“What’s wine? Is it cider or something else? I didn’t like the first sip.”
This was Ntsiki Bayela’s first reaction after winning a scholarship to study winemaking in 1998.
He is now an international award-winning vintner and local winemaker at Stellekaya Winery in Stellenbosch, east of Cape Town, South Africa.
She is also the country’s first black female winemaker in an industry dominated by white men.
“I’m surrounded by people who are supportive, but in general it’s a struggle because you have to try twice as hard to prove yourself,” she told CNNMoney.
Its wines are sold globally but its main market is the United States. And he plans to launch his own brand later this year.
RELATED: South Africa’s wine industry is booming
Biala’s life began in 1978 in a small village in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province, where the only alcohol he encountered was home-brewed beer.
As a black South African, Biyela faced discrimination and oppression under the brutal apartheid regime.
Driven by a desire to make a better life for herself, she started looking for opportunities outside her village.
“I wanted to do chemical engineering but couldn’t do it due to financial situation,” she said.
Shortly after apartheid ended in 1994, South African Airways began offering winemaking scholarships as part of a program to help transform the country’s economy. Biyela jumped at the chance.
“There was an opportunity to study and become something,” he told CNNMoney.
So he left his village and family to pursue a career in making something he had never tasted.
At the University of Stellenbosch, Bielsa not only had everything there was to learn about wine, but he also had to study in Afrikaans, a language synonymous with oppression.
“It was difficult. I didn’t know African languages but I had no choice,” she said.
Graduating was just the first step. Biyela still had to find work in an industry that was ill-suited for a black South African woman.
She was fired from her job three times before getting a job at what she calls “modern” Steleskaya. And he soon got success. Their first harvest in 2004 produced award-winning wines.
It was the same old bottle that Biyela had taken back to his home village.
During the trip his grandmother Aslina tasted wine for the first time. His reaction? “It’s good.”
Biyela is now preparing to launch a new wine as an independent winemaker. She will leave Stelekaya and buy grapes from farmers because she is not able to afford her own vineyards right now.
But she already has a name for the brand: Aslina.
CNNMoney (Stellenbosch, South Africa) First Published February 24, 2016: 11:41am ET
