Gain insight from Ntsiki Biyela
Join us on September 6th for our tasting featuring Aslina Wines from South Africa with very special guest Ntsiki Biyela, the owner and winemaker for Aslina Wines. This year I have hosted events with multiple winemakers/owners and each time I get to talk to these people behind the curtain, I have been inspired by the insight I get from them. And when I say insight, I’m not talking about “Well I pick this grape earlier to get acidity” or “This grape comes in a ___ bricks of sugar which helps…”. I’m talking about when I asked Michael B. Roth, owner and winemaker of Lo-Fi Wines, about why he chose to make natural wine and he told me “Well I went to school for wine and wanted to prove that I could make good wine without adding shelved yeast and the like.” Or when talking to Issamu Kamide, of Wonderwerk, about how they are really good examples of low-intervention winemaking. His response was “Yes we are natural wine producer, but we’re intervening with the wines all the time. Us adding Yuzu juice, blending a wine with rose petals are just some of the ways we stay natural, but intervene in our winemaking.”
I’m very intrigued to see what kind of insight we’ll get from Ntsiki. Being a Black female winemaker in South Africa has given her a perspective none of us here living in California could perceive. Starting her own winery in a country like South Africa, which has had a love/hate relationship with alcohol, gives her insight that we couldn’t imagine. Besides being an owner of a winery and the winemaker, Ntsiki sits on the board of directors for the Pinotage Youth Development Academy, which provides technical training and personal development for young South Africans in the Cape Winelands, preparing them for work in the wine and tourism industries. So she even has insight about the future of South African wine culture.
While it is more common to meet a winemaker now a days when you visit a winery up the coast, how often do you get a chance to spend hours with them? And sure, you could go online and get the facts about Ntsiki's wines, but getting to meet her, getting to talk to a person who does something for a living a lot of folks dream about? That's Special. For $40, not only are you getting to try 6 delicious wines made by Ntsiki, you can get insight into a world half way across the globe without having to leave your area code. How cool is that? It isn't often we get producers from South Africa here, so take advantage of this chance to try wine and gain insight.