Two Stellenbosch wine gurus received top honours at the annual black-tie dinner of the Institute of Cape Wine Masters (ICWM) on Saturday 13 August.
The glamorous event held at Angora Stud Farm outside Bonnievale, saw the names of the designated Wine Personality of the Year and the Dave Hughes Trophy winner being announced.
Beyers Truter of Beyerskloof Winery in Stellenbosch was named as the Wine Personality of the Year for 2022, after a lifetime of achievement in the wine sphere. As founder and long-time chairperson of the Pinotage Association, he has played a vital role in educating consumers in South Africa and around the world on the red wine he so dearly loves – pinotage.
Truter is the unsurpassed eighth time winner of the Pinotage Top Ten Competition and has won many other prestigious awards, including the 1987 Diners Club Winemaker of the Year for Pinotage and the 1659 Award for Visionary Leadership at the 10th annual Wine Harvest Commemorative event in February 2021.
ICWM chairperson Jacques Steyn, who is also general manager of Jordan Wine Estate in Stellenbosch, was named as the third winner of the Dave Hughes Trophy. Instituted in honour of the co-founder, who was made an honorary Cape Wine Master (CWM) of the Cape Wine Academy in 1979, this trophy is awarded annually to the CWM who has made a notable contribution to ICWM, wine education or to the wine industry in general.
Since 2019 Steyn has worked tirelessly to promote the institute and to raise its public profile via networking within the industry. He espoused the Vision 2030 mission to enhance transformation and handled the logistics relating to the Drinking Windows series in 2021.
Steyn also steered the institute through the rough seas of trading in the successive lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic and added its voice to the wine industry’s open letter to President Ramaphosa on the alcohol ban.
In 2003, the Cape Wine and Spirit Education Trust granted the Cape Wine Academy (CWA) the right to award the CWM qualification and confer the CWM title, in collaboration with the ICWM.
With the addition of two new CWMs – Helena Melis and Mark Philp, the number to attain this elite self-study qualification in the 42-year history of the CWA has now reached 111.
The prestigious group of Cape Wine Masters includes 13 from overseas and one of the three original Cape Wine Masters, Bennie Howard who, together with the late Duimpie Bayly and the late Tony Mossop, were the first to qualify in 1984.
Of the total active membership of the Institute, Western Cape members comprise 72%, Gauteng 22%, KwaZulu-Natal 1%, with overseas members making up 5%. The total membership profile of the CWM is 45% male and 55% female. The highly topical dissertations of the CWMs adding to the body of South African wine knowledge are available online at www.capewineacademy.co.za and www.icwm.co.za.
