Fine Brandy Fusion’s new dates are 27-29 June, being held at the Sandton Convention Centre. Presented by the SA Brandy Foundation, this is the event’s fifth anniversary, rebranded from the previously known Fine Brandy Festival). ‘The young and trendy, sophisticates and connoisseurs are tuning in to the modern image of brandy and are eager to explore South Africa’s internationally admired brandy industry,’ says Christelle Reade-Jahn, director of the Foundation.
SA’s multi award-winning R&B and gospel singer, Loyiso Bala, has been appointed as Fairtrade Label South Africa’s very first ambassador. He met with Deon Boshoff, cellarmaster of Place in the Sun Wines at a Devon Valley farm, to see for himself where the grapes are harvested for the Fairtrade-accredited wines.
Bala also met some of the farm’s top farmworkers and presented each with a signed copy of his latest album.
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Hunters Extreme Zero is Distell’s new zero-sugar offering in their existing Hunter’s Extreme cider division and is being positioned as the first beer alternative within the South African liquor market.
Distell approached brand design agency Just Design to assist with the packaging design. The client brief required maintaining the masculine and refreshing cues illustrated in the Hunter’s mother brand, yet developing a more contemporary design for added relevance to current consumers and health-conscious South Africans.
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Groote Post has released the 2011 vintage of their well-loved Unwooded Chardonnay, as well as their elegant 2009 Reserve Pinot Noir. This beautiful historic Cape West Coast farm, owned by the Pentz family, has its vineyard plantings on the cool south-facing upper slopes of the Kapokberg in the Darling Hills.
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The local market’s wine export volumes have shown healthy growth for the first three months of 2012, increasing by 21 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2011. According to Wine of South Africa’s (WOSA) CEO, Sue Birch, we’re seeing an increase in demand for bottled wines from non-traditional markets such as East Africa, Russia and Japan.
Nigeria, in particularly, is looking promising and the organisation tapping that market. The second largest economy in Africa, Nigeria has a projected annual GDP growth of 11,8 per cent until 2016 and a population that’s increasing by 2,35 per cent a year. Sapta Bhattacharyya, associate vice president of global research company Aranca, says that the volume of wine exported to Nigeria between 2007 and 2011 has shown a compound annual growth rate of 24,12 per cent.
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