Young Kenyans know what they like and will demand what they want!

Last night a group of young Kenyans, in fact the group were all women with one man, jumped into the deep end of wine tasting. This was at the Corner Café on Rhapta Road. So what were their reactions? Well, there was already a good knowledge about different grape varieties and how they tasted. Yes! So young Kenyans are buying wine, ordering wines at restaurants and enjoying what this can offer. Most of them liked the exuberance and up front flavours of the Sauvignon Blanc, but they were less enthusiastic about the more restrained and tropical flavours of the Chenin Blanc. They liked the oaky/vanilla flavours of the Chardonnay. And then turning to the Reds? They were unenthusiastic about the austere and mouthful of tannin from the Merlot, but liked the smoky fruit flavours of the Shiraz. All - man and women – were enthusiastic about the only indigenous varietal to Africa - the Pinotage. So, are young Kenyan’s drinking wines in restaurants only – or are they also buying wines to drink at home? The wines being tasted were from South Africa but in Kenya it is possible to buy wines from Chile, Spain, France and just about every major wine producing country in the world. So, what is the future for young Kenyans to taste and enjoy wines?


Nairobi is one of the fastest changing cities in the world. It is all go and there is a real buzz and everyone seems to be racing as fast as they can to the future. It is a cliché, but none the less true that the future is based on the young and Kenya is very much a young country. Well educated young people pour out of the nation’s higher education institutions every year and all seem to be wound-up and ready to go straining to make their marks. Partly because these graduates know that opportunities in the formal sector of the economy will be difficult to find, you meet an awful lot of young people that describe themselves as entrepreneurs. Their models are dot.com billionaires and they are developing all sorts of solutions to problems that they hope also will make them rich. It is not to fanciful to suggest that the future Mark Zuckenburg’s of this world could well be from Kenya.

This newly emerging young middle class aspire very much to the same things the young all over the world seem to aspire to including to what they drink. Beer is still king in Kenya and at least for young men spirits are gaining considerable in popularity. It is no surprise for example that in the last year alone several malt whisky brands, South African Brandies and French Cognacs, as well as well known American Bourbon brands have all entered the Kenyan market. Wine in terms of consumption is increasing rapidly albeit from a very low base. As young Kenyans frequent the rapid rising number of good quality restaurants in Nairobi they are choosing wine to accompany their eclectic food choices. Unfortunately and in most cases there is little information or support available to guide Kenyan dinners in their choice of wine. Any training provided to restaurant staff for example is at best ad hoc and usually provided by the wine selling companies, which are not exactly objective when it comes to selling their brands.

On anecdotal evidence, there is a huge demand for information about wine in Kenya. Just like the rest of the world, Kenyans can be intimidated by the plethora of wines available in supermarkets and hard to read wine lists in restaurants. Fortunately Kenyans are not what you would call a shy bunch they know what they like and are not afraid to demand what they want. Kenya is leading the world in cell phone usage in particular money transfer – so what can we do about wine knowledge transfer – hey – I’m drinking a wild/cool Wolftrap tonight – and you?

Phoenix Rising in the Lowveld

I am currently away from my home base in Kenya and staying in a beautiful corner of Mpumalanga not far from the town of White River in the Lowveld of South Africa. It is winter here, although with sunny blue skies and day time temperatures around 24 degrees centigrade it is not what I would call chilly. I first got to know this part of the world when I was living in Mozambique from 1994 onwards. In those days Mozambique was emerging from decades of civil war and the availability of many items including food and not least wine was limited. The lucky few mostly expatriates would abscond once a month or so to the town of Nelspruit in neighbouring South Africa about a three hour drive from Maputo and fill up their cars with anything from butter to fresh vegetables and of course at least for me wine.

By 1994 when I began living in Mozambique the ‘frontline states’ had fully embraced the newly elected ANC government in South Africa. This was then great timing for this particular wine lover as it meant I had free reign not to mention a favourable US$ to Rand exchange rate to explore the wines from the Cape.To assist our enthusiasm for wine I and a group of friends started a tasting group in Maputo. Being a group made up of many nationalities we had the great benefit of having access to wines from a whole host of countries. Each of the individuals in the group of course championed the wines from their own country proudly presenting perhaps a Barossa shiraz, a cabernet sauvignon from the Napa Valley, or a lesser, although occasionally a first growth from Bordeaux. It was great fun and dare I say even educational as we explored the different tastes of New and Old World wines. In the absence of any South Africans in the group,(in those days South Africans had only just started spreading their wings to neighbouring African countries),I became defacto thetalisman for the wines from the Cape.

