INC. magazine recently profiled an American distributor working with a group of South African winemakers in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The story is interesting for its focus on black wine makers and their attempts to access the lucrative US market.

Since the end of apartheid and lifting of sanctions in 1994, South Africa’s wine industry has grown to $3 billion. But freedom and opportunity are not identical: The vast majority of blacks still lack the capital and business expertise to attempt wine production. As part of an economic transformation initiative, the government created a land transfer program and announced a goal of 30 percent black land ownership. But black ownership remains below 5 percent, and black ownership of vineyards is below 2 percent. Black-owned wine companies have had trouble making inroads with customers, distributors, and the white winemakers that are often their partners.

Though the well-researched piece focuses on the travails of the American wine importer, Selena Cuffe, the writer does well to integrate that focus into a larger one about the racial politics of wine making in South Africa and depicting the small group of black vintners as a complex group.

She does the same for the white wine makers. But one startling passage is when she highlights the racism within the industry and among consumers: Some whites do not want to drink ‘black wine’ and go on about that wine’s ‘quality,’ conveniently forgetting who the majority of the workforce is producing the ‘white’ wine.

Read the rest here.