Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James
from the poorer soils. Virgil knew that vines love hillsides (Bacchus amat colles), and would have nodded approval of the changing view from a good vantage point in Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, or Constantia—seeing those high verdant patches.
Because of the dramatic changes to South African wine, one might have expected more absolute growth than has in fact happened. Australia and Chile, for example, have enormous new plantings, while the net growth in the total wine-grape vineyard area of South Africa in the fifteen years since 1996 (from 95,721 to 100,568 hectares) has been minimal. Much of that 5,000 hectares is accounted for by vineyards intended for high-quality wine in the recently opened cooler areas. In terms of the total production of wine, South Africa ranks eighth in the world, recently overtaken by Chile. In the early 1990s South Africa’s vineyard area and wine production were far ahead of Australia’s (and, even more, Chile’s). But Australia’s international success was accompanied by great expansion of vineyard area and production: the latter rose by something like two-thirds in the decade and a half to 2011 (something now regretted by many, of course). Chile’s production much more than doubled in the same period. Such spectacular growth did not happen in South Africa, for various reasons: a less overwhelming international success, less interest in investment by local or foreign forces, but also, significantly, the lack of irrigation potential, which means that South Africa is close to its limit of irrigable vineyard.
Faltering exports in a time of world economic sluggishness, together with depressed local demand, have even led recently to a reduction in the total vineyard hectarage. Since 2003 the number of hectares newly planted has been declining, and since 2006 it has been exceeded by the hectares uprooted or abandoned. The troubling aspect of this trend is its implication that vineyards are not being renewed as often as is generally thought desirable for the health of the industry: while carefully maintained older vines are frequently good news for high-quality production, an aging vineyard is not conducive to economically viable higher-yield production. Furthermore, there is every likelihood that in hard times for farmers, more and more vineyards are not being cared for as assiduously as they should be.
The expansion that has occurred over the past decades has brought continuous development of the pattern of official appellations. South Africa’s Wine of Origin (WO) system, which covers origin in terms of vintage and cultivar as well as appellation, is the most established and elaborated of any wine-producing country outside Europe. It was initially promulgated into law in 1973 (details of its workings are given in chapter 4). Although the WO system does not stipulate such things as viticultural and cellar practices, it is becoming increasingly refined, through subdivision of larger appellations into smaller ones, based on identity of terroir (soil and mesoclimate particularly). This in turn is both an expression of and encouragement for a degree of specialization—at least marking an emerging association between particular areas and grape varieties or styles of wine: Elgin, Constantia, and Elim for Sauvignon Blanc, for example; Hemel-en-Aarde for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay; Stellenbosch for Cabernet Sauvignon; and the Swartland for Syrah and a particular approach to white blends. While this process is starting to happen and is likely to continue, the associations are as yet necessarily tentative and exploratory, and far from exclusive, let alone definitive. The dominant practice remains for wineries from large to small to produce a fairly wide range of wine, although this is also starting to change, as individual estates discover what their climates and soils do best and concentrate on that. But as many will claim, some climates and soil serve a diversity of cultivars, and the large ranges persist, though generally on a less extensive scale than in the 1980s.
If the total size of the South African vineyard did not change drastically in the first fifteen years of the new South Africa, that is not true of its nature, particularly in terms of varietal composition—precursor, of course, to changes in the wine being made. The most obvious shift has been from the overwhelming preponderance of white grapes: in 1993 white grapes occupied 81 percent of the total vineyard area, much of the harvest destined for distillation. International demand required more red wine than the Cape was producing, especially of the best-known varieties, and the pattern started changing rapidly. There was even something of an overcorrection. In 2005 the white grape percentage was down to 54.3, but it rose again, to 55.6 percent in 2011. Especially because a good deal of the white grape crop goes into brandy and comes from high-yielding vineyards, the proportion of white wine to red is higher than the proportion of the respective vineyard areas: white wine is now 62.4 percent of total production.
The prime grape victim in the great color shift was Chenin Blanc. At just over 18 percent it remains by far the most planted variety, down from about 33 percent in 1993 (its high point was five years previously). Patterns of change are discussed more fully in chapter 3, but it is worth noting here how planting patterns have responded to the demand of international markets for wines from the best-known varieties, especially red wine grapes. In terms of vineyard area Cabernet Sauvignon grew from 5.5 percent of the total in 1993 to 12 percent in 2011, Syrah from 1.0 percent to 10.3 percent, Merlot from 1.8 percent to 6.4 percent. Of the important white grapes, Sauvignon Blanc went up from 4.5 percent to 9.6 percent and Chardonnay from 3.2 percent to 8 percent.
As for managing these vineyards, viticulture has improved greatly in recent years. For one thing, there are now many more professional viticulturists than there were, although it must be said that they are unfortunately generally less appreciated than winemakers, are sent abroad less often to gather expertise, and are less well paid. Francois Viljoen, from the country’s most important viticultural consultation service and one of the country’s foremost viticulturists, points out that when he started work in 1986 there were some twenty-five trained viticulturists in the Cape; the number rose to probably more than forty by the turn of the century; today he estimates there are about eighty—not including those formally untrained but with great local and international experience. And the latter category is, in fact, vital at the most ambitious end of wine production, for it’s certain that most of the Cape’s best producers have a closer link between cellar and vineyard work than ever before. Nonetheless, the cult of the winemaker is as established a religion in South Africa as it is elsewhere in the New World. At wine competitions it is invariably the winemaker called up to receive the medal and then, usually, to mouth platitudes (which he—usually he—possibly even believes) about “wines being made in the vineyard.” In fact, in many of the foremost wineries, and certainly the smaller ones, it is nowadays common for the cellarmaster and viticulturist to be one person: the traditional vigneron of Europe, in fact (and the traditional wine-farmer of South Africa too, for that matter, though now hopefully on a rather more convinced and convincing level).
So far, so good, but two important negative factors in South African winegrowing must also be mentioned. While the shift in the vineyard to superior varieties is an undoubted improvement, bringing South Africa more in line with its international competitors, the limited choice of clonal material and the limited availability of less mainstream but high-quality grapes are problems. It is one of many shortcomings that can be ascribed to poor leadership from the KWV in its days of overlordship. Through much of the twentieth century in South Africa not only was clonal material sought and developed with the aim of maximizing yield rather than quality, but there was little useful experimentation in finding varieties well suited to the Mediterranean climate of the Cape. The difficulty of obtaining good and sought-after vines was made particularly clear in the 1970s and 1980s, when ambitious producers felt obliged to resort to illegal smuggling in response to a lack of suitable available material and to long bureaucratic delays in bringing vines though quarantine. Chardonnay was the variety most famously involved, and there was even a governmental commission of inquiry into the matter.
Systems were subsequently streamlined, but leadership, at least, remained lacking, and a number of varieties that should be available—from similar climates in Italy and Portugal above all—are not. This remains a big problem in taking development forward. Diversity within the vineyards is sorely lacking: the five most planted varieties occupy more than 60 percent of the vineyard area, the ten most planted occupy more than 85 percent. Most producers with ambitions to produce high-quality wines limit themselves to the same “big five” that the rest of the world also dutifully worships (and of course the market demanding what amounts to brand names is a real problem): Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc. Chenin Blanc and Pinotage are the most significant local additions to this depressingly