34°19′S · 19°22′E — Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge, Walker Bay

Liezl RichardsCWM

Home Ground. Hemel-en-Aarde

Cape Wine Master. I live at 34°19′S, among the vineyards that produce the wine I sell. Twenty years in the trade taught me where a wine belongs — my work is putting it there, at home and abroad.

Trading as Wine Whispers · Est. in the Overberg

The craft

Plate I — The wine before the winemaker.
Plate II — The only part of the job that cannot be delegated.

Every vintage is an exam.

In forty-one years, fewer than 120 people have earned the title Cape Wine Master. She is the 115th.

Aerial view of the Hemel-en-Aarde: vine blocks, orchards, poplar windbreaks, a dam, and the Klein River mountains beyond.
Plate III — Hemel-en-Aarde, recorded at 721 m on 7 March 2024. Harvest week. 1 224 ha of Pinot Noir in all of South Africa. A third of it is planted on this coast.
Restaurants, retail & sommeliers

Trade

I represent a short list of Cape producers into Overberg restaurants and retail. Allocations, staff training and by-the-glass strategy come with the list, not on top of it.

See the portfolio Producers & international importers

Export

Independent representation into international markets — unattached to any single estate’s book. Market mapping and named importer shortlists first, then the mandate if you want one.

Take a wine out Private clients & collectors

Cellar

Sourcing, cellar planning and private tastings for people building a collection rather than filling a rack. Older vintages tracked down on request.

Start an enquiry Events, panels & press

Platform

Judging, guest speaking and wine education — from a floor-staff session on Tuesday afternoon to a Cape Chardonnay masterclass pulled from a collector’s cellar.

Check availability

The wine

Liezl Richards pouring a glass of white wine at a farm kitchen counter.
Plate IV — What all four sheets are about.
Liezl Richards seated before a carved oak vat at the KWV Cathedral Cellar with a glass of red wine, on the day of her Cape Wine Master diploma.
Plate V — Cape Wine Master. KWV Cathedral Cellar, Paarl, 16 August 2024.

The mailing list

From Home Ground.

One letter a month from the farm. What the valley is doing — harvest, weather, who picked what — and what is in the book worth buying. Written here, not by an agency.

Your details are used for this letter only, never sold or shared. Unsubscribe in one click, POPIA compliant.

Enquiries

Tell me what you’re after.

A trade listing, an export mandate, a private sourcing brief, or a date in the diary — same form, it reaches me either way.

Opens in your mail app, addressed to liezl@winewhispers.co.za

The ground · 34°19′S 19°22′E

The Valley.

Where the wine comes from — and what living here lets me say about it.

Overhead view of harvest: a blue tractor and trailer on the headland between vine rows, pickers loading crates of blue-black Pinot Noir grapes.
Plate VI — The same ground, 80 m southwest. Man and machine working the row. Pinot noir into the kissies. Four pairs of hands and one tractor.

About

Twenty years in South African wine.

I have worked South African wine from almost every side of it — national sales, export, education and now my own distribution business. That means I know what a wine costs to make, what it costs to land in a restaurant, and what it takes to get a waiter to actually recommend it.

A good part of those years has been spent travelling — through Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, tasting wine and food where they are grown together. That is the fastest way I know to tell a buyer where a Cape wine actually sits, rather than where we would like it to.

Home is a wine farm on the Ridge in the Hemel-en-Aarde, among the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Not visiting the valley — living in it. That is the whole of my advantage and I do not pretend otherwise.

The trade side is a small portfolio, personally represented, across the Overberg. Everything else — judging, speaking, training, export — sits under my own name.

Liezl Richards at a teal doorway, no glass in hand
Plate VII — The one without a glass. 29 July 2024.
  • Cert.Cape Wine Master (CWM)
  • In viewMaster of Wine candidate — 2027/28 intake
  • AbroadSpain · Portugal · France · Italy — trade travel and tasting
  • Day bookNational Sales Manager, Gabriëlskloof
  • Own bookOwner, Wine Whispers — Overberg distribution
  • ExportIndependent — mandates taken direct from producers
  • RegionHemel-en-Aarde advocate to international trade
  • PanelsWine show judging, Cape and abroad

The book

Wines & Trade.

