Matome Mbata, Africa Market Manager at Wines of South Africa (WoSA) and Sylvia Karanja, founder of Sip&Savour Atelier and East Africa lead for WoSA during the There’s Sunshine Inside Wines of South East Africa Tour held in Nairobi on May 15-16 /HANDOUT
Something is
shifting on the Kenyan drinks scene. Wine, once considered a niche indulgence
for the well-travelled or the well-heeled, is increasingly becoming the drink
of choice for a new generation of urban Kenyans who are just as likely to pair
a Chenin Blanc with a weekday lunch as they are to reach for a spirit on a
Friday night.
Wine registered
moderate volume growth in Kenya in 2024 and 2025, with over 3.1 million litres
in imports of South African wine. Industry insiders say the more significant impact
is not just how much wine Kenyans are drinking, but how they are drinking it,
with curiosity, discernment, and a growing fluency in grape varieties, terroir,
and food pairings that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
Bringing it on
May 15, 2026, at Nairobi’s Social House, champagne flutes were barely set down
before the conversation started. The air was warm with a particular kind of
excitement, the kind that comes not from obligation but from genuine discovery.
Sommeliers in
crisp linen, hotel buyers with notebooks, lifestyle influencers cradling Chenin
Blancs, and seasoned importers swapping business cards with producers from Cape
Town and Stellenbosch. Wines of South Africa (WOSA) had come to Kenya, and by
all accounts, Kenya had been waiting.
This was the
inaugural WOSA East Africa showcase, a full-day affair, that moved through
three distinct registers. The morning opened with a business-to-business
session, bringing South African producers face-to-face with Kenyan trade
representatives for commercial conversations. The afternoon pivoted to a
masterclass, with two of South Africa’s most storied grapes, Pinotage and
Chenin Blanc, under the spotlight. By evening, the event had opened its doors
to hoteliers, lifestyle partners, and consumers eager to taste wines both
already on the Kenyan market and those still waiting to make their debut.
“It was an
incredible event. It was successful,” said Sylvia Karanja, founder of Sip
& Savour Atelier and WOSA’s East Africa Lead, her tone measured but clearly
pleased. “We got very positive feedback and were very excited to just have
more of this kind of event.”
An African wine,
for African palates
At the heart of
the day’s programme was Pinotage, a grape as singular as the continent it comes
from. Developed in 1925 at the University of Stellenbosch by viticulturist AI
Perold, Pinotage is a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, and it grows
nowhere else on earth with the same cultural or agricultural weight. It is,
quite literally, Africa’s own grape.
For Karanja,
this is more than a talking point. It is personal.
“Pinotage
is African, so we need to drink Pinotage,” she said, with the quiet
conviction of someone who has made this argument many times and intends to keep
making it. “We need to talk about it; we need to learn more about it and
enjoy it. It is a signature African grape, grown first in Africa, for
Africans.”
Flanking
Pinotage on the masterclass programme was Chenin Blanc, South Africa’s most
planted grape variety. Originally from France’s Loire Valley, Chenin Blanc
found a second home in South Africa’s diverse terroir, and today the country’s
vineyard acreage under this variety exceeds even that of the Loire itself.
Versatile and expressive, it produces everything from bone-dry, mineral-driven
whites to rich, oaked wines and even late-harvest dessert styles, making it a
natural ambassador for a market, like Kenya’s, that is still finding its full
range of tastes.
Matome Mbatha,
WOSA’s Africa Market Manager, based in Stellenbosch, was the man behind much of
the day’s energy, and behind the broader strategy of investing in East Africa
as a priority market.
“East
Africa is the fastest growing in terms of volumes that we export. Kenya is the
biggest both in volume and value,” he said. “So, we’re upselling. Kenyans
have now shifted from just taking wine because it’s been introduced. They
research it. They want the finest. That’s why they are willing to pay the
price, which is high end.”
For him, the
day’s theme Taste Sunshine Inside was not poetic branding, it was
literal.
“South Africa
has sunshine 365 days,” he laughed. “That brings diversity in our wine, the
soils, the sun, the atmosphere… that’s what we want to celebrate.”
Mbatha has watched
the Kenyan palate mature over a decade of training programmes.
“We’ve done
introductory wine courses. Thousands of young people in Kenya today are now
sommeliers. Some work in cruise ships, hotels, restaurants.”
“What we’ve done
in the last 10 years is paying off.”
