Brand South Africa Blog

Coming soon: a website — golferwines.com — dedicated to selling wines from the estates of SA’s top golfers, including David Frost, Ernie Els andf Gary Player, to US oenophiles. Click on the arrow to hear Bob Marx talking about it in his interview with Gene Burns on San Francisco’s WGO Newstalk. The full interview can be heard via the previous post.

 

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Dining Around is a San Francisco instititution. It’s a weekly radio show hosted by Gene Burns every Saturday morning on KGO Newstalk. We got a call on Friday from Burn’s producer, Joel Riddell, looking for someone to talk about SA and its wines. We suggested Robert Marx — the ex-Marine from Minnesota turned SA wine importer — and pointed to Joel to the blog item we posted on him last week. Click below to hear the results, which include a major plug for Overgauuw Sauvignon Blanc.

 

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Bob Marx is the CEO of Minnesota-based MT Global Wines and specialises in importing South Africa wine into the US. He fell in love with the stuff while serving as a Marine guard at the American consulate in Cape Town. This year he’s on track to ship 50 container loads which works out at some 60 000 cases or about one in every 15 bottles of South African wine sold in the US. He imports wines under his own labels which are sold at two major US retail chains, Costco and Trader Joe’s. He also handles wines from a number of well known estates including Overgaauw and Oubenheim. His Overgaauw Sauvignon Blanc, which retails for $15 in the US, recently beat far pricier Marlboroughs from New Zealand in a blind tasting. Happily, I had a chance to find out why and to ask Bob how he got into the business. Click below to hear the conversation.

 

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Because South Africans do “exceptional quality work” and are “very, very innovative.” So argues Henk Touw, a native of Holland who spent 18 years managing the Europe, Middle East and Africa business of Donaldson, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of filtration equipment. Donaldson has a significant presence in SA. Henk is currentlly President of Stakeholder Satisfaction LLC. Click below to hear his take on SA. He was speaking last week to Minneapolis area business leaders at event organised by the Minnesota-SA Business Council for a visiting SA trade delegation.

 

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A trade and investment mission headed by Iqbal Sharma, deputy director general for trade and investment at the Department of Trade and Industry traveled to the US Midwest on Monday. Message: “China and India are on everyone’s lips. The next market that will be on everyone’s lips is Africa.” Click below to hear Sharma’s presentation to the Minnesota-South Africa Business Council in Minneapolis. Follow along with the presentation.

 

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How the South African Post Office markets itself. If you live in SA and listen to the radio, you’ve almost certainly heard this. If not, enjoy.

 

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