Few countries have had as fraught a wine-producing history as South Africa. Things got off to a running start with Constantia, the sweet wine that became the darling of royals and intellectuals for much of the 18th and 19th centuries. But waves of economic and social calamity saw much of that early promise squandered, and the 20th century was, generally speaking, a dim time. Chronic overproduction led to the domination of co-ops, and one in particular, the KWV (Ko-operatieve Wijnbouwers Vereniging van Zuid-Afrika in Afrikaans, or Cooperative Winemakers Union of South Africa), grew to monopolize the industry. Due to its close political ties, the KWV’s reign became especially potent during the apartheid years, a period when embargos from much of the rest of the world left the wine industry to flounder in isolation.
Things turned around rapidly after apartheid ended in the early 1990s—but the seeds of change had already started rooting. In the 1960s and ’70s, an increasing number of private estates had begun attracting attention with their high-quality wines, and this movement gained momentum across the 1980s. These producers and winemakers fought against the complacent establishment and lobbied for things like access to better vine material and the right to develop new viticultural areas. As a result, by the time of the first non-racial democratic election in 1994, the KWV had already softened many of
In the History of South Africa section above, the text states: 'Vineyard development spiked with the arrival of the British, an investment that was rewarded in 1813 when they lowered export tariffs on South African wine.' Though I can't type with authority, other sources suggest it was import tariffs that the British lowered--granting preferential treatment to Cape wines arriving in Britain as traditional trade sources had been disrupted during the Napoleonic wars.