About Platter’s South African Wine Guide

South Africa’s first and still best-selling wine annual, Platter's Guide is the comprehensive, up-to-date and authoritative guide to who's who and what's what in the winelands. Featuring hundreds of producers, negociants and brands, and thousands of individual wines, Platter's Guide packs everything you need to know about the South African wine scene into an informative and entertaining format.

Platter's Guide was conceived in 1978 by wine lovers and print journalists John and Erica Platter, after reading Hugh Johnson's ground-breaking Pocket Wine Book. The couple wryly recall that the first (1980) edition – an attempt at assembling a local version of the Pocket Book, recording as many of the why, where, when and how specifics as possible – was dismissed as “boring” and a “waste of their money” by a compositor employed by the very company commissioned to do the printing! But three decades, two Best Wine Guide Worldwide awards, and well over a million copies later, we’d like to think the Platters were onto something. They’ve since handed the reins to a new team, and we’re doing our best to remain the favourite guide to who’s who and what’s what in South Africa’s winelands.

Mission

We'd like to encourage you to taste, buy and responsibly enjoy South African wine, and if we can help you choose a bottle to get excited about, invest in, show off with, cook up a storm over, or just enjoy for its own sake, we'd consider it job done.

Products

Our major offering is a 600-page annual book, most of which is rewritten each edition so the content is fresh and current when it hits the shelves at the end of November. Our website, previously low key, has been given an extensive overhaul and now forms the foundation of our online platform. Our Facebook page is updated regularly with posts about not just the guide but also South African wine news generally, events in and around the winelands, new wine releases and more. You can also follow us on Twitter.