in the US market, we recognise we have to expose trade and consumers to what makes us attractive and distinctive if we are to gain any sort of foothold.”
According to the International Wine and Spirits Record study commissioned by trade fair Vinexpo and released earlier this year, US wine sales should reach US$24 billion by 2008, the highest anywhere in the world, followed by the UK, currently still South Africa’s biggest export destination.