Khanya Mncwabe: A backyard brewer tells her story behind Matawi Mead

Businesswoman Khanya Mncwabe is the brain behind Matawi Mead, a beverage brand that is a hit in the market as it produces from fermented honey. 
 
The company came at the height of the Western Cape’s 2018 water crisis and the brand or company seeks to conscientise consumers about alternative alcohols to traditional water-intensive ones. 
 
While the province’s water dams at the time were near exhausted, Mncwabe spotted a glorious opportunity to take the plunge in debuting Matawi to the market, whose name means branches in Swahili. 
 
Speaking to Business Insider SA, the co-founder and CEO, Mncwabe says they recognised the environmental benefits of the brand. 
 
Matawi Mead has various offerings such as beer, a liqueur, and gins, they only use water during brewing.  
 
She said the process translates to less than 10% of the water used to produce alcohol, whose key ingredients include wine grapes, corn, wheat, rye, barley, sugarcane, and potatoes, which require months of irrigation. 

The self-proclaimed, “competent and confident backyard brewer”, from KwaZulu-Natal, started brewing umqombothi with her influential mother, who was regarded as the family’s designated brewer. 
 
Mncwabe said she learnt indigenous methods, which were not biochemical but were critical in her understanding of how to modulate for variables such as how the weather, and add-ons like raisins, affected the beer taste.  
 
“For us, in launching Matawi, we recognised the environmental benefits of it. I think a lot of us were sort of continuing to live as if it business as usual…but it’s very clearly not business as usual,” Mncwabe told Business Insider South Africa. 
 
“We’ve really spent the time to build up Matawi’s understanding that it’s about partnering with cooperatives, making sure that they are capacitated… and [we] aim to pay a fair market price, so we know we’re appealing to a conscious consumer. 
 
“[Our] Braggot, which is a blend of a crafted ale and mead, [is] made in a sour style. It’s really bitter, it’s really sour, and that was just allowing the fermentation process to really consume all the sugar in the honey.” 
 
Popularly known as ‘the nectar of the gods’, mead is cultivated and consumed in various forms and has been produced through ancient times across, Europe, Africa, and Asia. 
 
In East Africa and particularly Ethiopia, it is called Tej, and it is traditionally mixed with shiny-leaf buckthorn, and the Finnish, who call it Sima, made it sweet and effervescent with muted alcohol content. 
 
Coming to SA, it has a deep history among the Khoisan and Xhosa people, mainly in the Eastern Cape, who call it iQhilika, which is also the style of brewing mead used to produce Matawi’s drinks, Mncwabe said. 
 
It is reported that Matawi spent two years experimenting with different honey and landed on organic variants, including Western Cape fynbos. In line with its ethos, it sources from small-scale producers. 
 
Image: Khanya Mncwabe/stagram 
https://www.instagram.com/matawi_experience