08 sep Scherpenheuvel on the Rise: A Conversation with Cape Wine Master 2026 Junel van der Merwe
From a switchboard at the KWV showgrounds to South Africa’s highest individual honour in wine, Junel van der Merwe on Pinotage, patience, and putting a young Breede River terroir on the map.
Junel van der Merwe answers questions the way she tastes wine: slowly, and with the whole story before the verdict. As the 2026 recipient of the Dave Hughes Trophy, the Institute of Cape Wine Masters’ top honour for a Cape Wine Master’s contribution to the industry, and Global Ambassador for Alvi’s Drift, the family estate she runs alongside her husband Alvi in the Breede River Valley’s Scherpenheuvel pocket, she has spent more than two decades explaining South African wine to the world. Ask her how it started, and the story doesn’t begin in a cellar. It begins with a bottle she was never supposed to open.
A Bottle She Wasn’t Supposed to Open
As a student in the 1970s, long before she ever set foot at the KWV, Junel’s father sent her to fetch a bottle for lunch. “He had some special wines he had bought while travelling in Europe, and without asking, I opened one. It was Château Angélus,” she recalls. She served it among friends. When the bottle reached her father, “he was absolutely horrified. He had been keeping it for something special, and here I was, innocently serving it to everyone!” He was furious, which “broke my heart because I adored my father,” she admits, but he then explained just how rare the wine was. “I remember sipping it and thinking, I hope this taste never goes away.” Years later, studying the great terroirs of the world, that afternoon kept returning to her: “my father’s shock, but also my own fascination and pleasure.”
The Switchboard at KWV
Junel wasn’t studying wine, or even agriculture. She was reading languages at the University of Johannesburg when she took a part-time job answering phones for the KWV at the showgrounds, setting up tastings and pouring for guests. “Listening to them talk about wine, how it was made and how to taste it, completely fascinated me,” she says. One evening, staff asked her to present a tasting herself while they stepped out. “I knew very little about wine, but I had absorbed their passion through listening. That evening sparked something in me. I loved it, and I simply wanted to learn more.”
What the job really gave her, she notes, was proximity, tours through cellars that, at the time, still produced sherry using the criadera-solera method. “Knowledge from books or academic studies can never capture the feeling of actually walking amongst the barrels, being alongside the winemakers and hearing their stories,” she explains. Noticing how little the public understood about cellar life became her calling: “to carry those stories forward, to create that warmth around the glass in their hands.” Dave Hughes and Phyllis Hands, founders of the Cape Wine Academy, shaped that period too; Junel later was one of their first lecturers and therefore often spent valuable time with both both of them. “That is where I really began to understand the value of knowledge, not just learning about wine, but living it, sharing it,” she says.
Pinotage Wasn’t Even on the List
Junel’s 2004 Cape Wine Master dissertation, “Pinotage and its role in the Cape Blend,” tackled a category that, at the time, didn’t officially exist. “I wrote that one day it would be, that it would become something uniquely South African,” she says. It wasn’t her first choice of topic. “I had much more romantic ideas: Italian varieties in South African soils and ancient varieties of the world. Pinotage wasn’t even on my list. I wasn’t particularly passionate about drinking it,” she admits. The redirection came from Beyers Truter, a committed Pinotage advocate irritated that Hartenberg had just won Winemaker of the Year with a Shiraz-Cabernet blend rather than one built on his grape. “The professor ultimately chose the topic for me,” she says, “and I wrote about it, never realizing how significant it would become.” Cape Blend is now a recognised, regulated category, and Pinotage, she says, has grown into “magnificent, premium and iconic styles, alongside lighter styles and even rosé, a grape we can genuinely be proud of.”
Earning the Title
There was no formal syllabus for Cape Wine Masters when Junel qualified. “It is largely self-study. You buy the books, you study for hours, and you have to be incredibly disciplined,” she says. The science was hardest for someone who’d studied languages, not chemistry, while viticulture and geography came more naturally. The three-hour general knowledge exam demanded constant reading of Decanter, Wine Spectator and the South African press; she passed every exam first time. The tasting exams covered 24 still wines from around the world, plus fortified wines and, for the first time for any cohort, brandy. “We were the first group required to taste brandy, because the board felt South Africa, as a brandy-producing country, should include it,” she explains. Untrained for it, her group failed initially, then asked the brandy masters to teach them. “To our surprise, we all fell in love with the subject.” Her dissertation was returned several times by strict examiners: “At times, it nearly broke me.” She finished it anyway, “incredibly proud and very, very happy.”
