Wine tourism in Zimbabwe is on an upward trajectory, according to Africa Marketing Manager of Wines of South Africa (WOSA), Matome Mbatha.

WOSA recently held an inaugural wine-tasting festival in Victoria Falls, with the aim of making it an annual event – and expand it to other East Africa countries – that attracts more tourists into the country’s prime resort town while, in the process, boosting the country’s tourism revenue.

It came against the backdrop of the third UNWTO Wine Tourism Conference held in Chisinau, Moldova, in September, where UNWTO Secretary-General, Zurab Pololikashvili, called on stakeholders to co-operate for development and growth.

While Zimbabwe has only two active vineyards – which have struggled with poor grape-growing weather over the past two years – wine tourism as a sector encompasses wine festivals, special events, organised wine tours, as well as visits to wineries, vineyards and restaurants known to offer unique vintages.

With the country importing around 18.5 million bottles of wine annually, and a surge of tourist arrivals from 2.1 million in 2016 to 2.4 million in 2017, tourists visiting attractions, making use of accommodation and restaurant facilities, are priming wine tourism for take-off.

And local wine-makers are looking at reviving Zimbabwe-grown wines in the face of this growth.

Bushman Rock – a safari and activities operator with an on-site winery – is the only boutique winery in the country, and is planning to produce sparkling wine during the course of 2019. “We have been looking to introduce bubbly for some time, and are going to be conducting small-batch trials this season,” says Managing Director, Jonathan Passaportis. “We replanted a small vineyard of Chardonnay eight years ago, which is now producing suitable quality at suitable volumes to allow us to ‘play with’ the production; should this show promise, we are looking to expand into commercial production in 2020. We had planned the trials to be done in 2018, however, due to the huge rains that we experienced, we needed all the suitable grapes for our dry white blend.”

Passaportis says there has been a huge increase in Zimbabweans’ consumption of wines, with local consumers being excited to try locally produced wines. “In addition to the local market, the increase/return of foreign tourism is creating huge interest in locally produced products across the beverage market.”

“Global markets have moved toward ‘buying local’, and socially savvy travellers are now keen to support small local brands. There has been huge growth of ‘micro-breweries’ and ‘micro-ginneries/distilleries’ on a global market scale, and yet here in Zimbabwe we are still largely dependent on imports. My feeling is that any locally produced products that are of an international standard will add massively to the appeal of our tourism markets,” says Passaportis.

“As a country we have huge potential to produce some very good quality white wines and hopefully some great sparkling wines.”