As I don't have a piece in this week's Saturday's magazine, which is devoted to a bumper travel issue, it seems timely in the light of Invictus to look back at the South African wine scene before Mandela became President of South Africa. So here, in an occasional series, From the Archive, is my report in the Independent nearly 20 years ago.

AFTER years in the wilderness, the prospect of an end to pariah status has given the South African wine industry the confidence to dip a tentative toe into international waters. The industry had hoped that by the time it staged two major wine tastings in London, the call for sanetions to be lifted would have come. But it was not to be.

The first event was organised by the Bergkelder, a division of the Rembrandt Group which markets 19 of the Cape’s estates. Last week it was the turn of the Cape Wine & Spirit Exporters Association, the export arm of KWV, the umbrella co-operative, which brought 54 companies to London for a trade and press tasting.

If the springboard for seeking recognition beyond its shores came with President F W Klerk’s "landmark speech" in February last year, the industry already had good reason for wanting to see its wines on our shelves and dinner tables. South Africa’s 76 independent estates and 70 co-operatives produce some 9.5 million hectolitres of wine (the equivalent of 1.26 billion bottles), putting it in eighth place in the world production league. But in consumption, at around 9.7 litres per head, it ranks a lowly twenty-eight. A relatively insignificant amount of wine is exported. Half or more of the total has to be distilled for brandy and other products.

So the future lies in two non-conflicting aims: turning the nation’s black beer-drinking population into wine consumers and expanding into foreign markets. On the domestic front, selling wine into black townships requires a re-structuring of the conservative. Afrikaner-dominated industry. As for exports, as Jannie Retief, marketing director of KWV, said last week, “we are running a race with one leg in plaster.”

Make that both legs. Although South Africa claims a tradition of winemaking stretching back 300 years, the legacy of the Cape as a colonial producer of cheap fortified wines has done the modern industry few favours. In the 1880s, the wine market collapsed under the pressure of foreign competition and growers turned to producing ostrich feathers.

In 1918, the KWV (Ko-operative Wijnbowers Vereniging) was formed to keep prices stable, mop up surplus production and generally look after the interests of the Cape’s white grape farmers, now 5,700 in number. Since then the industry has made plodding progress using feudal labour to work vineyards planted largely with a host of dull-to-midding quality, high-cropping grape varieties. The main white varieties are chenin blanc (known as the steen in South Africa), colombar, Muscat of Alexandria, palomino, sultana and crouchen blanc (known as Cape or Paarl Riesling). Cinsaut, cabernet sauvignon and pinotage (a pinot noir/cinsaut crossing) make up a large proportion of the reds.

The advent of cold fermentation – technology that has enabled hot climate vineyards to produce aromatic, refreshingly fruity, dry white wines – was the making of the steen. In the so-called “Lieberstein revolution” of the early Sixties, the birth of a crisp, fruity, medium-dry white succeeded in launching a new generation of Cape wine drinkers. Steen will not set the world alight. But technology has at least provided the wherewithal for the industry to make inroads at the £3 to £5 “fighting end” of the market that is most feared by countries such as Chile and Australia.

The classic French varieties have slowly infiltrated South Africa’s vineyards over the past 15 years. Their potential for the production of quality wine is probably greater in the long run. At the London tastings, a handful of complex, barrel-fermented chardonnays and claret-like, oak-matured cabernet sauvignons showed promise. But a degree of old-fashioned winemaking and only tiny available quantities suggest that isolation from the mainstream and control by the dead hand of the KWV have been giant obstacles to progress.

Latterly, South African winemakers have drawn strength from an evident thaw in attitudes towards their wines. Indeed, it seems that much of the traditional trade has been eagerly awaiting the green light. In November last year, the British Wine Development Board (now the Wine Promotion Board) issued a “new dawn” press release. “Within the political climate changing, “said John Mostyn, a director, “there appears to be a renewed – and very welcome – interest growing within the trade.”

South African white liberals, too, are urging acceptance. Tim Hamilton-Russell is a winemaker and outspoken critic of government polices and KWV practices. Last year he caused an uproar when he suggested the Rural Foundation’s gestures towards better conditions for farm labourers smacked of paternalism. However, in the light of long overdue legislation conferring on farm workers the same employment rights as industrial workers, he has asked the Which? Wine Guide to review its policy of not mentioning South African wine.

His own attempt to address the problem of the industry’s feudal system is contained in the Winelands Commitment. This states that its signatories will provide a minimum wage, better conditions for a farm worker, calls for lands ownership to be opened unconditionally to all races and an end to apartheid. To date only three other winemakers have signed: John Platter of Clos du Ciel, Simon Barlow of Rustenberg and Peter Younghusband of Haute Provence.

David Back of Backsberg is not a signatory, but he feels that a growing number of farmers, albeit still a minority, are beginning to realise that workers’ conditions must change radically if the industry is to progress. “ If we are to get labour to care, we need to establish a better rapport with our workers,” he says.

Earlier this year Nelson Mandela called for sanctions to remain in place. But whether or not to stock South African wines is a value-for-money question rather than political or moral issue for most of the British wine trade. Most high-street chains and some supermarkets stock the odd South African wine, usually one more of KWV’s successful brands. Marks & Spencer says it will have a range in the autumn “provided we get the quality and value we’re looking for”. Oddbins is “looking at South Africa”; Sainsbury’s has “no plans yet”. A handful of independent merchants, among them Winecellars’ David Gleave: “not until the call comes for sanctions to be lifted.”

Refusing to drink or buy South African wines on principle is currently no great sacrifice. In the quality, strength and depth of its wines, South Africa is not yet a Chile, let alone an Australia. But if sanctions are lifted, there will be undoubted opportunities.