The general consensus is of course that the demise of apartheid and the emergence of South Africa into the international fold had overwhelming positive impacts. This was particularly true for the South African wine industry. Through most of the 20th Century South Africa’s wine farms largely produced grapes either for sale to the brandy industry or to large cooperatives, which then made wines of variable quality mainly for domestic consumption. There were of course a number of estates that had been producing wine for centuries and the quality of these wines for those fortunate to drink them was usually good and quite often exceptional. Nevertheless, these relatively few estate wines were the exception rather than the rule. Locked away for decades behind a wall of sanctions there were few incentives save personal pride let alone markets to encourage South African winemakers to produce anything less than vin ordinaire.

There is a much used adage to restrain those tempted to enter the wine industry, which is: the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one. In some ways despite the explosion in worldwide wine consumption over the last fifty years this is probably truer today than ever. However, from the 1980’s onwards with the end of apartheid now within touching distance South Africa offered new opportunities for enthusiasts to start up their very own wine farm with relatively limited resources.

Gyles Webb had been an accountant working in Durban historically not a place known for wine production. Infected with the wine bug Gyles, his wife Barbara and family bought a fruit farm outside Stellenbosch the Cape’s wine capital on the Helshoogte pass and called it Thelema Mountain Vineyard. The family had owned a hotel in Kimberley called the Phoenix and accounts for the emblem that adorns the label of Thelema’s wines. It is rumoured that Gyles became particularly adept at producing olive oil from the olive trees that are common in Kimberly, but that is another story. Gyles completed a degree in Oenologyat Stellenbosch University and after some experience making wine in South Africa and overseas, in 1988 produced the first vintage from Thelema Mountain Vineyard.

The first vintages from Thelema were well received in South Africa and indeed Gyles won the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year in 1994 for his Merlot 1992. It is probably fair to say though that it was the Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon 1994 which captured the attention of a wider wine drinking community. Gyles enthusiasm for wine was partly ignited by the wines from Burgundy and he admired the minimalist as opposed to old fashioned wine making techniques that the very best appellations use. “Wine is made in the vineyard”, is another adage common in the wine world and its proponents highlight the importance of the quality of the fruit rather than any wizardry in the cellar as the key to making great wine. The reputation of Gyles and Thelema for producing quality wine is much based on the emphasis of producing the best quality fruit possible and then handling it as little as possible to make wine. The wines from Thelema were though not shy in terms of using the best quality French oak barrels 50% first fill for the 1994 vintage for a total of 18 months.

Living in Maputo I bought a case of Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon 1994 in 1996; which if my memory serves me well cost R34 a bottle.I still buy a case a year and it demonstrates to wine makers if you hook them early they stay loyal dare I say even if the vintages go up and down. We used to have Thelema and other Cape wines shipped to Nelspruit, after which we managed to get them to Maputo in all sorts of innovative ways. I left Mozambique in 2001 and the Thelema wines followed me first to Zambia. In 2005 the wines returned to South Africa where they have been stored ever since in the Lowveld in temperature controlled conditions. I am down to my last three bottles of 1994 and it has become something of an event in our household to open a bottle or two on our visits to the Lowveld.

The vast majority of wines produced throughout the world are designed to be drunk young and I suspect it is only odd folk such as me that enjoy old wines to drink as opposed to collect. It is also probably fair to say that Gyles never intended his 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon to be kept for the best part of 20 years. I notice on the back label of the 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon it says that the wine has the structure to, “improve over the next five years”. Since 1999 the wine may or may not have improved, but it has certainly changed. We drank two bottles last night with friends over dinner. I decanted the wine only forty minutes before drinking and there was as you would expect from a wine made with minimal finning and filtering and given its age plenty of sediment in the bottle. The wine was still bright if not necessarily brilliant with some good colour albeit gravitating towards mahogany. On the nose there is still good fruit aromas definitely blackcurrant and perhaps even a hint of the famous eucalyptuses (mint) that Thelema and to an extent South African cabernet sauvignon’s are known for. On the palate the fruit is there, smooth tannins and a reasonable length of finish.

