When Hannah Bellemare was growing up in freezing-cold Skellefteå, a small picturesque town in Sweden known for its ice hockey, she was a lonely girl who chased insects in the garden and ate the wild berries she found. She would also spend hours learning to cook in her mother’s kitchen, rustling up gourmet dishes for her family from the age of 11.
These days, she’s one of the few gastro-sommeliers in the world, based in Philadelphia, in the United States (US), a far cry from her icy hometown. She works in fine dining restaurants around the world pairing wine and food.
“Growing up, I always wanted to taste everything, everything from insects, wild berries in the forest, wine or whatever I could get my hands on. I was curious to know what it would taste like… I bullied my mom out of our kitchen. I took over cooking for the family and wouldn’t let my mom in the kitchen anymore,” says Bellemare in a telephone interview from the US with FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
“I have always wanted to inspire passion for food, to share my knowledge of food and wine pairing, and to inspire others. I want the world to understand the science behind food and wine pairing.”
Bellemare says she never planned on making a living out of cooking. But the passion developed gradually and as she grew older, she realized her never-ending affair with food and wine.
Graduating with a degree in gastronomy at Umeå University, in Sweden, she turned entrepreneur, launching her own company, Dalalva Wine Tastings, where she taught people all about food and wine pairing. Meanwhile, she studied for a sommelier diploma from The Swedish Restaurant Academy of Stockholm.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31595 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Forbes-3-edited-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Forbes-3-edited-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Forbes-3-edited-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Forbes-3-edited-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Forbes-3-edited.jpg 681w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
In 2013, Bellemare relocated to Philadelphia to stay with her husband, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, a French professional ice hockey player. She taught for a short while at Drexel University, in the US. She also changed the company’s name to Dalalva Wine Education &amp; Consultation, extending its services to corporate consultations. She also has a website where she posts her cooking videos and recipes.
“There are few people in the world with this specific title [gastro-sommelier]and expertise since most countries don’t even offer gastronomy as a university degree. I would guess there are between 10 to 20 people in the world with this title, but I don’t really know,” she says.
“I create recipes around the wine that I want to use rather than creating a dish and then trying to pair a wine to it. You can change the recipe but you can’t change the wine unless you are a winemaker. My whole life I have been very determined never to let other people’s ideas influence me, I trust my own ideas.”
Bellemare is also writing a cookbook, to cater for those who prefer dining at home and spending quality time with loved ones.
“The recipes in the book are what I call fine dining at home, it’s for people who want to learn about fun cooking techniques, beautiful plating. Some people don’t want to go out and pay dining prices for something they could do at home.”
Bellemare’s work has taken her around the world, learning different cuisines whilst also imparting her knowledge to others.
And she loves coming to South Africa for its bountiful food and wine landscapes.
“South Africa is one of my favorite places in the world, I make any excuse to be there. I find the South African Chardonnays inspiring because they are such quality wines,” she says.
Her recent month-long trip to South Africa was spent on the farms of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek; the farming towns with the oldest vineyards and Cape Dutch architecture in the Western Cape province.
From her mother’s humble kitchen in a pretty Scandinavian town, Bellemare is sharing her rare culinary expertise with the world.

Forbes-5-edited

Something To Wine About

Alonely dirt road leads to a rustic farmhouse with old-fashioned shutters, wooden beams and creeping vines. By the entrance are a few ageing oak barrels, still sturdy and red from years of storing wine.
It is a fitting prelude to the man you are about to meet.
We are at Vriesenhof, a farm nestled between the Stellenbosch and Helderberg mountains in the Paradyskloof Valley of South Africa’s Western Cape. These winelands are rife with grapes and gossip, and boast a colorful cast of characters, mostly wine farmers who relate the valley’s stories, and often are stories themselves.
This is a world where wine and winning are spoken of in the same breath.
And in this cavernous house, a remodeled 18th century cellar, Jan Boland Coetzee, the renowned Springbok rugby player and venerable vintner, exemplifies both.
Within seconds of meeting him on this impromptu visit, Coetzee shows he is a true son of the soil. It is a warm April. Barefoot and brisk, in beige shorts, he darts from the living room, to the kitchen, to the backyard – where his elder daughter Hanle, who lives close by, is earnestly laying out tables for an evening do at the house.
