Cork and celebration have been inextricably linked since Dom Pérignon became the first person to seal Champagne bottles with it, said Amorim Cork chair António Amorim at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the company’s sponsorship of the annual Cap Classique Challenge.
His family have been in the cork business since 1870, had a presence in South Africa since 1968 and have run their own cork operation locally since 1982. Their relationship with Cap Classique, South Africa’s answer to Champagne, began in 2002 with the sponsorship of the challenge and the competition continues to go from strength to strength.
“Over the past few years, global wine volumes have fallen sharply, down from around 17-billion bottles to 14-billion,” said Amorim. “Sparkling wine, by contrast, has held remarkably steady, reaching roughly 3.5-billion bottles at its 2022 peak and still being around that level by the end of 2025. French Champagne has softened somewhat, largely on pricing, while Prosecco and other regions have picked up the slack.”
Champagne remains number one, but South Africa stood out among other global sparkling wine styles. “Cap Classique is increasingly recognised as sparkling wine’s second serious contender, ahead of the scattered pockets of quality found in parts of Italy, France or California,” Amorim said.
“What sets South Africa apart isn’t a handful of standout producers but the consistency of quality across the industry as a whole, sustained by people like Pieter Ferreira and the Cap Classique community.”
His confident assertion was borne out by the 2026 results. South Africa’s bubbly producers submitted 138 entries into a variety of categories: Brut blends, Blanc de Blancs, the increasingly popular sweeter Nectar style, Rosé, Blanc de Noir and Extended Ageing, a class which reviews wines of seven years and older.
Bragging rights went to overall winner Laborie of Paarl for its Blanc de Blanc, while Domaine des Dieux from the Hemel-en-Aarde valley near Hermanus won two categories: best Brut blend with Claudia Brut 2021 and Rose of Sharon 2017 as the best Rosé. (Coincidentally, it has been overall champion twice before.) Tulbagh’s Krone Night Nectar Blanc de Blanc 2021 won the Nectar class while the extended ageing class trophy went to Pieter Ferreira Blanc de Blanc 2015.
It was fitting that the latter award went to the newly retired former Graham Beck cellarmaster, Pieter Ferreira. He was also awarded a lifetime achievement honour by the International Wine Challenge of London just a month ago in recognition of his efforts in not just growing the category locally but driving quality standards ever higher. Ferreira has been producing bubbly for more than three decades and acknowledges the role the early pioneers of the style played.
The country’s first-ever sparkling wine made according to the traditional Champagne method of second fermentation in bottle was Simonsig Kaapse Vonkel 55 years ago. Purely on quality it won the inaugural Amorim Cap Classique Challenge in 2002 — and 24 years later a different bottling, the Cuvée Royale, was a double gold medallist in the Blanc de Blanc category.
The list of producers that won recognition is vast and varied: Babylonstoren, Colmant, Louisvale, Charles Fox, Spier, Graham Beck, Klein Roosboom, Paul René, Hidden Valley, Tanzanite, Alexander Vineyards, Lourensford, Van Loveren, Landskroon, Weltevrede and Bon Courage, alongside the aforementioned category winners.
Amorim mentioned as an aside that the company sponsored the establishment of a similar competition in Australia — but it failed after a few years. Australia lacked the competition in diversity and quality. “The same guy won all the categories every year!” The same cannot be said for South Africa.
The Cap Classique Producers Association has worked hard at getting its members to experiment and push boundaries, none more so than Ferreira during his time at Graham Beck in Robertson.
The process remains the same: picking grapes at lower sugar or ripeness levels, creating a base wine and then bottling it, adding yeast to kick start a secondary fermentation and then sealing the bottle. The wine undergoes a magical transformation during the minimum 12 months that it remains sealed, absorbing carbon dioxide into the liquid and creating that distinct froth, spritz and string of pearls as the bubbles rise in the glass.
Bubbly producers have tinkered over the years in ways that consumers often don’t appreciate. Using older oak when making some of the base wine, keeping a stock of perpetual reserve wine and blending a small portion of it into the new vintage prior to its second fermentation, some have pushed the boundaries and left the bottles for 60 months or even more before disgorging, labelling and commercially releasing them.
It’s this kind of alchemical experimentation that is pushing the quality bar ever higher.