Wine importers, South African wine producers, hospitality stakeholders and guests pose for a photo with Matome Mbata, Africa market manager at Wine of South Africa (WoSA) and Sylvia Karanja, founder of Sip & Savour Atelier and East Africa lead for WoSA during the “There’s Sunshine Inside East Africa Tour held in Nairobi on May 15-16 /HANDOUT
Wine importers, South African wine producers, hospitality stakeholders and guests pose for a photo with Matome Mbatha, Africa Market Manager at Wines of South Africa (WoSA), and Sylvia Karanja, Founder of Sip & Savour Atelier and East Africa Lead for WoSA, during the “There’s Sunshine Inside” East Africa Tour held in Nairobi on May 15–16, 2026.
From Four
Cousins to Cap Classique
The story of
South African wine in Kenya is, in some ways, a story of palate education. Gradual,
organic, and now accelerating in ways that are exciting even to the people who
helped set it in motion.
Wine in Kenya
began, for many consumers, with approachable, fruit-forward labels. Brands like
Robertsons and Four Cousins; sweet, accessible, unpretentious, were the
handshake. They were not the whole conversation.
“The
introduction of South African wine was from the basics and something very
simple,” said Cynthia Mwangi, a media personality and lifestyle influencer
who attended the event. “The Robertsons, the Four Cousins, all those were
very sweet wines. And I think I’m very grateful that that was our version or
introduction of wines. From there, you can see people appreciating a broader
perspective.”
That broader
perspective now includes Chenin Blancs, Sauvignon Blancs, structured Pinotages,
and increasingly, Méthode Cap Classique (MCC), South Africa’s answer to
Champagne. Made using the traditional method, Cap Classique sparkling wines
have become a quiet symbol of South Africa’s premium ambitions in Kenya.
“I am very
keen on Cap Classique,” said Mwangi. “The fact that you can drink wine
or a version of champagne that’s purely made in Africa, and that is huge. Being
able to walk into a restaurant and ask for a Cap Classique and you get it. That
has blown me away.”
The business
of wine
On the trade
floor, the conversations were more grounded but no less energised. Judy Ngene,
CEO of Galena Wine Importers and co-founder of the Wine Fair, was showcasing
wines from her South African partners at Diverse Shop Wine Estate, some already
available in the Kenyan market, others being considered for introduction.
For Ngene, the
day was not just a tasting event. It was market intelligence.
“Kenyans
are curious, generally, even when it comes to wine. So, we’re not very
hell-bent or stuck on one style,” she observed. “And more recently,
we’re looking at more premium wine consumption. People are able to spend a
little bit more on wine, which is good for us.”
She was candid,
too, about the balancing act facing any importer working in Kenya’s wine
sector: quality versus price. “We are all price conscious,” she said.
“Definitely people look at the price. However, they also don’t want to
compromise on quality. It’s perfect balance.”
What struck her
most, though, was not economics, it was storytelling. Increasingly, Kenyan
consumers are not just buying wine; they are buying into narratives. The
identity behind the bottle matters.
“We find
people moving towards brands that are female-owned, black-owned, because
there’s a story and you feel like it resonates with you,” she said. “So,
storytelling is actually very, very important.”
A market coming
of age
Mbatha, who has
watched the Kenyan wine scene evolve over more than a decade, sees the
maturation not just in what people drink, but in how they talk about wine. WOSA
has invested heavily in education, running introductory wine courses that have,
over the years, helped produce thousands of young Kenyan sommeliers, many of
whom now work in the country’s growing hotel and restaurant sector.
“We have
done introductory wine courses. Many thousands of young people in Kenya who
today, some are working on cruise ships,” he said. “Many of them are
placed in restaurants and hotels because they are now sommeliers. And this is
one country that’s got the biggest number of sommeliers.”
For him, the
vision extends beyond Kenya’s borders, and beyond wine itself. He spoke with
warmth about the possibilities of intra-African trade, of Kenyan coffee and tea
finding their way onto restaurant menus in Cape Town, just as South African
wines claim their place on tables in Nairobi.
“The drive
from intra-trade is critical. We want to see more of it,” he said.
“We want to see opportunities created; their coffees and teas being served
in South Africa. That’s how we all grow.”
Something in
the sunshine
South African
wine has a geography that works in its favour. The vineyards of the Western
Cape grow near the Atlantic Ocean, cooled by coastal breezes even as the sun
blazes overhead. It is this interplay, heat and cool, sun and wind, that the
industry has long called terroir, borrowing a word from French winemaking
tradition to describe something distinctly its own.
“Taste
Sunshine Inside”
was the theme of the day’s proceedings. It is a phrase that captures something
real about these wines: their warmth, their fruit-forwardness, their
exuberance.
But as the
afternoon wound into evening at Social House, what lingered most was something
harder to bottle, the sense that this was not just a wine event. It was a
conversation between two parts of Africa, one with centuries of viticulture and
another finding its own language for what it enjoys, what it values, and what
it wants next.
“For the
East African or African consumer,” said Karanja, “we need to
appreciate more what Africa is producing.
Dining and Cooking