In the kitchen – shelves laden with wine bottles – there are sizzling sounds on the stove, followed by the aroma of – possibly – deep-fried fish cakes. Coetzee is issuing instructions to a few laborers at the back. He soon returns to sit at the large yellowwood dining table, decked with flowers in vases set like a Vincent van Gogh painting.
Originally Dutch, Coetzee says his ancestors came to the Cape in 1679. It is here, in this valley at the foot of the Stellenbosch mountains, that he learned the game of rugby and the art of making wine.
Coetzee purchased Vriesenhof in 1980 – “for its south-facing slopes on the cooler side of the foothills” – and has been here since, cultivating plantings of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, pinotage and pinot noir, sold under the labels of Vriesenhof and Paradyskloof.
“I love to take pride in what is ours, what is South African,” says the valley’s doyen of pinotage.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4031" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Teddy-Leung-Shutterstock.com-002-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“I focused on pinotage when I was young, as it is the only grape variety since its birth that has really taken on a commercial collective in the world of wine. And if it is doing well, it means we are proud of it, because it is born under the African sun, it is performing under the African sun, and we take pride because we believe it is ours.”
Coetzee pauses between words and sentences, but when he speaks, he makes you feel the earth around you: the air, the sun, the soil. Clearly, it is his territory – and terroir.
“Wine is a mirror of the environment first and foremost, because it is a product of the soil. In that, lies our future. Man needs to understand the soil, the plant, to put it in its right place in the right environment to give it its best. And the more you care, the better it gets,” he says.
The man has a deep love for the farm, and is happy just to be in it – with his glass of chardonnay.
“I love what I am doing, I love the farm, and I love drinking good wine. It’s as simple as that,” says the sprightly 70-year-old whose days on the 85-hectare farm begin at 4AM.
Coetzee studied oenology and viticulture at Stellenbosch University.
“I didn’t become a vet so I became a viticulturist. It’s amazing how many winemakers wanted to become vets,”
he laughs.
“I still have the record for writing the most exams before I passed. So I have a very broad knowledge. Like the wooden barrel, it’s [like] the un-opening of old wine.”
While still a student, Coetzee became captain of the university’s Under-18 rugby team.
“Everyone in South Africa plays rugby from a young age,” he says.
He played for his provincial team, Western Province, from 1967 to 1979, and played flank for the national team, the Springboks, from 1974 to 1976.
He stopped playing when a tour was cancelled in 1979 on account of apartheid when South African sport also took a hit.
“From a South Africa point of view, things were bad in terms of international rugby because of apartheid. We were isolated… When the tour was cancelled, I stopped playing and went to France in 1981 to work in a wine house in Burgundy for a year,” says Coetzee.
That was the tipping point. He returned wiser, and helped lift the profile of wine in Stellenbosch. Today, he sells his wine all over the world; Scandinavia is his biggest market.
Coetzee may have stopped playing rugby, but he uses it well in his wine analogies.
“We used to export 74 percent of our crop, but now try and get as close as possible. We do 50:50 local and export. Rugby has taught me to have two legs. If you kick [with] one leg, one can hopefully stand on the other,” he says.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4030" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Fingerhut-Shutterstock.com_-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
Coetzee vividly remembers that tear-jerking moment when Nelson Mandela handed the trophy to Springbok captain François Pienaar during the 1995 World Cup final. Coetzee was present, as a spectator.
“It was a special day, not only for sport but also for mankind. I remember that moment clearly. I can still see it.”
Coetzee has ensured his legacy – in both rugby and wine – lives on.
“My grandsons [between the ages of five to 10] all play rugby. They also made their first wine in 2015. Each of them has a barrel from the vintage of the year they were born in,” says Coetzee.
Divorced, Coetzee lives by himself. Fortunately, his four children are all into farming in some way, and visit frequently. His daughter Hanle says the most remarkable thing about her father is his humility.
“He has 40 years plus of experience of harvests and climates in the wine industry. He has seen good vintages, and bad. The new, younger winemakers are well-traveled, whereas in his time, the exposure and material were limited. He has old-world knowledge. If he drops dead tomorrow, it’s all gone, I don’t know how to capture it,” she says.
