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Eager to put their best foot forward when hordes of soccer fanatics descend on South Africa for the FIFA World Cup in 2010, Cape wine producers have embarked on what might be called a wild wine-waiter training program. Or perhaps that should be "wildlife" program.

Aimed partly at the unemployed and partly at existing waiters with no wine knowledge, the program does away with the usual nap-inducing sommelier course material like vine-trellising techniques and German label nomenclature. Instead, students are learning about grape varieties with reference to metaphors borrowed from the world of bush animals, a profoundly ingrained frame of reference for tens of millions of South Africans who make up the majority non-European population.

Cabernet sauvignon? Think elephant, with its big body and thick skin. Pinotage? A leopard's spots can look vaguely reminiscent of mulberries, raspberries and black peppercorns, key flavours of South Africa's signature red grape.

And, to stretch the metaphor a little further, leopards, like pinotage, have a thing for red meat.

Chardonnay? How about the fish eagle, considered the noblest of all South African birds, capable of living a long time and often found perching in trees (code, in this case, for oak-barrel aging)?

Call it Sesame Street for wine, if you must.

But it's a practical first step in a country where, despite 350 years of vine-growing history started by Dutch colonists, much of the incoming restaurant labour pool has never nosed a glass of wine and was not, until the early 1990s, permitted to work in many of the fancy restaurants that will be frequented by high-tipping World Cup visitors.

"In Western society, we don't pay enough respect to people who live in nature," Paul Rowett, one of the course teachers, told me over the phone from Cape Town when asked if there's any chance the approach could smack of condescension. "The bush is their home, they live in harmony with the animals."

Mr. Rowett, who works for a restaurant-training company with the unusual name of Let's Sell Lobster, says most of his students have had no exposure to such "Western" obsessions as wine. Nor are they about to spend the next two years in Masters of Wine classes learning about airy-fairy notions of "terroir" or the impact of the Methuen Treaty on Portuguese wine consumption in Britain. Some only recently left small villages for the first time in search of city jobs.

In South Africa, most of the better-paying restaurant jobs, particularly in Cape Town and the wine country immediately to the north and west, have been off-limits to non-whites. That's been the case even since the apartheid system's demise, because typically such establishments have demanded fluency in English as well as at least a passing familiarity with wine and chi-chi menu items.

The dawn of employment equity and social mobility have put the onus on restaurants to seek help from firms such as Let's Sell Lobster, which, incidentally, gets is name from the ambitious waiter's mantra to promote one of the most luxurious food items on any menu.

Dubbed Bush Logic, the course was developed two years ago as a quick-and-dirty field guide for restaurant workers in game-reserve lodges. Mr. Rowett, who is 26 and white, recalls an encouraging anecdote involving one of the first students of the two-week course.

A group of guests prevailed on the waiter to choose a wine for the table. When the waiter suggested the "black rhino," the guests were puzzled. As Mr. Rowett recalls, "the waiter said, 'The Guardian Peak Shiraz is big, robust and aggressive, just like a rhino. But don't worry, this rhino won't kill you. It's delicious.' And they thought this was the funniest thing they ever heard."

Not that the point is to talk zoo-talk to restaurant patrons. The animal characters are merely intended as mnemonic tools for the servers. "I will say to the guys, 'If you are walking to the guest holding a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, walk to that guest thinking about the elephants,' " Mr. Rowett says.

Other animal analogies: the honey badger (small but assertive like the petit verdot grape); the giraffe (a tall flute of sparkling wine, of course); and the grey heron (a bird that does a convincing imitation of a German soldier, Mr. Rowett assures me, walking "with its hands behind its back" and thus calling to mind that Teutonic specialty, riesling).

Wines of South Africa, a trade association, seized on the Bush Logic course as a quick, affordable way to enhance wine salesmanship in advance of the 2010 World Cup, which should be no less of a guzzlefest than any other international soccer tournament. Every glass of domestic wine sold, after all, could translate into a new export customer.

But the wine industry also sees Bush Logic as its Trojan zebra, so to speak, against the more entrenched domestic drink, beer. "We also hope [the newly trained wine ambassadors] will make wine their alcoholic beverage of choice and reach a broader base of South Africans and introduce them to wine appreciation," says Su Birch, the association's chief executive officer.

The first group of 120 students completed the two-week course last month and Wines of South Africa hopes to train 2,010 in total (for symbolic symmetry).

Part of the funding will come from the sale of a commemorative red wine under the brand Fundi, a Zulu word for "learner." Six wines, all red blends, were recently chosen in an open tender by a blind-tasting panel, then bottled under the same label. (You can only tell the wines apart by the back label.) The brand is not yet for sale in Canada, but a couple of provinces, including Ontario, are considering it for next year.

I tasted one of the recently bottled Fundi wines, a blend of merlot, pinotage and cabernet sauvignon made by the country's first female Zulu winemaker, Nontsikelelo Biyela, at Stellekaya Winery, and it was impressive. Rich, tannic and intense, it oozed flavours of plum, blackberry, cherry and accents of spice and herbs, with a pleasantly subtle, Barolo-like note of tar on the finish. Projected Canadian price: about $30.

At a time when wine everywhere seems to have morphed into a totem of wealth and a prop for one-upmanship and snobbery, here's a brand symbolizing and supporting social progress, if in a modest way. If it weren't so rich and tannic, I'd call it refreshing.