Introducing eWine - South Africa's newest wine portal.

An e-mail which read: ‘eWine is a brand new South African wine portal. We have some great features and are confident that we will be a definitive website for South African wine in six months time…’ piqued my curiosity enough to go on-line and check it out.

The faces behind the site – Louis Ferreira and sommelier Phil Sullivan – cut their cyber teeth at South Africa’s most successful wine retail website, www.cybercellar.co.za. Now these 30-somethings, currently based in Paarl while looking for premises to attract walk-in trade too, are putting a fresh spin on wine e-commerce at www.ewine.co.za.

Still a work in progress, the website has many interesting features, including informal digital audio interviews with some of the Cape’s top winemakers. Audio wine tasting notes will follow soon. Another unique feature will be their affiliate programme: if a site refers buyers they will earn a commission. “No-one else is doing that as far as wine is concerned,” says Louis of their upcoming programme.

The site offers a comprehensive wine tourism experience – you can find accommodation, top restaurants (there’s a link to the on-line version of Eat Out, an annual glossy restaurant guide) or hire a car. They also list events and things to do in the winelands such as horseback wine tastings, river cruises and mountain biking trails. They run regular competitions and are about to launch their first newsletter. “Tourist-friendly interviews with chefs which include their take on food and wine pairings are also coming soon to eWine,” says Louis. “We’re aggressively listing wineries at the moment.”

When it comes to the main event, shopping, it’s an easy and pleasurable experience with a toll-free number to call should you have any queries. Wine selections are intelligent, interesting, imaginative. Limited releases and must-haves – currently the Vergelegen V 2001 – feature prominently on the homepage. Wines are listed by varietal – you’ll find everything from the noble cultivar line-up to fashionable viognier and novel nouvelle here – and by style too for easy access.

“We love our wines. We don’t list anything that we won’t drink ourselves. Our goal is to focus on 100 producers – we have around 50 so far. All the wines we list are consistently good quality wines, year after year,” says Phil.

The website is aimed at both the local and international market: “It’s early days for us. We’ve only been live since March but so far we’ve had orders and queries from every corner of the world,” they continue.
It’s a database-driven website specifically designed to track trends like which wines and wineries are being looked at, what’s being purchased. “After 12 months of on-line time we can start to pull some interesting stats from this behind the scenes data,” explains Louis.
This is intended to be a wine portal which offers valuable user-friendly information about the Cape winelands – even down to the weather. “We’ve still got a long way to go. On-line wine retail is a numbers game, you have to be around for a while to reap the benefits. This is not a flash in the pan…” emphasises Louis.
“We’ve been in the wine game for the last seven years. The quality and marketing of South African wines have improved dramatically. We want to become the number one on-line wine retailer in SA,” conclude these confident young cyber sellers.

Lindsaye Mc Gregor Public Relations