LIQUID INVESTMENTS: How a prop for the wine industry became a world-class drink
WINE enthusiasts, especially those whose preference is for small-batch production of handcrafted wines, conveniently forget for most of the 20th century the Cape wine industry would not have survived without the Cape brandy industry.In an era when it was necessary to have an institution such as the KWV to manage surpluses and shortages, it was also important to have a strategy to take up the unsold portion of the crop and turn it to commercial gain.Out of this emerged the premium end of South African brandy business, a segment that has grown in quality and presence, and is now one of the world’s most widely recognised benchmarks.In the very early days — the first few decades of Dutch settlement — poor wine was transformed into poor brandy for sale in the local taverns and to supplement supplies on the ships using the Cape as a midway point on the Eastern trade route. It was even a means of managing unsold wine surpluses. Because brandy is more stable than unfortified wine, less capa...
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