Like every other industry, the wine world has felt the sting of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yes, many reports note that we’ve been imbibing more since the pandemic took hold, but overall the effects of the coronavirus have been anything but positive for wineries. Most winery tasting rooms are shuttered, and staff have been laid off. Picking and tending to grapes becomes trickier when having to navigate heightened safety precautions. One of the key outlets for wine sales, restaurants, are either closed or operating at reduced capacity.

For South African producers, the coronavirus has had a crushing effect — and not the good kind of crushing that happens at wineries. The country’s grape growers and winemakers have felt the pain of the pandemic more than any wine-producing region — a pain that could have a lasting, devastating impact.

In March 2020, the South African government implemented widespread restrictions that banned the sale and production of alcohol, both for domestic consumption as well as for export. The thinking was twofold — that consuming alcohol increased the likelihood of socializing (and therefore transmission of the virus), and that alcohol-related illnesses would add strain on hospitals and health care workers. In early April, the government scaled back the ban to allow for exports to resume before lifting the ban completely in May. Then just a week later, the domestic ban was re-implemented, lasting until mid-August.

In late December of 2020, COVID-19 cases in South Africa spiked, resulting in the current ban on domestic alcohol sales introduced by the government, recently extended past the initial Jan. 15 deadline. In total three separate alcohol bans have resulted in 14 weeks with no domestic sales of South African wine and five weeks of bans on exports, a devastating impact on the country’s wine industry. In a recent Wine Spectator article, South Africa wine industry bodies estimate 80 wineries and 350 grape growing operations will close permanently, that 21,000 people will lose their jobs and that the industry has already lost US$400 million.