Making sustainable wine commercially viable

At the end of last year La Motte Wine Estate earned the title of South Africa’s top practitioner of sustainable wine tourism for the second year running.The award was from the internationally recognised Great Wine Capitals of the World network. La Motte, the overall South Africa winner in 2012 and 2013, could not be considered as the overall winner this time as the competition’s rules do not allow more than two consecutive wins.

While winning awards is fantastic, what is more important for CEO Hein Koegelenberg is its implicit recognition that the vision developed for La Motte by the late Antonie Rupert was ahead of its time.

Rupert bought the farm in the 1970s and was a committed conservationist even then. But in the late nineties he decided this philosophy should underpin efforts to transform La Motte into an international wine brand, and the Estate into an international tourist attraction.

“Organic farming, as an end in itself, is not commercially viable,” Koegelenberg says. It costs R30 000 to farm one hectare conventionally, but R45 000 if you are using organic principles. Organic farming needs to be one component in a vision for sustainable farming.

Even then, sustainable farming can’t be an end in itself. Instead it was the means by which La Motte boosted wine tourism in Franschoek and to the estate in particular.


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