Cape Town - Kanonkop Wine Estate made history on Wednesday when 600 bottles of Kanonkop Black Label Pinotage 2006 were sold for R1 000 each within three hours.

These form part of Kanonkop's new wine series, only 1 000 bottles of which are being released to the market.

The estate is attempting to establish a secondary wine market in which investors can acquire expensive wines for later sale at a profit. The rest of the wine will be made available in about three months' time.

Johann Krige, co-owner of Kanonkop, says that a secondary market, which the South African wine industry needs to establish itself as a producer of genuine premium wines, will create a new dynamic force in the wine industry.

The ultimate goal of creating a secondary market for the wine, he says, is to have an authentic en primeur system by 2012, by means of which interested buyers can place their orders after tasting the particular vintage while still in the barrel, just like the system in Bordeaux.

Each bottle is individually numbered and labelled with a hologram to guarantee authenticity. Sales are limited to 36 bottles per individual.

The wines are available exclusively from Wade Bales Wine Society and Fiona Phillips of cybercellar.com.

- Sake24.com

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