DAY 4 - Madagascar wine
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Poverty is often linked to laziness, ignorance, or carelessness. But driving around the island and seeing the neatly maintained fields everywhere, laziness and carelessness are nowhere to be found. The more we explore here, the greater our admiration has grown for the farmers of Madagascar. And nearly everyone here is a farmer.
Despite the poverty we encounter in the villages, we honestly can’t remember seeing better cared-for plots of land anywhere else. Since rice is the main crop and every family owns only a small piece of land, the fields are divided into parcels separated by ridges, surrounded by remarkably complex and well-thought-out irrigation systems. How they’ve managed this in areas with so few rivers is hard to grasp.
Oni, our local guide, told us that in the villages there’s a tradition: every Thursday, the whole community comes together to maintain and build the irrigation canals. It’s a collective effort, because everyone depends on them. About 90% of the fields grow rice, but we’ve also seen all sorts of other crops – wheat, cabbages, garlic, even grapes. And no matter what grows on a particular plot, or even if it’s standing empty, the care and attention is striking. Since there’s little flat land, terraced fields spread across the hillsides, widening and narrowing with the landscape. Some are tiny, just a few dozen square metres, but with a fast-growing population, every patch counts.
In the central highlands around Fianarantsoa, nestled between rice and herb fields, we found something that at first seemed almost unbelievable – vineyards. Madagascar’s wine industry may be an even bigger surprise than its tea. We had never heard of Malagasy wine before, and probably neither have you. Considering Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world, it’s not a place where you’d expect to find wine cellars. But the conditions for growing grapes are there, French colonists once saw the potential, and somehow the industry has survived to this day.
Production isn’t large – up to 10 million bottles a year, comparable to Slovakia or Cyprus. Almost everything is sold locally, and prices range between €2 and €4 per bottle, low by European standards, but more than most locals can afford. After tasting the wine, it’s clear that quality improvements would be needed before exports could grow. The sweet dessert wines were fairly pleasant, but the dry wines we tried were closer to vinegar – difficult to drink more than a couple of sips. Perhaps there are better ones too; we only managed to try a few.
Still, the very existence of this industry is a small miracle. And while we had some criticism of the final product, the vineyards themselves – like all the other fields here – were in immaculate condition: tidy, well cared for, and in parts equipped with irrigation. Alex, who knows quite a bit about viticulture, was pleasantly surprised and said the vineyards looked very professional.
Unfortunately, when the same professionalism isn’t found on the production side, the result in the bottle is still vinegar. We visited two wineries, and both were far from what we’re used to seeing in Europe. Is there potential here? Hard to say. Without the skills, demand, and technology for top-level production, it’s difficult to know what could be possible.
Could this be something for the Renegade project? Probably not. Lack of competence we could overcome – we’re fairly quick learners. But producing good wine would require major investments, plus a completely different sales model with local regulations and taxes in every market. Malagasy wine sounds exciting, but perhaps some other rebel will bring it to the next level ...
Could this be something for the Renegade project? Probably not. Lack of competence we could overcome – we’re fairly quick learners. But producing good wine would require major investments, plus a completely different sales model with local regulations and taxes in every market. Malagasy wine sounds exciting, but perhaps some other rebel will bring it to the next level ...