A duo of female winemakers

As the first black female winemaker in South Africa, Ntsiki Biyela believes that the variety of culture in South Africa can only benefit our wines, as the winemaker’s personality comes across in the wine. She has been making wine for two years at Stellakaya winery in Stellenbosch.

In conversation with Ntsiki it quickly becomes clear that she loves every minute of her job. “I get really excited when we start the blending process, that is when you can really start exercising your artistic talent. Wine is alive so you have as much control over it as any other living being. You can try and make it go in a certain direction while it is in the barrel, but in the end nature will take its course. Only once you start blending can you perform your magic. Blending is the most important aspect of making wine and you really have to come up with something great and that is where passion comes into play,” Ntsiki explains.

Allison Adams, assistant winemaker at Meinert winery in Stellenbosch, has been in the industry for seven years and agrees wholeheartedly with Ntsiki that wine cannot be made without passion. “Wine is not a beverage, but a form of art,” she says. “A good wine can be made with skill, but a great wine is created with passion.”

Allison finds it enlightening to watch a wine develop and observe how it gives life to the barrel. Since wine conveys the personality, heart, philosophy and passion of the winemaker, she views it is a medium through which she can express herself, and share it with others.

“I love the art involved in blending, but even when creating single varietal wines, one may be challenged with blending different ‘batches’ of that specific cultivar. It’s about adding components together, with the result far greater than the sum of the components added,” says Allison.

Both winemakers have travelled abroad to experience other winemaking countries and have not only picked up invaluable experience, but have learnt to appreciate the South African way.

Ntsiki, who experienced the harvest season in Bordeaux, France, says that she returned home happy that South Africa used automated grape crushers.

“In France they do absolutely everything manually. All the grapes are crushed by foot and you end up spending hours plodding around in the mush. At lunchtime all the workers come together and they all have a feast. You really have to be fit and the huge lunches they served don’t help,” she laughs. “Here in South Africa you take maybe half an hour for lunch or you eat on the go because you are so busy. Harvesting is a lot of hard work because you have to be in the fields everyday to check which grapes are ready to be picked. Fortunately it does go quicker here because of the automation. Here, the crushing of five tons of grapes takes five to six hours.”

Allison says that her ideal wine is complex, but not heavy; full bodied, but not tannic; fruitful, but not easy-drinking. “I love the romance of wines being able to lie down for a while so that one can appreciate the evolved product after some years, but one should be able to enjoy it at the time too. I am not too fond of people offering wine for drinking which is too tannic to enjoy, and they make excuses that it’s not quite at ‘peak’ and could actually be great in 20 years time. I feel if you have to make excuses for a wine, especially to yourself, you’re drinking the wrong one,” laughs Allison.
She adds that one needs to feel the ‘wow’ factor when taking the first sip of the wine. One needs to feel warm and happy, otherwise it is not worth it.

Allison plans on having her own brand in the future. She wants to be able to make wines that make people smile and feel good about what they’re drinking.

Ntsiki adds that one should never associate wine with sadness, but instead only drink when you are happy and want to enhance that joy by sharing it with a glass of wine. She feels that even though South Africa still has a growing wine industry, we have great potential and can compete against countries that have been making wine for centuries. “I think that maybe because we are not overly set in our ways, we are more accepting of change, which includes having female and even black winemakers,” she says.

Allison agrees, adding that South Africa is close to, if not past the biggest challenge of convincing everyone that women can do the so-called ‘man’s job’. “We’ve already had a woman as Winemaker of the Year and people nowadays tend to seem really pleased to hear that I’m a winemaker, although they do still note that it is nice to see women making wine too,” says Allison.

Women in the winemaking industry have indeed become increasingly widespread, and if all of them are as passionate as Allison and Ntsiki, then South Africa can look forward to a wine future set to age very well!