South African Wine Directory

There's a lot of reading in this site with a whole host of articles either re-printed from terrestrial magazines, or specially written for the Wine Directory. Many of these are to be found under the Wine News heading. There are also promotional advertorials, for example on the vineyards of Franchhoek, ‘The French corner of the Cape', which although a puff for the region, does include an excellent primer on the place and the wines.

The directory listings for wines and wineries are very sound, and given that this site is in the business of promoting South African wine, the advice and information seems to be dependable.

The homepage presents topical articles in a magazine like format, with lots of news, special features and a diary of events listed in the body of the page. Down the left-hand edge of the screen is a navigation panel. There is another navigation bar featuring more or less identical options along the top edge of the screen. This latter bar is featured within most sub-section main screens. Other sub-sections have only a Home button, and once you are down at the level of the site's database of producers or wines, there are usually no navigational options other than hitting your browser's Back button.

The site is database-driven, and some results of searches do take a while to download: especially on pages like Wineries and Wines, where high-quality photographs mean large file sizes. It has to be said that the wait is usually worth it, but the best advice is to make your searches as specific as possible.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Wineries When first selected from the navigation bar this section displays a random winery profile in the body of the page. The means to access specific winery information is via the panel towards the left hand side. Here you can browse by region or by special categories like those wineries with disabled access or those that are open on Sundays. You can also use a search facility where entering the name of a winery will take you straight to its entry. These winery profiles are excellent. There is a photograph, a lovely introduction to the producer and their wines, full contact and visiting information and a full rundown on their wines including label images and technical data. You can even buy wines for shipping to the UK using full ecommerce facilities.

Wines Again a featured wine is shown to the right, but the main access is through the search panel on the left. Query the database by wine name, wine maker or grape variety. The result is a listing of wines with label images and technical data. Be warned: searching simply for a generic term like Chardonnay will result in a list of several hundred wines which will take forever to download.

Wine News is a collection of topical stories, many culled from other wine sites or print magazines. It deals mainly with issues of South African interest. ‘My money for a glass of Pinotage' is the amusing tale of trying to defeat bureaucracy in a winery restaurant, ‘Wine Wars — Episode One' tells the tale of the United States' complex and contentious wine shipping laws and ‘Symptoms of a Wine Fanatic' is a handy self-diagnosis guide to see if you've got the bug.
Maps A handy section with a general map showing the main wine areas, individual area maps that get down to showing road numbers and the positions of wineries, and a wine route map that would be handy if you are planning a visit to the area.

OTHER FEATURES

There are some other resources here, such as a very comprehensive History of South African wine which also includes a description of the main wine regions and Noticeboard, a kind of classified ads section where you can leave a notice and contact details.