The Cape Winelands region is blessed with one of the world’s best climates and topography for crafting fine wine: cool mountain and sea breezes combined with variable soil types that allow for the growing of a wide variety of grapes, from chardonnay to pinot noir. While the most popular wines in South Africa remain the whites, including Cape Riesling and chenin blanc, it is the Pinotage, a mix of pinot and Heritage grapes, that is the national specialty. Pinotage is a bit of an acquired taste; accordingly, exporters and importers are waiting to introduce this variety into U.S. markets until more mainstream South African wines have taken hold.
South Africa has 14 different traversable wine routes and more than 2,000 varieties of wine to taste. While most visitors venture out to the wine country for day trips from Cape Town, you can spend many heady weeks tasting your way through the Cape, a jaunt made all the easier by outfitters like Cape Wineland Tours, a U.S.-based tour operator specializing in the wines of South Africa. Oenophiles and tried-and-true grape lovers can steep themselves in tastings and bask in viticultural talent at every turn. With entrée into private estates and personal meetings with winemakers and other experts, tour participants gain a real insight into the business of winemaking in this up-and-coming destination.
On my recent journey to South Africa with Cape Wineland Tours, we flew into Cape Town and traveled by car to Stellenbosch, the country’s second-oldest city (after Cape Town) and the true heart of the West Cape's wine country. Outside the city, the vineyards rest in a valley lined with brilliant panoramas and majestic peaks, while the tree-lined streets of Stellenbosch itself are dotted with perfectly preserved examples of Dutch Cape architecture – an ideal backdrop for my first foray into the wines of the country.
On our first morning in the Winelands we headed off to Meerlust, one of the most revered vineyards in Stellenbosch, where we were privileged to meet with Georgio Dalla Cia, wine creator at Meerlust for the last 24 years and the "grandfather" of South African wine – pretty much every South African vintner looks to Georgio for new trends in winemaking. As we wandered leisurely through the stunning vineyards (open to the public on on Wednesdays, otherwise by appointment only), the vineyard's history surrounded us. The original settlement was built in the late 1600s and its cellar dates back to the early 1700s. Fifteen years ago, the vineyard was declared a national monument by the South Africa government. At its peak, it had more than 400 people working on the estate. Today, the number is down to 70 essential employees.
A farmer with Vision
From Meerlust it was off to Kaapzicht (Cape View) to meet owner and vintner Danie Steytler who was simply delightful, his deep commitment to his vineyard and passion for winemaking shining through.
A wine farmer, as he likes to be called, Danie believes the geography of the vineyard is ideally suited for producing red wines, so he is focusing on those for the time being. His collection includes an excellent merlot, a Pinotage (for which Danie prefers to use bush vines instead of trellises, which give smaller bunches and smaller berries and keep the color in the skin, not the juice), and a truly outstanding blend he calls "Vision," produced under the Steytler label.
As we drove over the mountains into the Hemel en Aarde (Heaven and Earth) Valley, the Cape wind reared its ugly head, signaling a change in the prevailing climate and letting us know that we were moving into a completely unique South African wine-growing region.
The area around Hermanus, and Walker Bay in particular, is something of an anomaly in South Africa. Located close to the water, its climate is more like that of Santa Barbara than Cape Town (though the terrain most closely resembles Iceland) and our first vineyard stop had a distinctly American flair as well.
When Anthony Hamilton-Russell returned in the early 1990s from a stint at Wharton Business School by way of the illustrious Elon College in Great Britain, he had big plans for his father's vineyard, which he purchased in 1994. His first task was to help make South African wines known around the world – a country-wide project that is still underway – and, more importantly, to put the wines of Hamilton-Russell on the map.
Rather than trying to recreate wines from such mainstays as France and Italy, Anthony decided the main focus of Hamilton-Russell Vineyards would be to produce a wine that had a real sense of place, vintages that drew directly from Walker Bay's native terroir. He scaled back production at the vineyard to only two wines, a pinot noir and a chardonnay, and prides his vintages as having "individuality and expression of origin."
Testing soil from across its 52 hectares, Hamilton-Russell Vineyards pinpointed the particular portions of the estate that produce the best cultivar (foot note) and it is only in these particular sections that today’s Hamilton-Russell grapes are grown. To reinforce this sense of place, the wine bottles are made locally. Anthony is even experimenting with drying his own oak right in the vineyard. The wood will then be shipped back to France and fashioned into barrels. Hamilton-Russell strongly believes in the power of wood, "If you cut corners on your barrels, you will ultimately diminish the quality of the wine."
