Some news for local winos is that Getwine has bought Cybercellar, South Africa’s oldest online wine seller.
A statement from GetWine (Call Off the Search is on all the important distribution lists) outlined how this is good news for South Africa-based vinophiles who don’t (yet) live in the Cape: “Our vision is to broaden our reach on a national scale, particularly among wine enthusiasts based in Gauteng and KZN.”
“Our aspiration is to emerge as the foremost leader in South Africa’s wine e-commerce sector, and this endeavour is rooted in a journey that began in 2003 when my brothers and I commenced selling unlabelled wines to our circle of friends and relatives, ” said GetWine’s Johan Wegner.
What next? A Publik branches in Jozi and Durban? See article on the right
Ít is too early to tell if this consolidation will be good for wine drinkers, grape growers or the thousands of people who eke out a living on the lower rungs of the industry.
What we at Call Off The Search hope for is that GetWine uses some of their additional clout to support South Africa’s smaller producers. Let’s hear more about them, let’s try their wines, let’s buy their wines. How about an effort to find a small/interesting/unusual South African producer of the month, or even just once a quarter. Please tell their stories.
GetWine’s Johan Wegner replies: “You’ve got a strong point and, although most customers want to go with the more mainstream and well-known brands, it is definitely something to consider.”
“We have recently listed two brand new wines from Christopher Krüger, called Viento, small producer. The problem sometimes with these smaller producers is that they only produce around 5 pallets of each (white and red) and that might not be enough for our database.”