Joe Berardo, one-time twist champion of Lourenço Marques, made several fortunes in SA in gold and diamonds and he’s now making wine across Portugal from the Douro in the north to the Alentejo in the south. Joe makes the largest brand in Portugal called JP which could come in handy for exports to SA as the publisher of the Platter SA wine label guide is one JP Rossouw and they rate wine sighted. Platter is owned by Standard Bank while Joe himself owns Millennium Bank in Portugal, a more traditional financial institution.

Joe’s toniest property is Quinta da Bacalhôa 25Km from Lisbon which is one winery that takes tourism seriously. It is no Great Wine Capitals free lunch for fatties gig.

Joe owns one of the great art collections of the world and one show at Bacalhôa at the minute is called Out of Africa: homage to Nelson Mandela. Joe is teaching WOSA how to do its job as Tata is the most potent salesman for SA wine even if its from the other side. A resource the generic SA wine marketer inexplicably ignores.

The exhibition is a riot of colour and looks like a cross between the Rosebank African craft market and Greenmarket Square.

Joe’s idea is to make Bacalhôa a destination and Out of Africa must ring a few bells with the hundreds of thousands of Portuguese who left Mozambique and Angola a generation ago in a hurry.

By staging the exhibition in a winery, Joe is making the potent point that wine is a crucial part of our civilization. Out of Africa indeed, which is after all the continent the whole human race calls home.

 

Portuguese take wine so seriously no duty is levied on wine by the government which also decreases sales tax on vino from the usual 23% to 13%. The exact opposite of SA policies which seeks to soak SA wine drinkers at every turn.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans in SA yet the connections between SA wine and the Lusosphere are tenuous indeed. Perhaps the time has come to link hands in a toast across the continents.