Membership of the Cape Winemakers Guild

Cape Winemakers Guild

The new millennium saw the Cape Winemakers Guild evolve into an association with newfound energy, fervour and business acumen to raise the bar in South African winemaking. The name change and new admission criteria heralded a new generation of young winemakers into the Guild bringing new expertise and perspectives into the organisation.

During the first decade of the newly constituted Cape Winemakers Guild, the membership grew by an astounding 80%. The Guild Auction also grew in stature from a niche event to the country’s definitive public wine action with annual Showcases launched in in Cape Town in 2001 followed by Johannesburg in 2002 to enable the public to taste the Auction wines.

The new Guild logo, the iconic key, gave the Guild wines a unique brand identity and the appointment of a business advisor in 2004 created a solid business platform for the Guild.

While the Guild has defined clear business objectives with its annual Auction, the sharing of knowledge is as important today as it was 30 years ago and monthly technical tastings of local and international wines remain a major priority for the members.

Today, the 45 top winemakers who make up the Cape Winemakers Guild continue to raise wine standards higher than ever before, single-mindedly striving to extract the full potential from the unique South African terroir and to set new world-class benchmarks for South African winemaking. Membership of the Guild is by invitation only and is extended to winemakers who have been responsible for the production of outstanding wines for a minimum of five years.

Over the past three decades some of the original stalwarts have reached a stage in their careers, where they are no longer at the coalface in the wineries but continue to make a crucial contribution as respected authorities to the industry as a whole.

To ensure that this valuable expertise and knowledge is safeguarded within the Guild, provision was made at the end of 2011 for an additional membership category of Technical Member. This enables members who no longer fulfil the requirements of the Producing Membership category to remain active members of the Guild even though they will no longer submit wines to the annual Guild Auction.