How much is he worth? Coetzee thinks long and hard, before answering: “I actually can’t put a number to it; we are not [into] numbers. We want to be loving and caring people, and that you can’t measure in currency. Money is an evil necessity. I am a big believer of the barter system – milk farmers and cheese farmers must drink wine, and I must eat cheese. They must produce meat, and they must drink wine. I try to convince all my farming colleagues in the mutton, beef, cheese, fish and lobster businesses to [barter].”
And are they listening? For sure, he says with certainty.
Coetzee has many admirers in the valley, across generations. About three kilometers from his Vriesenhof farmhouse, at the Kleine Zalze estate, its owner Kobus Basson, another Stellenbosch success, says Coetzee was instrumental in exposing him to the lifestyle around the wine business. He turned the rugby-playing lawyer into one of the region’s top wine farmers.
“Jan Coetzee is one of the characters of Stellenbosch, you can’t tell a wine story without him,” says the 57-year-old Basson of the senior entrepreneur.
“He is the type of guy [who] if there is snow in the mountains, would still walk in his short pants, with muscles like he has. He is a Stellenbosch legend, one of the five wine personalities that built this industry.”
Basson’s father was a figurehead in the local rugby club and that was his first connection with Coetzee. Plus, Basson’s initial 10-year legal practice ensured he interacted with most of the wine farmers.
“When you work with them, it’s like a friendship. Jan was the guy who spent a lot of time in France, and knew all the wine areas well. In 1996, I went with him and a few other prominent guys – while I was still a legal guy – on a trip to Argentina, and that gave me a completely different perspective of the industry. They were much ahead of us.”
Basson says South Africa’s wine industry matured only in the last 20 years. After he finished his law degree at Stellenbosch University, Basson took a year off to go to central Europe to be a rugby coach.
“I went there to play and coach and work on relationships, in what they called the European B-League rugby countries. It actually exposed me to other things – to wine, food and the lifestyle around it… I understood how the Germans, Dutch and French work in a different way with wine… I immediately got this idea about lifestyle and food and wine combinations.”
Returning to Stellenbosch, he practiced as a lawyer, and got into the wine business more by default than design.
“My wife came from a wine family, and told me she wanted to live on a farm. I said ‘forget it, I am not farming’. Eventually, in 1996, her brother was running the family farm, and was looking for an opportunity with a winery, and I told him about Kleine Zalze [that I had heard] was on the market. He asked me for money to pay the deposit, and that’s how I got involved. He said ‘in the meantime, you can have 50 percent share of it’, and before I realized, I was sucked into it, because this is a business that sucks in money, in terms of capital investment.”
They bought the 40-hectare farm and after the first harvest, signed up with importers from Britain, who had high expectations.
“I thought, ‘either you do it properly or bail out’. In retrospect, I can see how the year in Germany helped, how my friendship with Jan Coetzee formed me,” says Basson.
During the nineties in South Africa, golf and wine tourism was just starting, so he thought: “Why do we go to Tuscany and Provence, when we actually have everything here? Why can’t we create it here?”
It was hard work. Every day, for a decade, Basson woke up at 3AM.
“I had no choice. It was crazy and difficult years, the interest rates went up between 1998 and 2002. I had to invest my shares and everything I had. Cash flow was the challenge during those years; we had to slowly and steadily build this up.”
Today, Kleine Zalze is 280 hectares, including the wine estate, an 18-hole golf course, a 47-bedroom lodge and the award-winning Terroir restaurant with chef Michael Broughton. Basson says all the businesses are doing very well.
“We are doing well in terms of exports [too]; I would say we do more than 200,000 cases of Kleine Zalze wines a year. And we have won several awards,” he says.
Chenin blanc is the brand’s specialty.
The last season for wine tourism in Stellenbosch was wonderful, adds Basson, who is also a director of the Stellenbosch Wine Route.
“If we stay calm and focused, it’s a very exciting period ahead… We have done research and the interesting thing is they compared different regions, and Stellenbosch has by far the highest visitor return rate. We have guys who have come to Stellenbosch 18 years in a row. You won’t find [a place] more beautiful. You have no idea how sexy Stellenbosch is.”
And like any good sportsman, he says his greatest asset is his team.
“You need strong players in your team… [The wine industry] is a little bit like top-end sport. It’s so competitive, if you don’t play with your best team, you are not going to win.”
What is it they say about wine and winning in the valley? It’s the same thing. And Coetzee agrees.

