FEATURE
“This white wine is amazing. Nothing to improve, the bouquet of
aromas is simply excellent”.
We are just completing a tour of the
Leleshwa winery near Naivasha and
the person behind this flattering
comment is Stephane Alsac, the
Export Director at Grands Vins de
Gironde, one of the largest wine
merchants in Bordeaux, France. Alsac is part of a French wine distributors delegation that have travelled
to Kenya to promote their produce,
but also to find out more about
Kenya’s first homegrown fermented
grape juice.
“The Leleshwa vineyards started
about 20 years ago more as an
experiment that anything else”, says
Wikus Ventar, manager at Morendat
farm, an expanse of land owned by
the Kenyan Nut Company that sits
just after Naivasha on the NairobiEldoret highway. Ventar, who has
over two decades of wine farming
experience back in South Africa,
says that deciding to come and
invest his talents in this nascent
Kenyan industry is proving an excellent choice.
“When I first arrived here two years
ago, there were 50 hectares set aside
for vineyards but everything was
dying,” Ventar tells the group as he
surveys the rows of vineyards that
lie before him. “I cut that down to 11
hecta ɕ́