“What is wine? Is it a cider or something? I hated the first sip.”
That was Ntsiki Biyela’s first response after she received a scholarship to check winemaking in 1998.
Now she’s a global award successful vintner and resident winemaker on the Stellekaya vineyard in Stellenbosch — east of Cape City, South Africa.
She’s additionally the nation’s first black feminine winemaker in an trade dominated by white males.
“I’m surrounded by men who are supportive, but in general it’s a struggle because you have to do twice as much to prove yourself,” she instructed CNNMoney.
Her wine is offered globally however her fundamental market is the US. And he or she has plans to begin her personal model later this 12 months.
Associated: South Africa’s wine trade is booming
Biyela’s life started in 1978 in a small village within the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, the place the one alcohol she encountered was dwelling brewed beer.
As a black South African, Biyela suffered discrimination and oppression underneath the brutal apartheid regime.
Pushed by an urge to create a greater life for herself, she began in search of alternatives exterior of her village.
“I wanted to do chemical engineering but I couldn’t because of the financial situation,” she stated.
Quickly after apartheid was abolished in 1994, South African Airways started providing wine making scholarships as a part of a program to assist rework the nation’s economic system. Biyela jumped on the probability.
“There was an opportunity to study, and become something,” she instructed CNNMoney.
So she left her village and household to pursue a profession in making one thing she had by no means tasted.
At Stellenbosch College, Biyela not solely had all the pieces to find out about wine however she needed to research in a language synonymous with oppression, Afrikaans.
“It was difficult. I didn’t know Afrikaans but I had no choice,'” she stated.
Graduating was simply step one. Biyela nonetheless needed to discover work in an trade that wasn’t precisely welcoming to a black South African lady.
She was turned away thrice earlier than she landed a job at what she calls the “modern” Stellekaya. And he or she rapidly discovered success. Her first harvest in 2004 produced an award successful wine.
It was a bottle of that very classic that Biyela took again to her dwelling village.
In the course of the journey, her grandmother Aslina tasted wine for the very first time. Her response? “It’s nice.”
Biyela is now making ready to launch a brand new wine as an impartial wine maker. She’ll be leaving Stellekaya and can purchase grapes from farmers as a result of she will be able to’t afford her personal vineyards simply but.
However she already has a reputation for the model: Aslina.
CNNMoney (Stellenbosch, South Africa) First printed February 24, 2016: 11:41 AM ET
