Winefeast returns to Johannesburg with 40 winemakers, 180+ wines, great food, DJs and the Springboks. Here's why EasyEquities is backing a festival making wine easier to explore.

Welcome to what might just be the most refreshing wine festival format in years. Winefeast celebrates the quality and diversity of South African wine while leaving the pretensions and stuffiness at the door. In short, Winefeast makes wine accessible in much the same way as EasyEquities has made investing accessible.

Wine is great. The wine world though, sometimes less so. A drink with origins embedded in culture, celebration, and community has found its image usurped. Not by plucky read-to-drink upstarts or cheap and cheerful competitors. But by its own self-importance and perhaps hints of forest floor too.

A mystery novel of jargon, a tightrope of tasting notes, and centuries of classification have guarded wine’s perception so successfully, it has become nearly inaccessible to new audiences. Bylines of declining consumption and reports of bulk wine getting tipped down drains catch attention. But none of this should surprise us when the right to get excited about wine is so often seen as contingent on somehow knowing everything about it.

But one festival has set out to show that wine doesn’t need to be this way. Winefeast curates an annual experience in the heart of Sandton with an energy and tone aimed at puncturing the notion that one has to get wine in order to enjoy wine. The all-day celebration takes great South African wine out of the carpet-clad convention centre and shoves them where they belong — right at the centre of a very good time.

Carel Nolte, Chief Enablement Officer at EasyEquities, “firmly believes in the power of wine to bring people together, start conversations, and cement memories”. The inaugural Winefeast in 2024 achieved exactly that. 40 of the country’s best independent minimal-intervention winemakers and more than 900 Joburgers gathered around the basement parking lot of a coffee roastery to share, chat, laugh, and shout over 1500 bottles of wine that catered to every palate and level of experience.

Wine wasn’t the whole conversation, it was just the fuel for it. And the memory was of a great day out, where everyone was welcome, not a single ‘forest floor’ tasting note was heard, and the Boks thrashed the All Blacks. (Move over brandy and coke, wine is coming for your rugby-watching crown).

“It isn’t about selling wine, it’s about presenting wine in a way that doesn’t expect you to understand it first.”

Chad Goddard when asked why he founded Winefeast

A festival started by people who just “love wine without really knowing all that much about it” that initially set out to shrug off wine’s boring image, has built a platform that democratises wine’s enjoyment. And of course, they also happen to be EasyEquities clients! If the raucous attendance at its parents’ monthly events – the Winebar and Father Coffee braai days – is anything to go by, it feels well on its way to galvanising an ongoing culture for natural & low-intervention wine in Johannesburg.

The event has stripped the pretense from wine, bridged the gap between winemakers and a vibrant community of curious drinkers, and established a cult following. Three years in, and now with EasyEquities onboard as headline partner, the relatively niche event might just be proving that small, consistent actions are the route to meaningful impact and that wine is both easy to enjoy and can be accessible to everyone.

The third installment of Winefeast offers the same crystal clear promise of a guaranteed good time against a backdrop of great wine poured by the people who make them. If you’d like to see what wine is like without the fuss, join us, 40 winemakers, 180+ wines, 1000+ of your very closest friends, some incredible chefs, great DJs, and of course the Springboks live on a billboard screen all day on 21 November at Father Coffee, 19 Dartfield Rd, Joburg. Tickets are live but going fast, get them at www.winefeast.co.za. And for Easy community members, there are a limited number of tickets at the early bird price – use code EASYBIRD

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