The Stellenbosch Wine Week kicked off on a spiritual note last night with a performance of Misa Criolla, an amazing folk Argentinean mass, sung by the SA Youth Choir in a most unusual cathedral – the barrel cellar of the Delheim Winery. The street music of Buenos Aires was given a distinct township twist with curio Zulu drums and a boere trekklavier and sufficient ethnic diversity to drive WOSA (the exporter’s association with motto ‘variety is in our nature’) into religious ecstasy.

Cellar becomes Cathedral

Delheim patriarch Spatz Sperling, who recently celebrated his 81st birthday, was in fine, albeit apocalyptic, form judging by his comments that the current situation in SA wine is the worst in his 60 years in SA. Spatz reckons the industry faces the biggest crisis since the 1920s which was reversed by the formation of the KWV national co-operative. An institution which now seems to be busy imploding up the road in Paarl with one of the players in the (increasingly likely) final act of that ongoing soap opera, Jannie Mouton, in the audience last night.

Stellenbosch councilor Pietman Retief agrees that co-ops may be the way forward. Responsible for 15 plots of 5ha each leased to previously disadvantaged individuals who grow vegetables on them, Pietman reports that the current management structure via a trust does not work as there is no individual accountability. “Boer farmers were saved by co-ops after the Boer War and we’re investigating replacing the trust with a co-op so that successful farmers like Jan Boland Coetzee can get involved and help.” So it’s back to the future all over again.

Which is something Stellenbosch has no shortage of – the past. Last week iconic gardener Una van der Spuy celebrated her 99th birthday in her own private Eden at Old Nectar in the Jonkershoek Valley, a stone’s throw away from Jannie and the Steinhoff billionaires. Perhaps co-ops and the financial genius of the burghers can lift die eikestad and the wine industry out of the sloot in which it currently finds itself.

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