South Africa 2019 part II – Beyond the Vagabonds

In Part II of this report from South Africa 2019 we move on to ‘Vagabonds+’ – vagabond winemakers who have become so established – though certainly not establishment – that they have developed into substantial businesses with global distribution and reputations to match.

South Africa 2019: part I – The Vagabonds
South Africa 2019: part II – Beyond The Vagabonds
South Africa 2019: part III – The Estates
South Africa 2019: part IV – Regional Profiles

I ended part I of this report by asking the question, “When is a vagabond not a vagabond?” and of course it is a notional distinction in many ways. There are no rules, no parameters, but the winemakers below tend to share certain characteristics: working for themselves, often under their own name rather than a brand, still sourcing interesting parcels of fruit from the far reaches of the Cape’s winelands (even if they now have their own home vineyards), and still restlessly experimenting. They tend to follow a ‘hands-off’ philosophy with their winemaking and, above all, are focused on the vineyard and old vines in particular, which are usually at the heart of the philosophy.

BLANKBottle

A visit to Pieter Walser’s cellar on the outskirts of Somerset West, in the middle harvest, is fun if a little chaotic. Grapes were arriving continually, but we clambered between the barrels to reach a tasting table crammed with bottles and surrounded by ‘dead soldiers’ – great bottles drunk in the past.

Pieter started making his own wine when he left Stellenbosch university, literally from a garage. That was 15 years ago, “for a bit of fun.” He had previously worked vintages in France and the USA whilst travelling, which is presumably where he got the wine bug. He sold his wines without labels for two and a half years, highly illegal (as he claims not to have known) and remembers the day a police raid closed him down. So he re-started properly this time, cheekily branding his fully-labelled bottles as BLANKBottle – though that also ackowledges his refusal to name the varieties in the blend on the labels so that people don’t “judge the book by its cover.”

It’s a bewildering operation of epic vagabond proportions, using 40 different varietals sourced from around 60 vineyards, and releasing around 35 – 40 different labels each year, about half of those new or one-off wines each vintage.  In terms of winemaking, all fermentations are spontaneous and there are no additives. “That’s just practicality,” he says. “The wines would begin to ferment on their own, so I decided it was a waste of my time to interfere.”  Managing logistics is a priority, but Pieter splits juice and newly made wines between all the vessels (steel tanks, concrete eggs, clay pots, big and small barrels) with no clear plan at that stage of what he’ll do with them. “It’s like Lego,” he says, as he constructs each wine, sans recipe, year by year.  Just don’t get him started on the stories behind the wine names. BLANKBottle is imported by Swig.

Trizanne Signature Wines

Trizanne Barnard was one of the first women winemakers in the Cape to stamp her own name on her business, launching TSW in 2008. Confidence to do so was perhaps inspired by the success of the wines she had been making at Anwilka, though also from global winemaking stints from Margaret River, to Alsace, to the Douro Valley.

The same vineyards in the ultra-cool Elim have been the source of her fruit since the beginning, truly maritime and the most southerly point of South Africa, ferrecrete soils (iron-rich granite) give the minerality that is so evident in her Semillon and Sauvignon-based whites.

In search of diversity, Trizanne also sources fruit for her red wines from Swartland and Darling. Here diverse soils of granite, shale, clay, and slate and warmer temperatures give a whole new palette with which to work. Trizanne’s wines are imported by Alliance Wines.

Badenhorst Family Wines

One of the original vagabonds, Adi Badenhorst may have his own winery in Swartland, plenty of fruit from his own vineyards, and some fairly large volume wines, but in terms of spirit and ethos, this free-wheeling force of nature still has vagabond running through his veins. A visit to his seemingly chaotic cellar might take in everything from his popular ‘Secateurs’ range to, on this occasion, a Mescal, for which he made a round-trip of 750 miles to harvest just the right blue agave, mashed and cooked in a fire pit, buried just outside the winery.

