We in the wine industry often have a skewed view of how South Africa perceives wine. There is a reason people joke that Capetonians believe the world ends at the Huguenot Tunnel, our perspective can be narrow, shaped by the Western Cape’s dominance in wine production and culture. Yet beyond the tunnel lies the majority of South Africa, where wine is not woven into everyday life in the same way it is in Stellenbosch or Franschhoek.
Food and drink form the cornerstone of culture. They are not just sustenance but symbols of identity, belonging, and heritage. To take ownership of these aspects, South Africans have developed words in our mother tongues that anchor these foods into our language and, by extension, our culture. Think of koeksister, bobotie, dombolo, shisanyama, braai, marog, and samp. These are not just dishes; they are cultural markers. By naming them in our own languages, they become inseparable from the communities and traditions we see ourselves as part of.
This gives us a clue to the question: why has wine struggled to become part of the majority of South Africans’ culture?
One reason lies in the language we use. Even today, the wine industry relies heavily on French terminology to describe processes and characteristics. Words like bâtonnage, dégorgement, sur lie, and even mousse are commonplace in cellars and tasting rooms. These terms carry centuries of European winemaking tradition, but they remain alien to most South Africans. Wine is still spoken of in borrowed vocabulary. Without a linguistic anchor in indigenous languages, wine struggles to feel like it belongs to the broader South African cultural landscape.
South Africa is the 8th largest wine producer in the world. Yet when it comes to consumption, we don’t even crack the top twenty. In fact, South Africa has the lowest per capita wine consumption among major wine-producing nations.
Wine remains associated with elite spaces, Western Cape tourism, or export markets rather than township taverns or rural celebrations.
Recognizing this gap, Stellenbosch University, together with the Chenin Blanc and Shiraz Associations, has launched an ambitious project, translating tasting wheels into indigenous languages. Already, Xhosa and Zulu versions of the Chenin Blanc tasting wheel have been completed.
The results so far have been fascinating. Consumers expressed wine experiences in ways that differed significantly from traditional European descriptors. For example, the wide range of berry flavours, blackcurrant, raspberry and blackberry proved difficult to translate. This is not surprising. Most South Africans, myself included, did not grow up with hedgerows of wild berries. My closest encounter with blackcurrants or raspberries was through artificially flavoured sweets, or perhaps the occasional strawberry from my grandmother’s summer garden. These descriptors were inherited directly from Europe, but they are not part of our lived experience. How can wine become part of our culture if we cannot relate to what we are supposed to taste, let alone describe it?
One of the most encouraging outcomes of the translation project was the empowerment participants felt when given the vocabulary to describe wine in their own languages. Suddenly, they could engage with the wine industry more confidently. They felt emboldened to participate in conversations, tastings, and discussions that had previously seemed inaccessible.
This highlights a crucial point, language is not just a tool for communication it is a gateway to inclusion. By creating indigenous wine vocabularies, we invite more South Africans into the wine conversation.
Another insight from the project was how cultural experiences influence preferences and descriptors. It is generally understood that exposure shapes taste. The more familiar you are with something, the richer your vocabulary for describing it.
There is an old adage that Inuit languages have dozens of words for snow. Whether exaggerated or not, people develop nuanced vocabularies for what they encounter daily. For South Africans, berry descriptors may be foreign, but herbal and earthy notes are far more familiar. Participants had a wide range of descriptors for what might simply described by European tasting notes as “dry notes”, dried grass, hay, herbs had many more descriptors and much more specific descriptors by these consumers.
This offers new insights into what the majority of local consumers might prefer and forces us to reevaluate the wines we produce for the local market if we want to attract these consumers.
The challenge, then, is not just about production or marketing. It is about cultural integration. Wine must be spoken of in our languages, described in terms we understand, and crafted in ways that reflect our preferences.
Vir wyn om deel te word van elke Suid Afrikaner se identiteit soos braaivleis, pap en teleurstellende politici, moet dit ons eie gemaak word nie net vir een groep nie, maar vir almal in Suid Afrika.
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