S. Africa’s Wines Moving Onto Global Market : Commerce: With most sanctions ended, the nation’s vintners covet more sales in the U.S. But some large grocery chains still shun their products.

Beneath the cool, misty hills of Cape province, winemaker Beyers Truter carefully pulled the cork from a large new oak barrel in his cellar the other day and siphoned off half a glass of his progeny.

He swirled the red liquid to release the bouquet, took a deep sniff and poured it into his mouth. But, rather than soberly spitting it out, as professionals like Truter usually do, he swallowed it.

After all, he said with a smile, why waste a lovely wine?

“I’ve had a craving to make wines like this all my life,” Truter said. And as chief winemaker for the small, highly regarded Kanonkop Estate, he is helping make this Pinotage, a red wine pressed from grapes unique to South Africa, an award winner and a world favorite.

“This wine and I have a very special relationship,” he said.

South African wines, banned in much of the world for almost a decade by sanctions aimed at breaking this country’s apartheid policies, are on the shelves again, teasing the palates of curious wine lovers from the United States to Europe to the Far East.

South Africa’s vineyards produced 600 million bottles of wine last year, making it the world’s eighth-largest winemaker. About a fourth of that was exported, including more than 50,000 cases to the United States for the first time since sanctions were removed in 1991. The South African product already has begun to appear on store shelves in 33 states, from California to Texas to New York.

The legal obstacles are gone, but some political ones remain. Major grocers in California, for instance, have refused to stock the stuff for fear of a backlash from politically conscious consumers.

Although South African winemakers plan to ship 70,000 cases of wine to American distributors this year, they could double that if African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela endorses President Frederik W. de Klerk’s reform program with a call for an end to all remaining sanctions.

That call, expected within weeks, “will tell people it’s OK to buy South African wines again,” said Niel van Staden, marketing manager for KWV, the country’s large winegrowers cooperative. “We’re just waiting for that spark.”

Overcoming American reluctance to buy South African goods, even legally imported ones, will give winemakers here a much-needed boost and, they believe, a measure of protection from a new, black-controlled government.

Like so many white-controlled businesses, the wine industry, founded three centuries ago by Dutch and French settlers, is pinned uncomfortably by the covetous stare of the impoverished black majority.

About 50,000 mixed-race Colored men and women live and work on wine farms, which also are home to their 250,000 dependents. But the 5,500 winegrowers, almost all of whom are white, wonder what will happen to their vineyards if the predominantly black ANC Congress, as is expected, wins the first elections here next April.

ANC leaders insist they won’t forcibly take land from whites and give it to blacks, but some form of economic redistribution is inevitable. The new government will be under pressure from 34 million blacks, Coloreds and Asians to right the wrongs of apartheid, which favored the 5 million whites.

“The ANC doesn’t have a real understanding of the wine industry,” said Arnold Kirkby, public relations manager for KWV, which represents 90% of the winegrowers.

But profitable export markets may help shield them from ANC meddling. “This country is going to need foreign exchange,” said Kevin Arnold, winemaker for Rust en Vrede, a small estate that makes premium-quality red wines. “Wine is one thing we can do well and which people will want to buy.”

South African wines already are selling well in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. But the biggest potential market is the United States, which consumes 120 million cases of wine a year, 20 million of them imported.

U.S. sanctions against Pretoria, approved by Congress in 1986 over former President Ronald Reagan’s veto, swept South African wines from American shelves, and wines from Australia and Chile have since filled the void. Now, two years after then-President George Bush lifted federal sanctions, winemakers here are battling to re-enter that lucrative market.

During their absence from American tables, South Africa’s wines have gotten significantly better. One reason is the arrival here of varietals, such as Chardonnay grapes. Another is the use of wooden barrels to mature red wines. Vintners also have been traveling widely, studying in France and California.

KWV, which was founded 70 years ago to help local vineyards sell their wines overseas, is by far the country’s biggest exporter. Its biggest market is Britain, which imports 800,000 cases of South African wine a year--a sevenfold increase since 1990.

KWV sells red and white wines in the United States under three labels: Cape Country, which retails for about $5 a bottle; Springbok, for $7 a bottle, and Cathedral Cellar, for $12 a bottle. The most popular wine by far has been the 1991 Springbok Chardonnay.

Although those imports have done well in New York and Texas, KWV has been hampered in California and some other states by the reluctance of large grocery chains to stock the politically sensitive product.

(Many wine experts here also believe their product is handicapped by a 58-year-old pact with France, under which the French agreed to import South African lobsters if South Africa would stop using words like Bordeaux and champagne on labels for its wines.)

California, because it produces some of the best wines in the world, and because of protectionist laws that put imports at a disadvantage, is traditionally the toughest market for an importer to crack. Only 4% of the wine sold in California is imported, compared with 60% in New York. And only 2,000 cases of South African wine have been sold in California.

Many vineyards, though members of the cooperative, also are exporting their estate wines. Boschendal, the country’s largest estate, sent 16,000 cases to the United States several months ago. Kanonkop’s first 1,000-case shipment to the United States last year sold out, and a second 1,000-case shipment is being prepared.

Kanonkop, with just 250 acres under vine, produces about 20,000 cases of red wine a year. A fourth of that goes to Britain, and about half is sold to local and international aficionados as “futures,” for delivery in four or five years.

“It’s not fireworks yet, but I think people will get to know the brand after a while,” said Johann Krige, manager of Kanonkop and 40-year-old grandson of the estate’s founder.

Kanonkop’s pride is its Pinotage, which has sold well--at $15 a bottle--in New York wine shops and helped Truter, its maker, win the Robert Mondavi International Winemaker of the Year Award.

The Pinotage, a cross between the French Pinot noir and Cinsaut vines, generally has a sweeter, rounder flavor than a Cabernet Sauvignon. And a good bottle can last 15 years or more, improving steadily with age.

Although this country produces 3% of the world’s wine, South Africans are not big wine drinkers, ranking just 27th in wine consumption worldwide. The French, the No. 1 wine drinkers, consume seven times more than South Africans.

More than 75% of the wine here is consumed in the Cape, one of four provinces. And, to the continued consternation of winegrowers, black Africans, a potentially giant market, have little fondness for wine at all.

It was white settlers who planted the first vines in South Africa. Jan van Riebeck, who founded the first Dutch colony on the Cape, planted vine cuttings from western France here in 1655. Four years later, he wrote in his diary: “Today, praise be the Lord, wine was made for the first time from Cape grapes.”

Those first wines were less than impressive. John Platter, a South African authority on wine, quotes a diarist of the time as saying the young wines “irritate the bowels.”

Quality began to improve, though, with the arrival of a party of 200 French Huguenots two decades later. During the 18th Century, Cape dessert wines were favorites of many European notables.

The glory days did not last. Slavery was abolished, and winemakers lost their cheap labor. Many whites left their farms and embarked on a trek north to escape British colonial rule. And the vineyards were struck by disease.

Now, more than a century later, growers here believe South Africa’s wines can compete with the best. And, after so many years of isolation, their desire to take a place at the world’s dinner tables is driven as much by pride as by profit.

“I still think the best French wines are the best in the world,” said Truter. “But we aren’t far behind. And sometimes--well, sometimes I think we’re there already.”