IN THE 1980s and the early 1990s, brandy held a high percentage of the spirits market. This was due to apartheid restrictions preventing any international brands from entering SA.But the lifting of sanctions changed that. Global brands started looking to Africa — SA being the springboard — as a market with potential for growth. This influx put brandy under threat."Brandy was taking serious strain from whisky but also from other categories like vodka and ready-to-drinks (spirit coolers or ‘alcopops’), which are attractive to the younger markets," says Christelle Reade-Jahn, director of the South African Brandy Foundation. "Brandy had lost an entire generation of people; there was no relevance. And it’s such a sadness because the image of the old Afrikaner guy drinking his Klippies and Coke in front of the braai has stuck... It’s difficult to get that perception changed."But this has not stopped the South African Brandy Foundation, a Stellenbosch-based nonprofit organisation that repr...
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