Our next stop was Moggs Country Cookhouse for an outdoor tasting with wine consultant Bartho Eksteen, who doesn’t even have a vineyard to call his own. Bartho, a self-proclaimed sauvignon blanc "freak," has arrangements with several producers to purchase grapes (one finely-tuned deal says that if a crop is bad, the producer will pay Bartho to go ahead and make the wine, which he will then try to sell on his own), which he then turns into his sauvignon blanc and shiraz in the cellars of friend Dave Johnson, owner of Newton-Johnson. And, unlike Anthony Hamilton-Russell, Bartho is a huge combiner of grapes and concentrates more on what happens in the cellar than on the farm.
Before lunch we tasted wines from both Bartho Eksteen and Newton-Johnson labels. Of the pinot noir (a 2001 vintage whose grapes were hand-picked and hand-sorted and whose color had a surprising pinkish tint), Bartho offered the following pearl of wisdom: "Other countries try to make a red wine out of pinot noir. I disagree; make it as elegant as you can." Bartho Eksteen’s 2000 shiraz was nothing short of incredible – what he calls a "blockbuster" and something he’s not sure he could ever repeat, even though his 2001 vintage is already highly regarded.
Established in 1750, Beaumont it is one of the oldest operating vineyards in South Africa, having once been an outpost for the Dutch East India Company. Thick stone walls helped with insulation for the fermentation process, though old vats have been updated with modern technology. During harvest time, grapes are picked by hand and fed into an antique wood-structured crusher and left to ferment in open tanks while workers and vintner Nils hand crush every four hours.
Looking to enter the world stage
Even our tasting at Beaumont harkened back to the good old days of winemaking. Nils carried around a stone pitcher and opened up valves in the tanks to give us a sip or two of the fermenting base wine. What a difference between these unfinished wines and the bottled vintages we tasted later in the visit. The sauvignon blanc was very fruity (with the appearance of pineapple juice) and both the young (and extremely dry) Pinotage and the shiraz practically stained the glass. Nils believes, while South Africa definitely has excellent wines, a shiraz will be the first truly world-class wine produced here and his 2000 vintage is certainly in contention for that honor.
On one of the hottest days of the late African summer (the temperature actually hit 40° C [108° F] in the valley), we spent a lovely afternoon at Roggeland Country House tasting Radford Dale and Vinum wines under the cooling shade of two towering oak trees. (Note: neither Radford Dale or Vinum cellars are open to the public; another advantage of touring with Cape Wineland Tours.)
An Australian, two Brits (one heavily-influenced by Burgundian traditions), and two Frenchmen have crafted these two new brands, and the only South African involved in making these wines is the farmer who grows the grapes. Among this eclectic mix of nationalities (which has been said to have a "disproportionate amount of fun for the serious task at hand") is Edouard Labeye, one of the first winemakers to perfect the micro-oxygenation process (the art of injecting oxygen into the wine while it's fermenting in order to elongate the tannins and give the finished product more structure) and is busily teaching other South African winemakers how to do the same.
Vinum's Gus Dale was on hand to guide us through a selection of merlots and chardonnays. "This is not an in-your-face, juicy, frivolous merlot," the winemaker wrote of the 2000 vintage. "So go away if that's what you're after! This is a serious merlot that doesn't take itself too seriously."
Radford Dale is the primary label for Gus's brother, Alex, and partner Ben Radford, created to be drinkable three to four years after bottling, while Vinum (for which Gus is the assistant winemaker) is the wine for immediate consumption. "We believe that good wine is make in the vineyard, not in the cellar." And, evidently, so do a lot of consumers. In its short history Vinum has achieved international acclaim for being an affordable, quality wine and is served by Disney and on Carnival Cruises. Surprisingly, it's actually quite hard to get within South Africa.
The final tasting of the tour had been planned as the most decadent. At Steenberg Vineyards in Constantia, John Loubser and his interior-decorator-by-trade wife, Karen, presented the most visually stunning presentation any of us had ever been to
We began our tasting with three whites, first with a nip of the base wine and then moved on to a later vintage in order to experience the growth in the finished product. The Cape Classic had hints of apples and biscuits; the sauvignon blanc (a Steenberg specialty) was full of green peppers, asparagus, gooseberries and green figs; and the absolutely outstanding semillon offered essences of grapefruit, honey, green pepper and vanilla.
Expectedly, the reds evoked more masculine tastes and aromas. The merlot was displayed with incense, chocolate, eucalyptus, black cherries, blackberries, cassis and coffee—clearly a terroir wine; and the final tasting of the evening, the shiraz, exploded with green peppercorn, coriander, white pepper, coffee beans, violets and tobacco.
»