December 2000
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Inspiration, Plans and Parties Both our families struck camp and headed to the farm for the holiday season. The Northern hemisphere dwellers coming direct from their base in the beautiful Alsace wine region. Apparently Merriman had had enough of freezing his behind off and wanted to get some sun on his back. The weather that greeted us was dry and hot, with beautiful cool evenings.
Apart from parties and presents high on the list of priorities was to decide on what we really wanted to achieve with our vineyard and how we would get there. In practical terms we would eventually have around 30 hectares of vines and a cellar to make wine. But what was the nirvana we were seeking, what was our goal? The wine business encompasses a huge variety of disciplines. Grape growing could be described as agriculture, but the word doesn't fit. Wine making could be described as beverage production, but it occupies a higher plane than that. On top of these is blending, bottling and selling it. Marketing of wine is a skill in itself but marketing is a rather dirty word to be associated with the drink of the gods. All in all, growing, making and bringing wine to the table is a series of sciences and skills that together can be described as an art. This is what attracted us to getting involved in the first place. Every wine producer has the same basic starting material but if the aim is to produce wine to sell to the consumer the economics of the business take over. If you are growing grapes and making wine with the primary aim of making money then the main component of your wine is economics, not grapes, terroir or wood. In the vast universe of wines that are available to the consumer there are top quality wines that are extremely rare, very famous and unbelievably expensive. There are also wines that are very expensive and not particularly good as well as wines that are very inexpensive and not particularly good. In fact as soon as you start to put a price or value on a bottle of wine you enter into a minefield of marketing, fashion, promotion and prejudice. That is why so many people make their living out of criticizing wine and writing about it. The subjective nature of the whole thing makes it bewildering and no two opinions are the same. Wines are produced to target very specific socio-economic categories of consumer at very specific price bands. Each producer has his strategy, but very few actually set out to make great wine. We want to make a great wine. That is our strategy. To the uninitiated this seems a little strange. Surely all wine makers set out to make the best possible wine and then it is judged against its peers and assigned a value by the market. In general this is not how it works. Most producers try to minimise costs and maximise returns, as far as they can get away with. In order to make a great wine you need to be very lucky, be totally uncompromising, throw a huge amount of money at it and then have it recognized by the wine world as a great wine. Frankly most producers need to make money quickly, so to take such a risk is not good economic sense. By international standards there are very few
great wines produced in South Africa. In fact considering the amount of
wine actually made in SA it is strange that so few are world class. South
Africa has about 1.5% of the world's vineyards and is 20th in the world in terms
of area under vine. In volume produced it is 7th in the world which
indicates that yields are much higher than in other Very few producers are fortunate enough to be totally uncompromising. Interest rates on loans are crippling as the Rand has to be supported in the market by the central bank. As a result cash flow becomes a priority. This means high yields, compete on price and bring it to the market quickly.
The other way to go is to disregard economics and don't even think about trying to make money. The making of a great wine becomes an end in itself and if it is achieved then the payback will come. You make a great wine by being totally uncompromising on quality, marrying the vine to the soil, squeezing the very best out of the vines by having them perfectly balanced, and use the best wine making techniques. If, by some miracle, you have produced a wine of world class then you challenge the world to say it isn't. That is what Stag's Leap and others did in the 1970's and they ushered in an era for California. So that's the aim. Forget how much it costs, we will just close our eyes and think of "wine". Now we have the target we need a plan to get us there. When we first came to SA we noticed how Mediterranean the climate and landscape is. Our climate survey backed this up. Among the vines best suited to Mediterranean climates are Grenache with enormous plantings in the hot and windy southern Rhone areas, Mourvedre in Provence and Syrah in Cote Rotie. Chateauneuf du Pape is a blend of Syrah and Grenache and Syrah reaches perfection on the steep slopes of the Cote Rotie. Surely these varieties, along with the Cabernet that is so successful in California, would be suitable. With these thoughts running through our minds we decided we needed some advice. Fortunately there is a platoon of young winemakers and viticulturists who are coming into prominence in the wine industry in SA. These guys and girls have been trained locally and abroad and have worked several harvests in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. They are the future of the SA wine industry and are really shaking things up. Also fortunately they are being supported by the estate owners they work for and the industry in general. These guys with this type of support will produce world beating wine in the near future that SA can be proud of. One of these guys is Eben Sadie at Spice Route. He is an ardent admirer of Mediterranean wines and has the backing of his employer Charles Back to produce a world beater. The Malmesbury area with its non-existent summer rain and poor soil is perfectly suited as a canvas for his vision of dry- land bush vines and low yields. His syrah is knockout and is already developing a large following. He very kindly entertained and astounded us for an afternoon in his cellar and among his vines. It was an enlightening experience.
