A former East London head girl swapped a career in nuclear medicine in London to become a wine consultant for five-star lodges and hotels, including luxury getaways in Antarctica.
Komani-born Ingrid Motteux, 61, who was head prefect at Hudson Park High in 1980, set up her independent wine consulting and logistical business called Winewise in 2002, and counts the Sabi Sands and Madikwe Game Reserve as two of her oldest clients.
Recently Motteux, who says she has always loved wine, has been devising specific winemaking techniques needed for wine to “show well” in the icy conditions of Antarctica.
“An introduction in 2017 to White Desert, a company which runs ultra-luxury travel experiences to Antarctica, was fortunate,” she says.
“They wanted me to consult on their international wine selection, as well as to source specific wines to put into Key Kegs — which both fits in with their carbon neutral aspirations and saves on air transport costs.”
Motteux says a keg weighing 1.5kg saves transporting 40kg worth of glass and that once empty, the kegs are flown back to Cape Town for recycling.
“Over the past year, including a flying visit to taste wine ‘on-ice’ — I got a couple of ice cliff abseils in while on the seventh continent — the assignment has changed into more of a deep-dive into very specific winemaking techniques needed for wine to show well in these conditions.”
Sauvignon blanc, for example had to be ditched and Motteux, together with Tertius Boschoff at Stellenrust and Mike Dawson at Journey’s End, made an “Antarctic Edition” of their top-tier chenin and chardonnay.
“The atmosphere is so dry and rarefied and one’s nasal epithelium so compromised that it’s difficult to smell what’s in the glass.
“Acidity is amplified and tannins are exaggerated. We’ve added a botrytised portion to enrich the chenin, used less barrel-fermented chardonnay and more rich and complex components from cement eggs.
“This involved plenty of blending and tasting.
“Reds were a little easier as we used more mature wines from riper vintages, where the tannins had softened but the fruit was still sufficiently vibrant.”
Motteux, who was a taster for the Platter Wine Guide for a decade and still serves on panels for their blind and five-star tastings, says a large part of her business is teaching.
She does this at lodges where she also provides in-house training.
“Fortunately, as I love travel, this has taken me to Tanzania — Arusha, Serengeti, Ngorogoro, Lake Tanganyika — as well as lodges and small boutique hotels throughout Southern Africa.”
Her wine consultancy also holds an annual Wine Scholarship Week, which hosts butlers, bartenders and waiters from various lodges, most of whom have never seen the sea, a vineyard, or experienced air travel, in the Cape winelands.
“This is easily the most rewarding week in the year, as they return to the lodges with newfound knowledge and confidence.”
In 2024, Motteux ran a two-week online wine course for a client in the Bahamas, where she struggled to hear the participants over the crash of the surf.
In London, she has judged for the International Wine Challenge and has travelled to the Far East for wine shows, seminars and tastings.
“And I’m hoping to visit Brazil for the first time this year, for the export side of the business.”
One of six children of a Belgian father who was a general practitioner in Komani and an Irish-South African mother, Motteux says she grew up occasionally drinking wine with meals.
“I’ve always just loved it. It’s an endlessly fascinating and compelling subject, spanning history, art, science, culture — and the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know. It’s very humbling!”
Despite her love of the grape, Motteux’s early career took a very different direction.
“I studied diagnostic radiography at Frere and then left for Cape Town’s Red Cross Children’s Hospital straight after graduating and followed this with a short stint in London.”
While studying nuclear medicine imaging at Groote Schuur Hospital, Motteux made her first foray into the wine world and did a basic Cape Wine Academy course.
Years working in London hospitals followed — as did a marriage to a Yorkshire pianist.
It was while she was running a new nuclear medicine service at the Harley Street Clinic that she began studying with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET).
“Disenchanted with the daily commute, the miserable UK weather, and keen on adventure, I persuaded the Yorkshireman to follow me to Hong Kong where I had answered an advert in the South China Morning Post for a job setting up a new nuclear medicine department in a large private Chinese hospital in Kowloon, Hong Kong.”
Motteux carried on with her wine studies while also learning basic Cantonese, and before long she became “hooked on wine”.
“I spent an absolute fortune on tasting wines from all over the world and completed the two-year WSET Diploma with honours, which I was very chuffed about.
“By the late ’90s, a year after the handover of Hong Kong to China, I was ready and eager to come home to a very different South Africa and was determined to go full-time — and headlong — into the wine industry.”
Her entry into the business was far from auspicious. Keen to dip her toe in the wine business, she worked for Klein Constantia as a vineyard labourer.
“I’ll always remember how hot the 1999 vintage was on those slopes!
“My Afrikaans improved dramatically and my co-workers did a good job of teaching me how to do battle with incredibly vigorous sauvignon blanc vines.
“Turned out farming was not quite my thing, and I was offered a job in wine retail, which was very, very much not my thing.”
By now she was a certified Cape Wine judge and had started lecturing for the Cape Wine Academy.
“I was contributing to a delightfully quixotic, serious, independent wine publication called Grape but wine writing certainly wouldn’t pay for nappies and by this stage I had had a baby who needed them — followed shortly by another.”
With the aim of being available at home for her children, Motteux set up Winewise in 2002.
“I was working from home, doing independent wine consulting and logistics for five-star safari lodges.
“Building this sort of business takes time, relies very much on word-of-mouth, and is based not only on expertise, but importantly on trust.
“Because I love wine, I couldn’t attach Winewise to any winery or distributor and had to have the ability to choose only wines I felt offered both great quality and value — from more humble house wines to the top-end, cellar-worthy bottles.
“When I design a wine list or cellar, every wine has to have a reason for being there and I aim to offer a well-balanced, fresh and interesting selection.
“My pet peeve is paid-for wine lists, where bigger wineries pay listing fees, pushing the smaller wine producers out — a very unlevel playing field.”
While she is clearly an authority about all things wine, Motteux is vehemently non-snobby about it.
“My tolerance for snobbery in wine is extremely low. There is no place for it, except when insecure people use any superficial knowledge they might have to appear grand.
“They usually name at least a dozen fruits they find in the glass, which is largely irrelevant.
“I remember my father, when we were young, decanting Tassies into smart bottles for their bridge evenings and having a chuckle at various comments on how good the wine was.
“He also couldn’t bear snobs.”
Her friends nevertheless feel understandably apprehensive when entertaining her at their homes.
“If it’s terrible, I’ll just drink it very slowly! I love pulling out special or quirky bottles to share with good friends who enjoy excellent wine with a meal, but will equally enjoy something tasty, simple and chilled over a chat.”
To give one an idea of her daily grind, just last week, Motteux was submerged in the Madikwe Game Reserves cellar, cataloguing and evaluating classed growth Bordeaux and top drawer local wines, a task which took her the whole day.
Her advice to collectors is to drink up.
“I think the biggest mistake one can make is to let a once-great wine get to an age when it’s geriatric and has to be ‘sent to the kitchen’ — or dying before you can enjoy your precious collection. I hope to leave nothing behind!”
Weekender
