Who’s snapping up SA’s bargain wine farms?
Rising wine exports and a weaker rand are luring more well-heeled international buyers to the Cape
Land expropriation jitters and drought would seem to have done little to dampen offshore investor appetite for trophy vineyards in SA. At least three local wine farms have been sold to international buyers so far this year at prices of more than R80m each. Though Cape wine-farm buyers are notoriously tight-lipped about what they pay for big-ticket estates, the FM believes San Francisco-based investment firm Eileses Capital forked out about R100m earlier this year to buy Warwick Wine Estate near Stellenbosch. And while selling prices for other sales are being kept under wraps, the FM understands French and German buyers have been active at the top end of the winelands regions of Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl in recent months. George Cilliers, co-principal for Lew Geffen Sotheby’s International Realty in the Cape winelands, says there is no doubt that sales volumes and prices of undeveloped agricultural land have dipped due to the drought and noise around the government’s propos...
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