Race, Taste and the Grape

Book excerpt: With the introduction of wine to the Cape Colony, it became associated locally with social extremes: with the material trappings of privilege and taste, on the one side, and the stark realities of human bondage, on the other. By examining the history of Cape wine, Paul Nugent offers a detailed history of how, in South Africa, race has shaped patterns of consumption. The book takes us through the Liquor Act of 1928, which restricted access along racial lines, intervention to address overproduction from the 1960s, and then latterly, in the wake of the fall of the Apartheid regime, deregulation in the 1990s and South Africa's re-entry into global markets. We see how the industry struggled to embrace Black Economic Empowerment, environmental diversity and the consumer market. This book is an essential read for those interested in the history of wine, and how it intersects with both South African and global history.