Stellenbosch, South Africa — NTSIKI Biyela looked curiously at the red liquid in her glass, wondering what to expect.
She was listening to a connoisseur who swirled his glass about, passionately extolling the perfumes of blackberries and cigar box that she was supposed to be appreciating.
Biyela smelled, as instructed, but there had never been any blackberries or cigar boxes in the Zulu village where she grew up, fetching water from the river and firewood from the forest every day. The liquid smelled alien.
Then it was time to taste. Bitter! Disgusting! Was she going to dedicate her life to making this undrinkable brew?
That was eight years ago. Today, Biyela, a petite woman with a ready smile, gets a faraway look in her eye when she has her nose in a wineglass. She is South Africa's first black female winemaker in an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated industry. In 1999, she was one of a group of students given scholarships to learn winemaking as part of an affirmative action measure in a country struggling to overcome the poisonous legacy of apartheid.
Fresh from university in 2004, she joined the boutique Stellakaya winery here in the Cape Winelands as its winemaker, and its wines since have won gold and silver medals in South Africa, one of the world's new wine powers.
"This is my favorite," the 29-year-old enthused, popping the cork from a bottle of blended Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, pouring it into a glass and holding it under her nose, with a small frown of intense concentration.
"It's this earthiness, walking out into the forest after rain," she said. "That's what I am getting. I used to go and fetch firewood from the forest, and sometimes it's like it's been raining on a sunny day and you get this overwhelming earthiness coming out."
Biyela has much to prove to her skeptical peers: The unspoken attitude among many winemakers -- and drinkers -- is that black people cannot make decent wine because it is not part of their cultural tradition.
In villages such as her hometown, Kwavuthela, people drink homemade beer. In black townships, people visit shebeens (taverns) drinking mainly beer and hard liquor. At the Jo'burg Wine Show in Johannesburg in June, there were few nonwhite faces among the tasters and drinkers, let alone behind the stalls.
"I was not particularly looking for a black winemaker. I was looking for someone who was capable," said winemaker David Lello, the owner of Stellakaya winery.