Electrifying

Alonely dirt road leads to a rustic farmhouse with old-fashioned shutters, wooden beams and creeping vines. By the entrance are a few ageing oak barrels, still sturdy and red from years of storing wine.
It is a fitting prelude to the man you are about to meet.
We are at Vriesenhof, a farm nestled between the Stellenbosch and Helderberg mountains in the Paradyskloof Valley of South Africa’s Western Cape. These winelands are rife with grapes and gossip, and boast a colorful cast of characters, mostly wine farmers who relate the valley’s stories, and often are stories themselves.
This is a world where wine and winning are spoken of in the same breath.
And in this cavernous house, a remodeled 18th century cellar, Jan Boland Coetzee, the renowned Springbok rugby player and venerable vintner, exemplifies both.
Within seconds of meeting him on this impromptu visit, Coetzee shows he is a true son of the soil. It is a warm April. Barefoot and brisk, in beige shorts, he darts from the living room, to the kitchen, to the backyard – where his elder daughter Hanle, who lives close by, is earnestly laying out tables for an evening do at the house.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4024" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/KZ-Lodge-rim-flow-Pool-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" />
In the kitchen – shelves laden with wine bottles – there are sizzling sounds on the stove, followed by the aroma of – possibly – deep-fried fish cakes. Coetzee is issuing instructions to a few laborers at the back. He soon returns to sit at the large yellowwood dining table, decked with flowers in vases set like a Vincent van Gogh painting.
Originally Dutch, Coetzee says his ancestors came to the Cape in 1679. It is here, in this valley at the foot of the Stellenbosch mountains, that he learned the game of rugby and the art of making wine.
Coetzee purchased Vriesenhof in 1980 – “for its south-facing slopes on the cooler side of the foothills” – and has been here since, cultivating plantings of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, pinotage and pinot noir, sold under the labels of Vriesenhof and Paradyskloof.
“I love to take pride in what is ours, what is South African,” says the valley’s doyen of pinotage.
“I focused on pinotage when I was young, as it is the only grape variety since its birth that has really taken on a commercial collective in the world of wine. And if it is doing well, it means we are proud of it, because it is born under the African sun, it is performing under the African sun, and we take pride because we believe it is ours.”
Coetzee pauses between words and sentences, but when he speaks, he makes you feel the earth around you: the air, the sun, the soil. Clearly, it is his territory – and terroir.
“Wine is a mirror of the environment first and foremost, because it is a product of the soil. In that, lies our future. Man needs to understand the soil, the plant, to put it in its right place in the right environment to give it its best. And the more you care, the better it gets,” he says.
The man has a deep love for the farm, and is happy just to be in it – with his glass of chardonnay.
“I love what I am doing, I love the farm, and I love drinking good wine. It’s as simple as that,” says the sprightly 70-year-old whose days on the 85-hectare farm begin at 4AM.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4025" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/unnamed-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
Coetzee studied oenology and viticulture at Stellenbosch University.
“I didn’t become a vet so I became a viticulturist. It’s amazing how many winemakers wanted to become vets,”
he laughs.
“I still have the record for writing the most exams before I passed. So I have a very broad knowledge. Like the wooden barrel, it’s [like] the un-opening of old wine.”
While still a student, Coetzee became captain of the university’s Under-18 rugby team.
“Everyone in South Africa plays rugby from a young age,” he says.
He played for his provincial team, Western Province, from 1967 to 1979, and played flank for the national team, the Springboks, from 1974 to 1976.
He stopped playing when a tour was cancelled in 1979 on account of apartheid when South African sport also took a hit.
“From a South Africa point of view, things were bad in terms of international rugby because of apartheid. We were isolated… When the tour was cancelled, I stopped playing and went to France in 1981 to work in a wine house in Burgundy for a year,” says Coetzee.
That was the tipping point. He returned wiser, and helped lift the profile of wine in Stellenbosch. Today, he sells his wine all over the world; Scandinavia is his biggest market.
Coetzee may have stopped playing rugby, but he uses it well in his wine analogies.
“We used to export 74 percent of our crop, but now try and get as close as possible. We do 50:50 local and export. Rugby has taught me to have two legs. If you kick [with] one leg, one can hopefully stand on the other,” he says.
Coetzee vividly remembers that tear-jerking moment when Nelson Mandela handed the trophy to Springbok captain François Pienaar during the 1995 World Cup final. Coetzee was present, as a spectator.
