She's making a name for herself in the wine business.
While still savouring the success of the book adaptation series, The Wife - which was her breakout role - Mbalenhle Mavimbela is cementing herself as a businesswoman in a widely male dominated industry.
Mbalenhle shared this during the Nomzamo Lighthouse Foundation's Empowering Her seminar. She says wine was her first alcoholic drink. She didn't t know it was that first savouring ‘moment’ that unlocked the businesswoman in her.
She has earned the title after launching a wine brand called Moments in 2022 and with her production company, Mmbela Productions. The wine brand is inspired by Hlomu, which was the character she brought to life in Showmax's The Wife. The journalist turned restaurant owner indulged in wine often.
“So, everything always aligns and you always ask yourself, why am I doing this? And then answers always come, you actually want to create jobs in that space you want to get into or crack into a market where not a lot of young black females are and you want to challenge yourself. And I did exactly that,” the actress says.
READ MORE | Mbalenhle Mavimbela on business, fame and the end of The Wife - 'I learnt that I need to allow growth'
As a wine lover, it only made perfect sense to venture into a competitive space like this, but she says, “Nothing was motivating me to start a wine brand because of the platforms or I guess the education behind that”. She adds that no one teaches you how to make wine nor own a wine brand.
She then said to herself “I want to do it before I get discouraged or before this idea, goes away”.
With that, she caught a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town and headed straight to Stellenbosch.
"When I got to Cape Town, it was just me looking for farms. It was knocking [from] farm to farm saying 'I wanna start a wine brand. What do I do?'”
While in Stellenbosch, surrounded by scenic mountain views and vineyards she enquired about a prospective business partnership.
“[An employee] connected me to the farm owner. He was very transparent about it [that] it's difficult to get into it [and] if they don't sabotage you, they just won't allow you [or] they will ask for too many things. But that relationship, not looking down on him, not looking down on the property, we formed a relationship,” she recalls.
“We formed a relationship and he [said], 'be patient with it. Just, just keep visiting the farm before you actually say, can we have a contract'.”
Following this encounter, Mbalenhle says everything changed. And she's now in business.
