South African Wine Company Goes Global with U.S. Help

Cape Town, South Africa — Loukie Vlok, the winemaker of South Africa’s Koopmanskloof Vineyards, points to six bottles on a table — three reds, two whites, and one rosé. “These wines are going to be known around the world and make us rich,” he says.

By “us,” Vlok means primarily the 86 black farmworkers who collectively own one of the six Koopmanskloof farms and 26 percent of Koopmanskloof Vineyards, the winemaking and retailing firm. He also refers to the mostly black businessmen who have a controlling interest in the vineyards and to Steve Smit, the aging owner of the five other Koopmanskloof farms.

The Koopmanskloof lands and winery, located in the lush Stellenbosch region north of Cape Town, have produced wines for more than 100 years, but the people who used to drink them knew them by other names. The wine was sold in bulk; buyers bottled it and put their own labels on the bottles.

“Mr. Smit was not interested in marketing. He was only interested in the quality of the production. I told Mr. Smit that other people put their names on our wines and make extra money from that. I told him that we could do that too,” Vlok said.

The launch of Koopmanskloof wines under its own labels came in 2005. That event was the outcome of a convergence of factors, the prime one being the South African government’s drive to place 30 percent of the country’s farms under black ownership by 2014. The government is steering clear of the forceful land-seizure policy taken by Zimbabwe, a policy blamed for devastating agriculture and causing famine in Zimbabwe.