The remaining bottles of the 1994 cabernet sauvignon will probably not get the chance to last another 20 years, a pity really as it would be interesting to see how it would taste. I should add that Gyles was awarded for the Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon 1994 again the accolade of Dinners Club Winemaker of the Year in 1996.Although the wines of Thelema Mountain Vineyards have changed in terms of style since the early 1990’s, the ethos of producing the best possible fruit has not. To this end Thelema now sources grapes from its Sutherland farm in the cooler climate Elgin area of the Cape. I am aware that for some Thelema wines are not necessarily considered in the imaginary category of South Africa’s “first-growths”. What is not in dispute though is the significant contribution Gyles Webb and Thelema wines have made to the modern South African wine industry. I for one will keep sending a nod of thanks from the Lowveld in the direction of the Helshoogte pass as I enjoy the remaining vintages of the Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon.

A footnote is that we also tasted some other older Cape wines on the same trip to the Lowveld, which included the following.

Meerlust Rubicon 1984
Stellenzitch Syrah 1998
Stellenzitch Sémillon 1998
Vergelgen 1998

“Georgia on My Mind” in Kenya

The majority of wine sold in Kenya is made from one or more of the famous-five grape varieties: cabernet sauvignon, merlot and shiraz for the reds and chardonnay and sauvignon blanc for the whites. In other wine markets of the world the phenomenon of ABC (any thing but chardonnay/cabernet) is well known. The more adventurous wine drinkers have turned to other grape varieties to titillate their taste buds. In response to changing tastes and new demands, wine makers increasingly provide wines made from new grape varieties in a plethora of combinations. Most of these varieties with rare exceptions are in fact anything but new. Instead, they are old varieties often long neglected that have been rediscovered, dusted off, sometimes given a marketing makeover and sent forth to jostle for shelf space with their more well known grape cousins.



Relatively new to drinking wine, Kenyan consumers are tentatively joining the grape variety treasure hunt. The world’s wine megabrands all present in Kenya supply wines made more or less from one or more of the famous-five grape varieties. The priority for Kenyan wine drinkers as is perhaps the case all over the world is not so much what is the wine made from, but of much more importance is does it taste good and is the price right.

My interest in grape varieties was stimulated recently by two events. The first was a bottle of wine given to me by a friend. The wine was a bottle of Teliani Valley Tsinandali 2011 from Georgia. Tsinandali is a village within the Kakheti region of south-eastern Georgia. For wine enthusiasts Georgia is interesting not least because it is the part of the world where many scholars believe that wine making originates some 5000 to 6000 BC. I must confess that I am not over familiar with Georgian wines and reading the back label on the bottle I learned that the wine was made from the grape varieties Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane.

Coincidentally I also received recently a copy of Wine Grapes by Jancis Robinson et al. This remarkable tome, all 1,241 pages of it and weighing in at over 3 kilograms, is for this wine geek a delight. Beautifully illustrated with plates from Ampélograhie by Pierre Viala published in French between 1901 and 1910, Wine Grapes provides descriptions for 1,368 vine varieties. I will not regurgitate the entries for the Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane varieties; suffice it to say they are comprehensive. Rkatsiteli though has a particularly interesting pedigree being one of the world’s oldest vitas vinifera (wine-bearing grapes) vines. Oeno-archaeologists a word that for some reason makes me smile claim that clay vessels containing Rkatsiteli seeds dating back to 3000 BC have been found in Georgia. Some biblical scholars claim that Rkatsiteli was the first vine planted by Noah after the flood, which I guess means it can tolerate high soil moisture content. Apparently after the waters subsided at the end of the Flood and according to the bible, ‘Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank the wine, and was a drunken.’ I guess Noah had been pretty busy and this ancient viticulturalist needed a bit of relaxation.

As for the Teliani Valley Tsinandali wine well it was delicious. The colour of the wine was pale straw with a light floral or stone-fruit nose. On the palate apple or quince flavours, crisp acidity and ripe fruit although finishing dry. A little more research indicated that the wine is made predominantly from the Mtsvane variety used because it gives fresh citrus aromas, tropical fruit flavours, but with crisp acidity. One other interesting note is that the Teliani Valley Tsinandali wine is made using the traditional clay qvevri. Qvevri-like containers have become increasingly popular in many parts of the world with winemakers believing it to be a more natural way of making wine. For the Georgians it would seem it is just the way to make wine.