Winners of Standard Bank/Chenin Blanc Challenge 2014 spread the winnings

Simonsig, named a winner in the inaugural Standard Bank/Chenin Blanc Top 10 Challenge, received its prize money of R20 000 on 18 February 2015. The wine producer will, per the rules of the competition, commit this money to a project that will benefit its workforce. More specifically, the funds will go towards IT upgrades at the crèche and aftercare centres on the Simonsig Estate.

(Top image caption: Willie du Plessis, Head of Business Banking: Western Cape at Standard Bank, Johan Malan, Cellarmaster at Simonsig, and Hannes Meyer).

“The prize money always comes in handy, although the exposure is the real reward”, says Johan Malan, co-owner at Simonsig Wines. This was also the case in the inaugural Standard Bank/ Chenin Blanc Top 10 Challenge in 2014, in which Simonsig’s “really well executed” Chenin Avec Chêne 2010 took one of the prized spots.

“It’s fantastic recognition for Simonsig, especially as it was the first wine produced here in 1968,” noted Mr Malan during the prize money handover. “It is a true South African wine.”

The Standard Bank Chenin Blanc Top 10 Challenge, hosted by the Chenin Blanc Association and sponsored by Standard Bank, whose three-year funding will run from 2014 to 2016, does offer a different challenge for winners, though. While other competition may offer winemakers international wine tours and the like, this challenge requires them to think closer to home.

The competition, which also aims to raise the profile of Chenin Blanc in South Africa, requires that the prize money must “reinforce the economic and social benefits in the workplace to the workforce”.

Simonsig didn’t have to think too hard about where it would invest its winnings. Mr Malan and winemaker Hannes Meyer, responsible for Simonsig’s selection of white wines, including the Chenin Blanc, chose to pump it into the Estate’s after-care centre and crèche.

There, a total of six teachers look after nearly 70 children – mostly the children of the Estate’s labour force who are aged between three months to 12 years. The money will go specifically towards the purchase of computers and printers, providing Internet access and even improving the facilities.

“In the end, the wine is not made by one person only,” says Mr Meyer. “It’s a bigger group of people who put in the hours and the effort.”

Standard Bank chose to sponsor the competition because of the value the wine industry adds to the country, both as an earner of foreign exchange and as a job creator, notes Willie du Plessis, Head of Business Banking: Western Cape at Standard Bank.

“As a bank we want to invest in and support the wine industry to grow,” says Mr Du Plessis. “In this case we looked at a particular cultivar; a cultivar that we believe will grow, and offer consumers something different.”