“It was a special day, not only for sport but also for mankind. I remember that moment clearly. I can still see it.”
Coetzee has ensured his legacy – in both rugby and wine – lives on.
“My grandsons [between the ages of five to 10] all play rugby. They also made their first wine in 2015. Each of them has a barrel from the vintage of the year they were born in,” says Coetzee.
Divorced, Coetzee lives by himself. Fortunately, his four children are all into farming in some way, and visit frequently. His daughter Hanle says the most remarkable thing about her father is his humility.
“He has 40 years plus of experience of harvests and climates in the wine industry. He has seen good vintages, and bad. The new, younger winemakers are well-traveled, whereas in his time, the exposure and material were limited. He has old-world knowledge. If he drops dead tomorrow, it’s all gone, I don’t know how to capture it,” she says.
How much is he worth? Coetzee thinks long and hard, before answering: “I actually can’t put a number to it; we are not [into] numbers. We want to be loving and caring people, and that you can’t measure in currency. Money is an evil necessity. I am a big believer of the barter system – milk farmers and cheese farmers must drink wine, and I must eat cheese. They must produce meat, and they must drink wine. I try to convince all my farming colleagues in the mutton, beef, cheese, fish and lobster businesses to [barter].”
And are they listening? For sure, he says with certainty.
Coetzee has many admirers in the valley, across generations. About three kilometers from his Vriesenhof farmhouse, at the Kleine Zalze estate, its owner Kobus Basson, another Stellenbosch success, says Coetzee was instrumental in exposing him to the lifestyle around the wine business. He turned the rugby-playing lawyer into one of the region’s top wine farmers.
“Jan Coetzee is one of the characters of Stellenbosch, you can’t tell a wine story without him,” says the 57-year-old Basson of the senior entrepreneur.
“He is the type of guy [who] if there is snow in the mountains, would still walk in his short pants, with muscles like he has. He is a Stellenbosch legend, one of the five wine personalities that built this industry.”
Basson’s father was a figurehead in the local rugby club and that was his first connection with Coetzee. Plus, Basson’s initial 10-year legal practice ensured he interacted with most of the wine farmers.
“When you work with them, it’s like a friendship. Jan was the guy who spent a lot of time in France, and knew all the wine areas well. In 1996, I went with him and a few other prominent guys – while I was still a legal guy – on a trip to Argentina, and that gave me a completely different perspective of the industry. They were much ahead of us.”
Basson says South Africa’s wine industry matured only in the last 20 years. After he finished his law degree at Stellenbosch University, Basson took a year off to go to central Europe to be a rugby coach.
“I went there to play and coach and work on relationships, in what they called the European B-League rugby countries. It actually exposed me to other things – to wine, food and the lifestyle around it… I understood how the Germans, Dutch and French work in a different way with wine… I immediately got this idea about lifestyle and food and wine combinations.”
Returning to Stellenbosch, he practiced as a lawyer, and got into the wine business more by default than design.
“My wife came from a wine family, and told me she wanted to live on a farm. I said ‘forget it, I am not farming’. Eventually, in 1996, her brother was running the family farm, and was looking for an opportunity with a winery, and I told him about Kleine Zalze [that I had heard] was on the market. He asked me for money to pay the deposit, and that’s how I got involved. He said ‘in the meantime, you can have 50 percent share of it’, and before I realized, I was sucked into it, because this is a business that sucks in money, in terms of capital investment.”
They bought the 40-hectare farm and after the first harvest, signed up with importers from Britain, who had high expectations.
“I thought, ‘either you do it properly or bail out’. In retrospect, I can see how the year in Germany helped, how my friendship with Jan Coetzee formed me,” says Basson.
During the nineties in South Africa, golf and wine tourism was just starting, so he thought: “Why do we go to Tuscany and Provence, when we actually have everything here? Why can’t we create it here?”
It was hard work. Every day, for a decade, Basson woke up at 3AM.
“I had no choice. It was crazy and difficult years, the interest rates went up between 1998 and 2002. I had to invest my shares and everything I had. Cash flow was the challenge during those years; we had to slowly and steadily build this up.”
Today, Kleine Zalze is 280 hectares, including the wine estate, an 18-hole golf course, a 47-bedroom lodge and the award-winning Terroir restaurant with chef Michael Broughton. Basson says all the businesses are doing very well.
