Johann Rupert is not a perfect candidate for the Dale Carnegie Award – he doesn’t seem to care much about winning friends. This does make him the perfect candidate to speak out and criticise the government for its failure to live up to its promises. Almost all of our other prominent businessmen have been strangely silent when it comes to confronting the politicians who treat this country as their own private domain. No self-respecting South African should feel anything except admiration for his willingness to stand up and be counted.

If you are going to allow yourself a surge of patriotic gratitude, it may be worth reflecting on another of Rupert’s pet projects – the Drostdy Hotel in Graaff-Reinet, and its potential to create a tourism-driven economy in that historic Karoo town. A lot of the impetus behind this came from his late father – who was born there and who established Historical Homes of South Africa in the 1970s, partly to drive the restoration of the privately owned monument-quality buildings which are, in many ways, a defining feature of the town.

The Drostdy was once one of the country’s best country hotels and in its early days (when I first stayed there) it was managed by the late David Rorden, who owned the Lanzerac, the Marine in Hermanus and the Lord Milner in Matjiesfontein. In time the Drostdy declined – by all accounts the inevitable result of ageing infrastructure and managerial neglect. Now Rupert has taken a hands-on interest in the project, overseeing an extensive and tastefully managed renovation of the buildings and décor, and bringing in a new team to direct the hospitality.

I spent a couple of days there on a long and rambling drive which took me from Johannesburg to Kommetjie. I caught the hotel just as it was re-opening for business (not the best time for a definitive judgement) so I saw the buildings while they were still pristine and the staff before they had established a working routine. Most of team were new on the job (the hotel appears to have a training programme which could make a meaningful contribution to the town’s hospitality industry) and they need to have vastly more experience before they can deliver to the expectations anticipated by the buildings and the finishes. When this does happen the Drostdy will probably become the best value deluxe stay-over in South Africa – given its current room rate of R1,125 per night (bed and breakfast).

Sadly, over-delivering against expectations is not a concept which afflicts Polka – one of the town’s most highly rated restaurants (for those who regard TripAdvisor as a reliable information source). Appallingly slow service, several ingredients out-of-stock (but not advised when the order was placed) – no blue cheese in the blue cheese gourmet salad, for example – and no interest in comping even one of the dishes that had arrived in a depleted state, tells you everything you need to know about how the restaurant is ready to milk passing trade at the expense of the town’s tourism prospects. This is in stark contrast to Graaff-Reinet’s museums where there are some fascinating collections and where admission fees range from R10, at the Hester Rupert Art Museum, to R50 (before discounts and packages) at places like Reinet House.

There is a real sense that Graaff-Reinet is again becoming a tourist hub. Job creation is following the infrastructural investments (historic and current) to produce an environment worthy of a detour. A further knock-on effect should follow: once magnets like Graaff-Reinet draw overland traffic into the hinterland, other destinations will begin to flourish. Nearby Nieu-Bethesda (whose claim to fame is the Owl House) will see more visitors, so too will Prince Albert.

The Ruperts’ investment in Graaff-Reinet should also have a positive impact on both the quality and value-for-money of Karoo tourism. Consider the once-famous Lord Milner Hotel in Matjiesfontein. The property is currently managed by the Liz McGrath Collection, which owns several iconic hotels such as The Plettenberg and the Marine. While the staff are friendly and competent, pricing is way out of line, compared with what is on offer elsewhere. Rooms in the old main building remind me of my grandmother’s residential hotel in the early 1960s. A cosmetic revamp of the bathroom doesn’t make the tiny bedroom, sans aircon, TV and proper plug points charming and attractive – certainly not at more than the price of accommodation at the Drostdy. When someone lifts the game in the same catchment area, the other players are forced to come to the party.

This is what has transformed the Cape wine industry over the past two decades. Initially, after 1994, it was too easy to sell South African wine – everyone wanted it. At the exchange rate of the time, there was money to be made trading the very ordinary average product of the country’s wine cellars. In fact, except for patriotic pride, there was really no incentive for the major producers even to contemplate an enhanced offering. It took the next generation, the youngsters emerging from the training schools in the 1990s and then getting temporary work in California, Australia and Europe, to make the more modern, edgier wines.

Pressure from them nudged the old-timers out of their complacency. The terroir-driven boutique producers – who garner the lion’s share of the media but whose volumes are insignificant compared with the bigger players – played an important role in lifting the profile and raising the stakes. However, it was their less flamboyant contemporaries, working in the high volume wineries, who applied the crucial changes – though of course they were too junior to initiate the process. For this we have to thank a couple of Australian-trained winemakers who occupied key positions at two of the country’s biggest production cellars. As the results of their endeavours became apparent, Linley Schulz at Distell and Richard Rowe at KWV had a major transformative effect not only on the brands for which they were responsible, but across the whole industry.

Today the current releases of our major wholesalers are easily as good as anything produced by top-end commercial wineries anywhere in the world. Distell led the charge (partly I suspect because its management recognised sooner than the others the need to upgrade its efforts). Then KWV (tarred with the Sauvignon scandal) had to rebuild its wine making team. Douglas Green Bellingham is now comfortably a third member of this trio (and may even have edged ahead), a function of its willingness to invest in personnel and technology. On reflection, management had very little choice: in this climate standing in the same place is tantamount to falling behind.

Game changers hardly ever function in a vacuum. They require a platform (mainly for visibility) but more importantly, they need to be operating in a competitive environment if they are to displace whatever came before. This is why state-owned monopolies are never described as “cutting-edge.” Success is infectious. If the Drostdy raises the stakes in the hospitality experience of Karoo road-trippers, it will galvanise the whole region. Change often seems slow if you don’t allow yourself the long view. To measure the transformative impact on Cape wine of the coincidence of new winemaking technology, new leadership and a new generation of winemakers, taste a few bottles of what we thought were the best wines of the early 1990s – then compare them to what is available today. DM