Hundreds of wine enthusiasts flocked to the Rooftop @ Gugulethu Square Mall in Cape Town this past weekend to get a taste of the wines from some of South Africa’s  finest wine producers. We’ve been firm supporters of the Gugulethu Wine Festival since 2010 and were excited to see what’s new while tasting some of the country’s top wines.

Over the years, we’ve seen several sponsors come and go, but for the past two years, the Spar group took ownership as the main sponsor of the event.

Like previous years, most of the wines on offer were cheap and sweet and it was pretty hard to find South Africa’s finest. For starters, there were only a handful of family owned wineries, which include Creation Wines, The House of Krone, Fairview, Vergenoegd, Riebeek Cellars, Mount Vernon (the only new discovery), Alvi’s Drift, and Kanu. Overall, very few producers showcased their flagship wines, which left us, and other individuals we chatted to at the show, disappointed.

We therefore decided to rather focus on the best wine labels at the show and here are the top 5 labels that we thought are worth a mention.