The names of the respective winners of the Wine Personality of the Year award and the Dave Hughes trophy were announced on Saturday, 17 August at the annual ICWM black-Tie Dinner held at Eenzaamheid in Agter-Paarl. Janno Briers-Louw, who is the 7th generation winemaker on the Eenzaamheid family farm, also attained his Cape Wine Masters qualification in 2016.
Ina Smith was designated the 2024 Wine Personality of the Year for her involvement in the wine industry over more than 22 years, specifically her achievements working for The Chenin Blanc Association since 2009, and her passion for educating consumers and the trade on Chenin Blanc as a wine of enjoyment.
The Chenin Blanc Association was formed in 2000 to promote the Cape’s most widely planted grape and membership has grown to 150. Since 2014 Ina was instrumental in instituting the annual Top Ten Challenge competition to identify and reward the top Chenin Blanc wines in South Africa.
Bennie Howard, Ina Smith, Mark Philp (ICWM Chairperson)
The fifth winner of the Dave Hughes trophy is Cape Wine Master Lizette Tolken, an admitted attorney, notary and conveyancer of the High Court of South Africa and currently the Human Resources Manager at Boekenhoutskloof Winery.
This annual trophy was instituted in 2020 in honour of Dave Hughes, co-founder and honorary CWM of the Cape Wine Academy, and is awarded annually to the CWM who has made a notable contribution to the Institute of Cape Wine Masters (ICWM), wine education, or to the wine industry in general.
Tolken, who qualified as a Cape Wine Master in 2012, almost immediately involved herself with the education of Diploma and Cape Wine Master students. She is a dedicated formal and informal mentor to many students and two of them graduated this year. Her contribution to wine extends well beyond her role as a much loved and respected lecturer at the Cape Wine Academy. She has served for eight years as Educom Representative on the ICWM Exco.
Lizette Tolken, Mark Philp (ICWM Chairperson)
As the new chairperson of the ICWM, CWM Mark Philp also announced the names of three new candidates who have started the Institute’s Vision 2030 CWM development bursary programme this year. They are Narissa Pieters, junior winemaker at Rustenburg Wine Estate, Kelsey Shungking, assistant winemaker at Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines, and Lerato Molekeki, Gauteng Territory Manager for Beck Family Estates.
“International funding and industry partnerships are strategically used to ensure a sustainable feed of qualifying candidates for the programme and help us to build a racially and culturally diverse wine community locally as well as internationally. The two original Vision 2030 candidates have now comfortably settled down to the intensity of the self-study material and the discipline required to pass the examinations.”
The first two candidates on the development programme Lethabo Komana, a chef and events management consultant and Xolani Mancotywa, a certified sommelier, qualified chef and culinary artist, featured in an SABC2 television programme ‘Stories Untold’ which aired on 9 September 2023.
