If there was a scholarship, she said, "I was going to take it."
Biyela is one of about 20 black winemakers who have graduated; 10 more are studying through the trust, Ntshangase said. The program is partly sponsored by South African Airways, but also involves a small levy on producers bidding to have their wines used by the airline.
When Biyela left home to study winemaking, she felt as if she had been torn out of her universe.
When she put up a photograph in her room of herself wearing her traditional Zulu costume, with bare breasts, fellow students told her it was not decent.
The lectures were in Afrikaans, a language she barely understood. She had to put in hours of work afterward just to discover what had been said.
"It was coming from my world into another world. That's how it felt," she said. "There were no white people in the village. At Stellenbosch University at that point, there were so few black people on the campus. It was a culture shock. Everything was a shock.
"I'd call my mother and sisters and say, 'I'm fine, everything is fine.' I'd call my cousin and burst into tears."
But she worked hard to educate her palate. She prowled the shelves of supermarkets in search of unfamiliar smells, sniffing different fruits and spices she hadn't tasted.
"When I got into a shop I would see something I'd heard of and just smell it and smell it," she said. "I would smell any fruit that I would see."
Biyela found that her palate grew exponentially when, while still a student, she worked in the acclaimed Delheim winery, renowned for its flagship Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. She no longer had to pretend to like what she was helping to make.
"When I was working at Delheim, I started drinking wine and enjoying it," she said, adding that winemaker Philip Costandius spent hours explaining the qualities of his wines to students. "He really did inspire me. When we finished at the end of the day, you could take an open bottle.
"When I was working, [the passion] just grew in me."
Costandius did not cut her any slack, and she was expected to do any job asked of her.
"He got into a tank and started emptying it. He said, 'There's your tank. You're supposed to empty it.' It was a big tank and I had to get inside and take the skins out. He said as a winemaker you really need to do the physical work so that when you ask someone to do something, you know exactly what it is you are asking them to do."
