(Entrepreneur) - Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

The South African economy has climbed many hills.  Even today, with mining as the main economic driver, the Rand is very weak.

So maybe it’s high time the country look toward the lower west coast and embrace its flourishing wine industry.

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” – Nelson Mandela

South Africa, a country on the southernmost tip of Africa, has been making wine for more than 350 years.  

It basically started when the Commander of the Dutch Colony at the Cape of Good Hope planted his first vines in 1685, says Alyssa Rapp and her research team at Bottlenotes.

Around this time the Huguenots, French Protestants who were persecuted in France for their religious beliefs, showed up. Well, the Dutch presumed, that since they were French, they knew how to make wine (much like people presume that since I’m Sicilian I can make a good meatball.)

So they threw them in the vineyards, and while they did impose their Bordeaux beliefs, they land was blessed with fertile soil, sloping hills, and ocean breezes, so they started to produce some great wine regardless of their past skills.

Eurpoean high society, including British writers such as Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, took notice, says Rapp.

Even Napoleon, while in exile at St. Helena, requested the Constantia, a sweet red dessert wine, named after the area where it was from.

But outside of Constantia, the vineyards were hit with diseases, they weren’t clean and most of the wine ended up in brandy.

The wine industry fell apart and it wasn’t until the end of Apartheid, when Nelson Mandela become president, that things changed for everyone.

It was then, in 1994, that the modern South African wine industry officially was reborn.