Badenhorst retains all the original ‘Swartland Revolution’ spirit OK, but it is fair to say he has become one of the father figures of the new South Africa. Since my last visit here, a new cool room has been added to handle incoming fruit, the ability to chill grapes until required meaning “We’re now basically co-fermenting everything,” rather than fermenting and blending different varieties. The cerebral dwarf (honest – it’s a description of himself that he loves) likes to make it all seem like a game: “We know our vineyards really well, but beyond that we don’t really know what we’re f******g doing,” he says. “Old Vines look the same on analysis, but there’s something in the juice. To be honest I don’t know what.”

Still working with lots of small, experimental volumes of 1000 or 1500 bottles, believe the naïf act if you will, but Adi Badenhorst’s wines deliver in spades. Imported by Swig.

David & Nadia

David and Nadia Sadie are the husband and wife viticultrual and winemaking team whose first release under their own name was but a single barrel of wine in 2010, at a time when they still held down day-jobs making wine elsewhere. By 2013 David was devoting all of his time to their eponymous project, joined by Nadia three years later. Today they own vineyards in Swartland, but still source around 50% of their fruit from small plots, mostly of old, dry-farmed bush vines, indeed their Topography range is partly a vehicle to save old vines from being lost.

David describes his vineyards – and those of the growers he works with – as being “Biologically farmed,” going on to explain they are not necessarily organic, but farming is focused on the biological health of the soil. Winemaking follows natural wine philosophies, most whites are fermented on skins, whole-bunch pressed, with minimal sulphur and spontaneous fermentation. Reds again use proportions of whole-bunch fruit, open fermenters and minimal sulphur for fermentation with ambient yeast. Again this is a terrifically impressive portfolio of wines that have complexity and freshness, modest alcohol, and great elegance. Imported by Justerini & Brooks.

Lismore Estate Vineyards

The clue’s in the name as to why Sam O’Keefe falls into the post-vagabond category, as her business is firmly centred around her own vineyard estate which she established in 2003, though she has since begun to source fruit from other areas for some cuvées, such is the demand for her wines. Originally from California, Sam chose a very unlikely spot to plant, an area called Greyton over an hour’s drive from the nearest vineyard neighbours, but one which had the perfect terroir for her: a barren site at altitude, with shale soils. She is still a lone voice in this wilderness, where she manages the business whilst bringing up her two young sons.

These are dry-farmed vineyards in the Overberg region, and although there is Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, the Rhône is the main source of inspiration here. Wines are generally made in steel or in large conical oak vats – foudres – though there is a little use of concrete ‘eggs’ for fermentation too. Among all cool-climate wine styles, the northern Rhône’s Condrieu and Côte-Rotie are particular passions, so there is Viognier and Syrah from Greyton naturally, plus younger plantings of Marsanne and Roussanne. Estate-grown wines appear under the ‘Reserve’ label.

Richard Hilton Vineyards

Richard Hilton is an unlikely vagabond candidate. Neatly dressed and business-like for our lunch meeting he has neither the beard, shorts, or wine-stained tee-shirt that are the required uniform. Englishman Richard established his business in 2003, focused on Syrah and Viognier. The production is small, Richard rents blocks of vines across the Cape and his philosophy is to harness the complexities of both varietal expression and terroir. As such, the vagabond credentials are sealed.

Richard’s path into wine began when he studied French in Grenoble, where he was apprenticed at Louis Latour, followed by experience at other estates in Burgundy where he also studied wine business. On moving to South Africa in 1996 a career in wine was cemented, working for various wineries before going it alone.

That first vintage in 2003 was Syrah, made from two tons of grapes sourced from Darling on the west coast, where the climate and high composition of decomposed granite in the soils suit this variety. Viognier was added to the range in 2007 (a variety only introduced to the Cape in 1989), and today fruit is still sourced from Darling and from growers in Stellenbosch and Elgin. The wines are made in rented cellar space in Stellenbosch.

Back to Part I: The Vagabonds. On to Part III: The Estates