In fact we were so wrapped up in talking and sampling Eben's great wine that we completely forgot the time. What was supposed to be an afternoon trip was spilling over into the evening. We were quaffing and chatting while the girls were preparing dinner for us back at home 70kms away. We made the call home with the usual lame excuses at about the time we were due to be sitting down. A little piqued that they were not involved in our fun and tired after a day looking after the kids the girls erupted and we knew we were in for a rough time when we arrived home. "Your dinner's in the dog" was the general message. Anyway Eben was sympathetic to our plight and he gave us a fabulous bottle of yet to be released syrah to accompany our dinner, which we ended up taking in a local roadside hostelry. Steak chips and a bottle of one of the best syrahs outside of Cote Rotie. It was amazing and the thought of it sustained us when we faced the music the next day. We also had the pleasure of meeting another of these young turks, Tom Lubber. He is working at the Spice Route property but on a separate venture, again supported by Charles Back. It's a project called Caldera which is trying to produce the most expressive wine possible from South Africa. Tom, born in SA but trained in New Zealand is the winemaker. Different varieties will be used, all from old Swartland bush vines. It will be a red blend reflecting the terroir and style of the Swartland. An ultra premium icon wine. Some are billing it as SA's Opus. Good luck to these guys. We hope that their efforts will raise awareness of SA wines among discerning and wealthy wine buyers throughout the world, so that when we start they have at least bashed the doors down. In penance the day after our Spice Route experience we took the kids on an all day trip to the Matroosberg reserve. This left the girls to cool off and was great fun. The kids also loved it but were more than a little scared by the near vertical assault of the mountain in the back of an open 4 ton Bedford. It was breathtaking at the top where we had our picnic. Totally unspoiled and isolated.
Another of Eben's generation is Andrew Teubes. He is a viticulturist and an expert in grafting techniques. He was trained in soil science and viticulture at Stellenbosch. We consulted him on our choice of varieties and our management scheme. He visited the farm and is in the process of making his report. This should put the final pieces in the jigsaw and take us from a vision to a plan. We intend to plant 10 hectares this year and build the cellar next year so we have to get it right!
New Year was great fun. The party theme was Chinese with all the clothes the genuine article, purchased in advance from Yue Hwa at Chinatown Point in Singapore. The kids looked great. By the time the first day of the year had dawned we had accounted for 6 bottles of Krone Borealis, 6 of Tony Bianco's Cabernet and 4 of Rijks' award winning Sauvignon Blanc. Funnily enough none of us had the sort of headache you would normally get after that sort of binge. Something to do with the quality of the wine or the fact that we never really sobered up. Long lunches with cold wine on the stoop were our particular pleasure. We drank some great Gewürztraminer from Viliera, and even the much maligned Chenin Blanc was great (also from Villiera).
It was also a pleasure to join the staff at their Christmas braai, with the beer flowing and the music booming through the trees. We leave the year 2000 with the sounds of partying ringing in our ears. It has been a monumental year for us, 12 short months since we completed on the purchase of the farm. It has also been a very happy year and we hope the immense promise of this year is fulfilled in the coming ones. We hope readers of this site have enjoyed being with us and following our progress. There's many chapters of this adventure to come! Copyright © 2000 Tulbagh Solutions. All rights reserved.
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