Norma Ratcliffe is far too gregarious to be a maverick. But ask around the exploding Cape area wine scene and invariably people point to the former Edmontonian as a pioneer who broke the established rules for wine making  in South Africa and helped usher in modern techniques to the once-moribund region. And in so doing, she managed to elevate her winery, Warwick, into being a global star.
The history of South African wine can be easily broken into two categories. From its beginnings in 1659 until the early 1980s, the industry was known for pumping out serviceable wine made by large conglomerates and co-operatives. In the early 1980s, pioneers like Ratcliffe and her husband, Stan, started wineries using modern techniques and maintaining low yields, in order to start producing wine that could compete with the world’s best. This experiment bore fruit for the couple in 2004, when the 2001 Warwick Three Cape Ladies made the Wine Spectator’s influential Top 100-signalling to the world that South African wine had finally come of age.

Ratcliffe’s path from Edmonton blues aficionado (her cousin is local legend Lionel Rault) to winery pioneer started in the early 1970s. After graduating from the University of Alberta with a degree in chemistry, Ratcliffe considered a career in food science but eventually decided to travel through Europe. "I spent about a year and a half living in France and Switzerland doing all kinds of jobs. I was teaching skiing, managing a restaurant, I even picked grapes," she says, on the phone from the rolling hills just north of Stellenbosch, where Warwick is located. "I met my husband when I was living in Europe."

Stan Ratcliffe was from South Africa, where his family owned the 300-year-old farm that is now Warwick’s home-at the time, devoid of grape vines. "We were married in Edmonton in the biggest blizzard ever," Norma remembers, "and my husband was horrified. We came straight back here because we had fruit trees that needed tending."

The couple soon planted cabernet sauvignon grapes and taught themselves to make wine, more as a hobby than anything else. As it turns out, Norma had a natural talent for viniculture and enrolled in the Cape Wine Institute to fine-tune her skills. But it was only after spending a harvest season in France’s Bordeaux region that she saw the potential for blending grape varietals-a vision she realized in 1986, with the first release of the Trilogy, a cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot blend that remains a flagship of the winery. It was later joined by the even more celebrated Three Cape Ladies, which took the then-heretical step of adding the indigenous South African pinotage grape to the blend.
It’s now a given in wine circles that South Africa represents one of the exciting futures for winemaking, but back in those days before the end of apartheid, Ratcliffe recalls a wine industry with little sophistication. "There were only a few boutique wineries and very few of those were using new French oak [aging barrels]. About five or six of us started doing it and, interestingly, most of them are still on top," Ratcliffe says, citing respected fellow producers like Meerlust and Rustenberg.

She has witnessed other changes for the better, as well. "The viticulture techniques are so much more sophisticated now," she says. "We thought we were doing cutting-edge stuff, and now my kids look back and can’t believe how archaic it seems. The monitoring of vineyards and irrigation have improved, but also the way we prepare the soil-we plough much more deeply now. Also, back then we used quite a few chemicals and we don’t do that as much now."

Her work as an international wine judge keeps her aware of developments back home. "I think that the Canadian wine scene has taken huge strides in the last 10 years," she says. "I toured the Okanagan about five years ago, from Naramata down to Osooyos. I was particularly interested in what they were doing with cabernet franc and riesling."

As much as she enjoys trips back to Canada, South Africa is now Ratcliffe’s home and her children are deeply involved in the family business. Son Mike, a wine business and marketing graduate, is the managing director of Warwick and daughter Jenny, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef who became the country’s youngest Cape wine master a few years ago, has also returned to the farm.