A short list of Cape producers, and the markets they travel to.

The trading company

Wine Whispers.

Wine Whispers (Pty) Ltd is my trading company. It is the commercial arm of the work: representation of a selected list of Cape producers, with the buying, delivery, invoicing and accounts run through a company built for exactly that. The title tastes and judges; the company trades. Keeping the two apart is what lets a buyer trust both.

What comes with the list, not on top of it: allocations, staff training, by-the-glass strategy, and your wine list designed and printed in-house — you own it.

“…the wine will always whisper into your mouth with complete, unabashed honesty, every time you take a sip.”

The name’s source — Uncle Henry, A Good Year

The Wine Whispers list

Small on purpose.

I carry what I would put on my own table, and I can tell you who farmed it. Every producer here is available to Overberg trade, with delivery handled directly.

Gabriëlskloof
Bot River · WO Bot River
Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc from a cool, wind-run site.
Crystallum
Hemel-en-Aarde · WO Walker Bay
Site-specific Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Allocation only.
Creation
Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the top of the valley, plus a broader range for the floor.
Van Niekerk Vintners
Multi-region
Old-vine and single-site selections sourced across the Cape.

Trade documentation

The current price list.

Full portfolio, current vintages and trade pricing, on letterhead and dated. Sent through directly so your buyer always has the live sheet.

Request the price list

International

Taking the valley out.

I represent producers into international markets independently — no single estate’s book to protect, no house line to hold. The wines that define cool-climate South Africa are made in hundreds of cases, not thousands, so which market at which price through whose book is a research question long before it is a sales one. I do that research, then I go and sell it.

Liezl Richards tasting a glass of red wine on a terrace above the terraced vineyards of the Douro Valley, Portugal.
Plate VIII — The Douro, Portugal. 25 November 2022.

1 224ha

South Africa’s entire Pinot Noir planting — 1.4% of the national vineyard. The category is small enough to know by name.

366ha

Of it on the Cape South Coast. Roughly 30% of the country’s Pinot on 3.1% of its vineyard — and I live in the middle of it.

4markets

Small production rewards depth, not spread. A shortlist of four right importers is worth more than a mailshot to forty polite ones.

What the work covers

  • PositionPrice and shelf mapping against the peer set before a single sample ships
  • ShortlistNamed importers with the right book — not the biggest one
  • ComplianceFDA, MFDS and EU e-label groundwork driven producer-side, ahead of the ask
  • FreightEx-cellar to landed cost modelled per market, tariffs current
  • MandateRepresentation into the market, and account management once the order lands — the part most agents skip

Markets in view

  • AmericasUnited States — premium Cape allocations
  • AsiaJapan · South Korea · Singapore
  • EuropeGermany
  • AfricaNamibia · Southern African trade

Taken either way: a one-off market brief you keep, or an ongoing mandate on commission. Never in a market where a producer already has representation.

Oct 2026

New to Market

Tokyo · Osaka

Feb 2027

Wine Paris

Paris

Mar 2027

ProWein

Düsseldorf

Jun 2027

Vinexpo Asia

Hong Kong

Platform

Consulting & Judging.

The knowledge, put to work — teaching, judging, briefing.

Education & platform

Teaching the floor, not the room.

Most wine training is aimed at people who already like wine. Mine is aimed at the person carrying four plates who has ninety seconds to sell a bottle.

Plate IX — The lesson, poured.
  • StaffRestaurant training — session plans, A5 reference cards, blind exercises
  • PrivateCurated tastings, cellar-led masterclasses, collateral built per event
  • TradeRegional talks on Hemel-en-Aarde Chardonnay and Pinot Noir
  • PanelsJudging and guest speaking
  • ExportMarket briefings for producers going out
  • PressComment and writing on Cape cool-climate wine