“We are doing well in terms of exports [too]; I would say we do more than 200,000 cases of Kleine Zalze wines a year. And we have won several awards,” he says.
Chenin blanc is the brand’s specialty.
The last season for wine tourism in Stellenbosch was wonderful, adds Basson, who is also a director of the Stellenbosch Wine Route.
“If we stay calm and focused, it’s a very exciting period ahead… We have done research and the interesting thing is they compared different regions, and Stellenbosch has by far the highest visitor return rate. We have guys who have come to Stellenbosch 18 years in a row. You won’t find [a place] more beautiful. You have no idea how sexy Stellenbosch is.”
And like any good sportsman, he says his greatest asset is his team.
“You need strong players in your team… [The wine industry] is a little bit like top-end sport. It’s so competitive, if you don’t play with your best team, you are not going to win.”
What is it they say about wine and winning in the valley? It’s the same thing. And Coetzee agrees.

Long Days Of  Sun, Rugby And Wine

Realistic and measurable transformation within certain South African industries has been a long journey. In some sectors it has warped definitions as boxes are ticked mechanically.  In others transformation is non-existent. The agricultural sector unfortunately still carries the stigma of embracing change at an extremely slow pace. Its record on transformation is patchy at best.
The wine industry is no different. With its sterling international reputation  and millions of liters of South African wine exported every year, vexed questions still remain on whether this generational industry has genuinely transformed and if so, to what extent?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5762" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-076-077-ENTR-Wine-002-300x275.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="275" />
In this industry, broad-based black economic empowerment transactions are usually viewed as façades used to divert unwanted questions from those who are pro-transformation. Despite these realities, there are women who are working tirelessly towards altering the status quo, with passion, to bring about significant change within the wine industry.
Nondumiso Pikashe and Carmen Stevens are two of these women. Ignoring skeptics and forecasts of failure, their professional journeys are the result of meticulous timing, dedication and resilience. Responding to a call from former president Thabo Mbeki in 2004 for active players within South Africa’s economy, Pikashe decided to enter an industry completely foreign to her. “Curiosity was what attracted me to [winemaking],” she explains.
“I was always fascinated by wine because in the townships it was an alcoholic beverage that was associated with shattered homes…, while on the other hand, wine’s other face was one of sophistication, class and elegance.”
Wanting to find out more about the characteristics of wine, the more she researched, the more Pikashe became intoxicated by the industry. And thus, Ses’fikile wine was born.
‘Ses’fikile’ is isiXhosa for ‘we have arrived’.
“My wines symbolize the impact that the growing number of women within the industry are making, regardless of the challenges and obstacles they face,” she says, proudly. Pikashe is frustrated by the pace of change in the winemaking industry. She says little is being done in order to pique the curiosity of young black girls.
“I entered the industry through support from associations and groups which are now collectively known as the Wine Industry Development Agency. The work they are doing is commendable; however, more needs to be done.”
Another player in the South African winemaking industry is Carmen Stevens. Unlike Pikashe, Stevens says it was almost a given that she would enter the industry because of how passionate she had always felt about winemaking. A winemaker at the esteemed Amani estate in the Cape Winelands, her passion for the technicalities behind the process has earned her respect throughout the industry. With 18 years’ experience and two harvest internships – one in California and the other in France – under her belt, Stevens is set to make a significant change in the industry.
“I just knew that I wanted to make wine: the smell of the wine cellar; the enchanting and sometimes majestic process of the art of winemaking was fueled by fantasies I developed from reading through my mom’s romantic novels, which were set in the vineyards,” Stevens recalls.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5765" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-076-077-ENTR-Wine-001-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />
Stevens is using her passion for wine to change women’s access to land and promote skills sharing.
“Agricultural land needs to be more affordable within the well-known wine regions to increase both female and black participation. The government needs to look into sustainable strategies in order to bring this into being. Skills transfer and development is another thing. Yes, there has been a visible growth of female winemakers within the industry, however, the growth in understanding of the industry holistically still needs much work,” she argues.
Stevens believes that the South African winemaking industry has the opportunity to increase the percentage of women and black role players.
She is upbeat about her future in the industry.
“Amani has given me the opportunity to make wines that are reflection of me, having a brand that carries my name is the next big step,” she says.
Carmen’s recent association with UK-based brand Naked Wine has inspired her to developing her own blends – Carmen Stevens Wines.
