On 20 and 21 October just such as event is taking place with Blaauwklippen’s Farm Festival.  

The idea of a Farm Festival is to give the local workers a platform to sell their goods, as well as to express a much needed sense of involvement within the local community.

Hopefully this Festival can become an annual event as it already has generated a lot of interest from the tourism and wine making community.

Funding from the Stellenbosch American Express ® Wine Routes, the generic marketing body of the Stellenbosch wine region, has made it possible to send all the farm workers from the participating farms on a life skills development course, where they will learn about branding, selling and marketing their products prior to the festival. Sixty farm workers will be attending the course, courtesy of the Stellenbosch Wine Routes.

QUITE a few Stellenbosch farms attended this year’s Winex at the Cape Town Convention Centre, from 5 to 7 September. On 23 to 26 October it is Johannesburg’s turn, at the Sandton Convention Centre.
 

On 7 and 8 September a few of us also attended the Soweto Wine and Brandy Festival in Johannesburg. According to the Cape Wine Academy, organisers of the festival, the numbers of visitors have been growing dramatically. On Friday evening alone there were over 2 000 visitors. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly – not as formal and intimidating as some of the other national wine shows.

This year, 94 wineries attended the show. Stellenbosch Wine Routes had 24 wine farms exhibiting, that means more than ¼ of the exhibitors were from Stellenbosch. We displayed marketing material such as banners, and distributed the new Sundays in Stellenbosch flyers. The majority of festival goers are younger than 30 years old, and has only been drinking wine for 1-5 years. They prefer red wine over white wine, and choose Pinotage as their favourite red wine. Brand names and packaging are extremely important in purchasing wine, and consuming expensive wines are seen as a status symbol. This market is hungry for information. They want to know the difference between cultivars, to figure out for themselves which ones they prefer. The producers who showed their brandies were also inundated with questions about the production methods and comparisons to big brand names.

In my opinion, the show needs to be followed up by more visits, and the wine farms needs to ensure that their distributors move into the off- and on-consumption markets. Almost none of the festival goers belong to a wine club – I see this is a great opportunity to educate and build a strong data-base of new consumers. Stellenbosch Wine Routes is also sponsoring a new range of dvd’s, which will be released in the next month. The main character, Mzala, visits wine farms and learns more about wine and cultivars as he goes along. It is a fun way of educating new wine consumers, and I am planning educationals with this new marketing tool.

This unique event, taking place on Saturday 13 October, with an optional 10km or 5km route, takes walkers through private vineyards at the foot of the Helderberg not normally open to the public, and is in aid of a good cause. 

There are some exciting changes to the route this year, including access through the vineyards and past the spectacular cellars of Ernie Els and Hidden Valley.