The small number of Cape Wine Masters doesn’t trouble her. Unlike Masters of Wine, who must be active in the trade, candidates here can come from any profession. What limits the numbers, she argues, is simpler: years of exams and international study before the programme even starts, then up to five more years, with no guaranteed job at the end. “That’s a huge commitment. Who has that kind of time?” Still, she wouldn’t lower the bar. “The challenge is part of what makes it special.”
The Call She Didn’t See Coming
Junel’s move into marketing wasn’t planned, it was engineered, in an afternoon, by Pieter de Waal of Uiterwyk (De Waal Wine Estate), one of the early pioneers of the Cape Blend style. Summoned to his Johannesburg distributor’s office, she arrived to find him mid-conversation with his sales reps. “He looked at me and said he wanted to introduce me as his new brand ambassador,” she recalls. “I looked at him and said, ‘What does that mean? You haven’t even asked me!’ He simply said, ‘Yes, but I’m not taking no for an answer.’” When she protested that she knew nothing about that side of the business, “he said, ‘Then I’ll teach you.’ And that’s exactly what he did.” The learning curve was steep. “I remember feeling too shy even to walk into a bottle store. I had grown up with the idea that women simply didn’t go into bottle stores!” she says. “If it wasn’t for Pieter de Waal, I don’t think I would ever have entered the marketing side of the wine world.”
Built on Relationships, Not the Clock
Studying marketing formally taught her the mechanics, she says, but that’s only half the job. “If you really want to be successful in this industry, you need two things: passion, and a willingness to give it everything you have. You cannot count the hours,” she says. “So much of our business is built on relationships, whether you are prepared to sit around a table with them, share a meal, sometimes work late into the night, and really get to know them.” She pushes back on treating wine marketing as just a job: “We don’t watch the clock.” The travel and long hours take their toll, she concedes, “but we don’t think about overtime or complain about the hours. We do it because we love it.”
Her Own Voice, Not an Echo
As Global Ambassador, Junel works closely alongside Alvi but draws a clear line around her own contribution. “I have been involved in the wine industry for many years, long before Alvi ever thought he would become actively involved in winemaking,” she points out. “So when I discover a wine that I am passionate about, I tell its story from my own perspective.” She writes the estate’s wine descriptions herself, and Alvi draws her into final blending decisions, where her judgment carries weight even though he, with a wider winemaking team, makes the final call. “I don’t believe I have to agree with everything. I have my own opinions, and sometimes those opinions open a different door,” she says. “It has never been about simply being Alvi’s voice.”
That independence extends to resisting market pressure. “The biggest test has always been the temptation to follow what the market wants at a particular moment,” she says. “A certain style, variety, packaging or price point suddenly becomes fashionable, and there is always pressure to respond.” Their starting point instead is always the vineyard, Scherpenheuvel’s cooler climate, its varied soils, what each block can actually produce. “So we ask ourselves: Is this really who we are, or are we simply following a trend?” That’s not the same as standing still, she adds. “Innovation for us must serve the wine, not the trend. You cannot plant a vineyard today and expect it to tell you its whole story tomorrow.” What holds it together, she says, is “family, our land, our Scherpenheuvel terroir and making wines that we genuinely believe in.”
Old Vines, Young Name
Alvi planted many of the estate’s vineyards himself. “When you know your vineyards as well as we do, it’s almost like knowing your children,” Junel says. As blocks mature, they earn their place in the Albertus Viljoen Icon range: “Mature vineyards have settled into themselves. They become more consistent, and year after year they can give us fruit of exceptional quality and concentration.” Only hand-sorted fruit from the most reliable blocks makes the cut, matched to yeast strains and barrels refined vintage after vintage. The one constant is age: Icon-range fruit comes from vineyards at least 18 years old, preferably 20 to 30 or more. “That maturity, combined with the knowledge and passion in the cellar, is what gives us the foundation for truly exceptional wines.”