“Watching my brand growing each year has been a great experience; this puts me in a position to develop future winemakers as well, that is something that is necessary and which will be very humbling,” she concludes.

Ses’fikile We have arrived

It’s one of those hot, cloudless days that make Cape Town residents smile inwardly at the good fortune that found them living in this particular corner of South Africa. About an hour outside Cape Town lies Stellenbosch, home to some of the country’s oldest vineyards, fruit farms and picturesque Dutch gable houses. Somewhere deep in the heart of this valley, there is a faint buzzing from warehouses filled with millions of flies, hatching, reproducing and dying. Down the corridor from the flies lie giant cement troughs filled with larvae, writhing and eating their way through rotten food, unaware that death is nigh. These larvae are destined to be processed into chicken and fish feed. For chickens diet of dried is lunch.
The man behind all of this at AgriProtein Technologies is Jason Drew. He is hoping to penetrate the South African agricultural processing market.
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“Flies feed on the blood from animal slaughterhouses, the fly larvae is in turn eaten by the chickens farmed for human consumption. Since the industrial revolution, chickens have not been eating fly larvae. In order to make the process sustainable, you have to close the loop,” says Drew.
The loop is focused on nutrient recycling, and Drew argues that it will become commonplace in years to come.
“If humanity is to survive without the starvation that has marked human history, until the last 50 years, it will most likely be a necessity. As we move out of the era of the Industrial Revolution and into the Sustainability Revolution, capitalists and environmentalists will become natural bedfellows, not the adversaries they once were in the old world order,” says Drew.
He is an environmental warrior incarnate. In his previous life, he led one of South Africa’s biggest online service outsourcing companies, Dialogue Group Holdings, to an initial public offering on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and then guided the company around the various perils of the country’s second online boom. Drew served as CEO of the company and presided over its growth to 3,500 staff members and into five countries in Southern Africa. In 2008, a 40-year-old Drew suffered two heart attacks. He ignored the first, but the second made him pay attention.
“My doctor told me ‘You may not believe in stress, but your body does.’ We had owned our farm in the Tulbagh Valley for many years. After my second heart attack, my wife insisted I leave the rat race and we move down there permanently,” he says.
Drew and his wife spent the next three years traveling around Asia, South America, Australia and the Middle East and investigated various ecological principles in agricultural methods. While in Saudi Arabia, he spent time researching the feeding and breeding of cattle in agriculture cooperatives and became fascinated by the flies circling the pools of blood in the animals’ slaughterhouses. The investigation led him closer to home to a chicken farm in the Western Cape.
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“I met the slaughterhouse owner and followed the process through to the lake of blood behind the shed, which was surrounded by millions of flies. It occurred to me that it takes as much water, land and fuel to produce the chicken that we throw away as it does to produce the bits we eat. And we throw away a lot.”
Drew learnt that the chicken farmer had been involved in some field work done by Elsje Pieterse, head of monogastric nutrition in the department of animal science at Stellenbosch University, who was investigating the recycling of animal waste by-products using flies.
“And so began my love affair with flies,” says Drew.
Drew was joined by his brother, David, and the pair joined forces with local entomologists, food nutritionists and the research unit at Stellenbosch University, an endeavor which would result in the establishment of AgriProtein Technologies.
The company is currently in the process of completing production trials and testing system elements, which are intended as input into computer-aided design for full-scale factory producing chicken and fish feed from s fly larvae. The factory will be based in the Western Cape and is due to be commissioned during the third quarter of this year. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2013 at an estimated cost of $6 million. Fifty percent of this capital will come from shareholders at AgriProtein Technologies, while the remainder will be sourced from new ones.
“We are hoping that once our model is proved bankable, we will be able to go into a debt-equity combination. This is a straight forward commercial activity, but one that also looks to repair damage done to the environment,” Drew says.
The dichotomy of capitalism and environmentalism as well as the near-hero status of the humble housefly were first explored by Drew in his 2011 book The Protein Crunch (co-written by David Lorimer). The theme was followed by The Story of the Fly and How it Could Save the World (co-written by Justine Joseph) in 2012. In his latest book, Drew theorizes that the fly could join the ranks of fish, pigs, chickens, sheep and cows as the sixth and most numerously industrially-farmed animal in the world. The Lord of the Flies could end up king.

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