Ross Sleet, sales director for Cape Legends, has resigned from Distell and is off to Tanzania to work for MMI, Tanzania’s premier wine merchant and spirits specialist. MMI distribute Distell brands in East Africa so brand SA will hopefully still benefit from Ross’s encyclopedic knowledge and contacts. After all, Ross was part of the team that made Kleine Zalze the dynamic export machine it is today.

Ross’s African destination speaks volumes to the future of SA wine exports, coming as it does in the week that SA wine sales to the UK look distinctly sickly. The vision of SA as the Vineyard of Africa has been sorely neglected by Eurocentric marketers like WOSA. That the marketing mouthpiece has no office in Africa outside SA is a total scandal.