Getting the world to say the region’s name correctly is, by her own account, one of her main jobs. “Do you know about this little pocket near Worcester called Scherpenheuvel? We are the only private wine producer in Scherpenheuvel,” she says. Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl carry centuries of history and established wine routes; visitors default there, often driving straight past the Breede River Valley. “Alvi registered Alvi’s Drift in 2004, making us one of the younger wine estates. We have to build that recognition ourselves,” she says. The estate deliberately resists the shorthand “Worcester”. “We are Scherpenheuvel. That is our identity, our terroir and our story. Once we have firmly established that name in the market, I believe people will start saying it naturally.”
The Dave Hughes Trophy
The trophy, Junel is quick to clarify, isn’t a nod to Alvi’s Drift. “It has nothing to do with Alvi’s Drift. The recognition is for my contribution to the broader industry,” she says, pointing to judging panels, lecturing, and her roles as Commandeur in the Commanderie de Bordeaux in South Africa and Chevalier of Champagne. Her aim abroad is deliberately broad: “I want people to understand our regions and not become blinded by one particular area or producer.” She compares it to France: “You wouldn’t go to Bordeaux, taste Bordeaux wines and then say, ‘I’ve tasted French wine.’ What about the Loire? Burgundy? Rhône? There is so much more.”
She wasn’t there to receive it. The ceremony fell shortly after a severe flood that cut her family off from the outside world and cost them, by her own description, “virtually everything.” She’d sent word she wouldn’t attend. Then her phone rang late one evening. “Junel, we just wanted you to know that you have been voted Cape Wine Master of the Year,” the Chairman told her. “I was completely overwhelmed. It was genuinely the last thing I ever expected.” Alvi had shrugged off her odds beforehand, saying “What are the chances? Just because you’re Junel…” but when the news came through, “he actually burst into tears. He just put his arms around me, and I could see how proud he was.”
Asked what Dave Hughes might say to her today, she recalls telling him, right after qualifying, that she’d realised she “actually knew nothing.” His reply: “Exactly. Welcome to the journey.” She’s carried that since. “I grew with the industry, and I’m still growing,” she says. “For me, it’s almost a case of, ‘Until death do us part.’” If Dave were still around, she believes, he’d simply raise his glass and say: “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Creating Space
Junel hasn’t built a formal programme for women in wine, but insists her influence has been real, just less visible. “For me, creating space means actually giving people an opportunity to participate, to be seen and to be heard,” through recommendations, tastings and “encouraging them to put themselves forward rather than waiting for somebody else to notice them.” She’s firm that opportunity isn’t entitlement, though: “They need to be given the opportunity to demonstrate what they can do… and be allowed to earn their place on merit.” “Over many years, I have helped create small openings for people. And sometimes those small openings become doors.”
The gender gap in South African wine, in her reading, runs through the whole industry rather than any one region, most visible at senior levels. “Acceptance is not the same as equality. The gap is still most evident in access to leadership positions, ownership, decision-making roles, remuneration.” She traces it to historically male-dominated networks that haven’t simply dissolved: “Sometimes the barriers are not explicit; they are built into the way opportunities are offered.” Representation has improved, but isn’t enough on its own: “We need to ensure that women are not only present, but that they are also heard, promoted, fairly compensated.”
Vision 2030, and What Comes Next
Unlike the Master of Wine programme, Junel points out, South African wine doesn’t depend on Cape Wine Masters to staff its roles. The real risk of a slowing pipeline, in her view, is losing talented people before they get the chance to try, the gap the ICWM’s Vision 2030 programme is meant to close by sponsoring candidates who’ve completed Cape Wine Academy diplomas but lack the means to continue. “We identify people who show potential and give them the opportunity to enrol,” she says. Not everyone finishes, but some do. “That is what we want to do for the future: identify potential, remove financial barriers where we can and help carry those candidates forward.”
Asked what she’d want people to say she built, years from now, Junel resists overstating her own legacy. “I have not built a specific institution, programme or business, so I would not want to overstate that,” she says. What she hopes for instead is subtler: proof, by example, of what’s possible. “I see students and young professionals adopting aspects of my approach, how I conduct myself, how I engage with the industry,” she says. “I would like people to say that I helped make the industry more visible and accessible, and that I inspired others not simply to follow me, but to develop their own voices.” It’s a quieter ambition than a trophy or a range of icon wines, but one that fits a career built, from a KWV switchboard onward, on listening first. “That, to me, would be a meaningful legacy, not that I built something in the traditional sense, but that I helped build awareness, confidence and momentum in the people who come after me.”
This article was written in collaboration with De Monnik Dranken, importer of Alvi’s Drift in The Netherlands.
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