But in March, the vintner filling Heritage Link's first major order failed to deliver, leaving the Cuffes scrambling for replacement product. Heritage had brought in 5,500 cases by midfall--the wines typically sell for $12 to $23 a bottle at retail--but problems continued, including an order that was placed in May and didn't ship until mid-September.
With that history in mind, Cuffe has made living up to commitments one of two key themes at the Stellenbosch training session. She delivers the message herself and through proxies. Keleigh Starr, Cuffe's best friend and her companion on this trip, puts it to the vintners bluntly. "You all need to get yourselves dependability screen savers," scolds Starr, who at home in Los Angeles is an account manager at Warner Music. "If you promise product to Selena and she promises it to Whole Foods and she can't deliver, Whole Foods doesn't care that it was your fault. Their bottom line is going to be 'Selena didn't deliver.'
"Selena is very loyal," Starr continues. "If she believes in your cause she will assist you to the end. But if you made a commitment and you don't come through, she will nicely tell you that we're not going to do business anymore."
Standing beside her, Cuffe smiles affectionately.
The second key theme of this training session is alliances--why they matter and how not to screw them up. Since the end of apartheid and lifting of sanctions in 1994, South Africa's wine industry has grown to $3 billion. But freedom and opportunity are not identical: The vast majority of blacks still lack the capital and business expertise to attempt wine production. As part of an economic transformation initiative, the government created a land transfer program and announced a goal of 30 percent black land ownership. But black ownership remains below 5 percent, and black ownership of vineyards is below 2 percent. Black-owned wine companies have had trouble making inroads with customers, distributors, and the white winemakers that are often their partners. SABVA is intended to provide them collective clout.
Heritage Link imports wine from several SABVA companies, and the Cuffes will represent any whose products pass muster with American focus groups and whose processes are up to snuff. In theory, working with SABVA makes things easier. Cuffe envisions members sharing expertise and experience and supporting one another so Heritage Link can be less involved in their operations. She would love to communicate best practices and process changes to a single contact who would disseminate the information to everyone else.
So far that's not happening. Individually, the vintners have effectively represented their own labels at promotional events arranged by Heritage Link in the U.S. And they often make well-received products. But they're not collaborating. "Depending on the day I'm talking to them, they could be teetering on the brink of chaos, where people don't trust each other or there are communication issues," says Cuffe. "They're basically laddering each other down to the lowest common denominator."
Heritage Link's staunch ally in alliance building is Vivian Kleynhans, the chairwoman of SABVA. Kleynhans's personal saga is exactly the grist for socially conscious mills Cuffe believes will move bottles stateside. When Kleynhans was young, her father lost his job at a fish-processing factory; the family was evicted and the children split up among relatives. Years after they reunited, Kleynhans launched the label Seven Sisters as part of African Roots, naming one varietal for each of her six siblings and donating a portion of profits to Paternoster, the poor fishing village where she was raised.
Cuffe calls Kleynhans a "mother hen," but Kleynhans sounds more frustrated than fond when discussing her charges. She recounts SABVA's jealousies and quarrels over dinner one evening at the apartment Cuffe rents on Cape Town's tourist-baiting waterfront. Cuffe rattles around in the stamp-size kitchen preparing spaghetti and bobotie, a kind of mincemeat pie, giving Kleynhans the chance to talk with Starr and another guest, Lillian Lincoln Lambert. Lambert is one of Cuffe's mentors, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Business School and a co-founder in 1968 of the school's African American Student Union. She is in South Africa on vacation, and Cuffe has recruited her to address the vintners on the importance of alliances.
The dinner is partly a strategy session: Cuffe wants Lambert to understand the situation so she can angle her presentation accordingly. Kleynhans obliges, describing the external and internal forces besetting SABVA. The former include a sometimes unwelcoming industry and unreliable government support: The national trust funding black-owned wine companies had just announced it was temporarily suspending payments because of financial difficulties. The latter include the tensions common among people who are asked to give unto others before anyone has given unto them.
"Everybody has a different personality," Kleynhans says. "Everybody has their own goals. They want their own thing. And I am sitting in the middle, trying to please everybody. They want to stick together, but they do not currently carry their own weight."
"That happens a lot with these collective relationships--people get so hung up on how much the other person is making," agrees Lambert, as Cuffe tips a bottle of Seven Sisters Yolanda Chenin Blanc into her glass. "I'll make the point to them: What matters is we're all making something."
The criticism is not one-way. Some SABVA members complain the group has not helped them enough with marketing, and they chafe at paying dues. A few have dropped out to concentrate their efforts on their own businesses. Kleynhans says, however, that two erstwhile members phoned when Heritage Link's training was announced and asked to participate. "They want to do business with Selena," says Kleynhans with satisfaction. "They fear they're going to miss out."
