Cork & Co: No Strings. Just Corks

Honestly, they had me at Merlot. I've spent enough evenings swirling a glass to know that good wine has a way of finding you at the right address. Mine found me on a terrace in Malandelas, watching the famous sunset light go copper over the hills.
 
 While someone two tables down ordered a chilled Sauvignon Blanc and someone else, mid-texting, called for a flat white. That's the whole story, really, told without a single tasting note. Cork & Co has become the kind of place where both of those orders make perfect sense at the same table.

I should say this for purposes of clarification: I'm a self-made sommelier, and Cork & Co is, more or less, my love language. I don't hand that out easily. I've sat through enough forgettable wine lists to be picky about where I give my evenings to, and this is one of the rare local addresses that earns it without straining to prove anything.

A club that grew up

Cork & Co didn't start as a café. It started, back in 2022, as something closer to a secret. A private wine club cigars, red wine, low conversation, the kind of room where deals get made over a decanted Cabernet Sauvignon and nobody's in a hurry to leave. It was luxury because it was quiet, and because you needed to know someone to get in.

From there it moved into public view, taking a boutique retail spot at Malandela's Food Court, where it sold small-batch whiskey and carefully chosen bottles from the Western Cape to anyone willing to stop and look properly. That's where a lot of us first got to know the name not as a club anymore, but as a source. A place you went when you wanted a bottle that meant something.

And now, the third act,  a full café at The Square in Malkerns, inside the Liv Padel precinct, which opened its doors on July 18. I went for the launch and stayed longer than I meant to. Diplomats, entrepreneurs, hospitality people, a few of us from the media, all standing around with wine glasses while a band played and small plates kept arriving. It didn't feel like a launch so much as a neighbourhood finally getting the room it deserved.

Founder Paula Marques told media houses the response caught even her off guard. She said the launch went beautifully; the response was generous and encouraging, and it told them Malkerns was ready for a space like this. Having stood in that room, I believe her. There was a specific kind of relief in the air, the sort you feel when a place you love finally gets the space to match it.

Wine, but not only wine

What's interesting about this new location is that Marques didn't just scale up the old club. She rebuilt it around a different idea entirely. Cork & Co began as a wine club, but with the café they deliberately took a different direction. They are not only about wine. They have brought in healthy bites and healthy drinks, creating a space where people can exercise, socialise and have fun in one visit.

You feel that on the menu before you feel it anywhere else. Speciality coffee sits next to curated wine. Smoothies next to sandwiches, pizzas next to soups. It's built for the person who just came off a padel match as much as the person who's been sitting on the terrace since noon, working through a bottle. I've watched both versions of that person exist in the same afternoon at the same table, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

The room itself does a lot of the talking. Glass, steel, soft velvet seating, floor-to-ceiling windows that let the Malkerns light do most of the decorating. Mornings are calm, almost domestic families, prams, people reading the paper over espresso. By evening, the energy shifts, the padel courts fill up, and the wine starts moving properly. Marques designed it that way on purpose, a venue meant to hold business meetings, family lunches and casual drinks all in the same week without any of them feeling out of place.

Right on time for Luju

The timing of all this couldn't be better dressed. As the country gets ready for the Standard Bank Luju Food & Lifestyle Festival, Cork & Co steps in as an official premium wine partner and if you've been to Luju before, you know it needs a partner with some actual backbone. It's not a festival that does things by halves. The outfits are big, the food stalls smell like woodsmoke and something citrusy, and the whole event has a kind of theatrical confidence to it.

Cork & Co is bringing two things to that energy. First, proper tasting sessions and small masterclasses, the kind where someone actually walks you through what you're drinking instead of just pouring and moving on. Second, a lounge built specifically for people who want to step out of the noise for twenty minutes without leaving the festival. Anyone who's done a full day at Luju knows exactly how valuable that second thing is.

It would be easy for a brand like this to borrow its whole identity from somewhere else a European wine bar, an American country club, the usual imported blueprint. Cork & Co doesn't do that, and I think that's the actual reason it works. It feels like it grew out of Malkerns rather than being dropped into it.

Marques runs it as a family operation; her husband Fernando and their children are involved whenever they're needed, and she's quick to credit the people who built it alongside her. "I couldn't have done all of this without the support of my family, friends and, most importantly, my team, a group of strong women who are always ready to jump at any challenge," she has said in an interview. 

Her ambitions for the place are bigger than one good opening night, though. If you haven't been yet, her invitation stands better than anything I could write on top of it: Come as you are. You do not need to play padel and you do not need an occasion. Come for a coffee, stay for a glass of wine, and see what we have built for you.

I took her up on it. I'd suggest you do the same, ideally with a glass of something good in hand, and no particular reason to be there beyond wanting to be.