MANY WINE lovers would be amazed on being told that neither Chardonnay nor Cabernet rank among the Top 3 most widely planted grape vines in France. And outside Spain and Portugal, who would have thought that Tempranillo is as big as it is in the total scheme of things. In the Cape winelands, the most-planted variety of grape vine is
Read moreMANY ARE UNAWARE or forget that in parts of the world the cultivation of wine grape varieties is stictly controlled. As some well know, this was once the case in South Africa, whereas now you can plant anything anywhere, so to speak. Naturally, there are some areas that are better suited to wine farming than others, and certain grape varieties
Read moreACCORDING to statistics provided by the Paris-based International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) in June 2017, the area under vine throughout the world was estimated at 7.5 million hectares in 2016, with total wine production estimated at 267 million hectolitres (9% less than in 2015). South Africa now ranks seventh among the biggest wine-producing countries in the world: 1 Italy (50.9
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