My year of wine: Our tipple must make a bigger ripple

Sitting in the private pool section of the Bay Hotel looking over Camps Bay beach isn't a shabby way to spend an afternoon.

Invited to lunch by family now living in Canada, we thoroughly enjoyed the generosity of their dollar spending and a day on the beach without getting our toes wet and our hair sandy.

There were many blonde and large-breasted poseurs perched along the edge of the infinity pool, amusing our party. And there was also some wine chatter, focused mostly on how great it is to buy rand-denominated wine in South Africa when you earn dollars in North America.

''We can order a bottle and if we don't like it we don't mind ditching it and buying another," one said.

''It's actually quite hard to spend $5 on a glass here," said another, who pointed out that $5 would be pretty cheap at home.

Although they have been drinking many a bottle here, they are still more convinced by the whites from Australia and New Zealand, and by the reds of France, than by what we're producing.

My sense is that they just don't know enough about our wines and that there is poor exposure of our wines in Canada. The bottle of Porcupine Ridge sauvignon blanc we were drinking was a familiar one to them. But they had until now thought it was a New Zealand wine.

Last year South Africa exported 422million litres of wine compared to 525million litres in 2013. That's a big drop, but André Morgenthal, of Wine of South Africa, explains that 2013 was an anomaly with a bumper crop.

He said the drop was also due to sufficient supply of local wine in Europe and the US.

I was happy to hear that my favourite and the most widely planted variety, chenin blanc, is selling well in other countries.

''Sauvignon blanc is still doing well for us in the UK. Consumers are looking for rounded, 'softer' reds versus the full-bodied reds," Morgenthal added.

White blends, at which the cousins turned up their noses (''Why mix the whites?"), are also doing well. Obviously, there are enough other people happy to drink blends.

''We can grow our exports in the markets where wine consumption is growing: the US, China, Japan and parts of Africa," Morgenthal said.

''To do this, we need to encourage people to try our wines. But in markets in which South African wine is better established we have to sell the image of our wines and grow our value share."

I did my bit around the pool. But we're going to have to get the cousins back to South Africa, this time to explore vineyards and not just to see the big five and the beach.