Kumala Leading South African Wine Growth

The 10th of September was full of good news for South African wines. The IWSC revealed the 2014 award results for South America and South Africa and we discovered that 50% of the awards went to South Africa! The same day, Accolade Wines announced that their South African brand portfolio (Kumala, Fish Hoek and Flagstone) are leading the growth in South African wine.

In the UK, Kumala is the number one South African wine brand and the sixth largest wine brand in the whole market. This year, Accolade Wines reported an increase of its market share from 15.5% to 16.5% of the South African wine market. They are now selling 1.5 million cases of Kumala in the UK!

Paul Schaafsma, general manager UK & Ireland at Accolade Wines, believes this amazing growth is due to their decision of “premiumising” the brand. This was achieved by redesigned bottles, packaging and labels as they focussed on the Reserve range by adding new regional varietals. In addition, they created a partnership with the DVD launch of “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” which attracted 80,000 Facebook fans on the Kumala page.

Their other two South African wine brands did very well too. Fish Hoek grew 52% in value and 54% in volume. Flagstone also showed an impressive growth due to the introduction of new ranges in Morrison’s and Tesco.

Adding to this success, South African wines received a large number of medals in the IWSC beautiful South competition. In this contest, 1,260 wines from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and South Africa received an award. Amongst them, a huge 632 wines were from South Africa, which accounts for 50% of the awarded wines. Chilean wines represented 30% with 375 award winners; Argentina accounted for 18.5% with 234 wines and new wine producer Brazil for 1.5% of the medals with 19 awards.

If you want to know more, visit our dedicated pages or discover the IWSC 2014 award winners.