Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James
are finer than the bigger, bolder, riper Rustenberg Peter Barlow Cabernet Sauvignons of two decades later, few who have drunk both would deny that both styles reveal a soil and a mesoclimate capable of producing good wine.
There seems to be something meaningful in the idea alluded to earlier, that the Cape is somehow naturally poised between (to employ reductive generalizations) the restraint and finesse of classic Europe and the powerful, fruit-driven exuberance of the New World. To an extent, as suggested earlier, it is a matter of winemaking traditions, but these traditions seem prompted by climate and soil. The assertive, sometimes flamboyant fruit that is found in California and Argentina, for example, is not easily found here, but nor is the equally forceful restraint (if that is not too much of an oxymoron) of France, while modesty in its best sense seems to come more easily here than it does in Australia—although, again, one needs to look beneath winemaking. A quality that many critics have noticed in many modern South African wines that are not pushed to excessive ripeness, especially whites, is a genuine freshness—and minerality for those who’ll countenance that description—connected to acid balance. This question of acid structure is particularly noteworthy, as it can point to the need to explore ways to understand and articulate a winegrowing potential. In the 1980s the academic insistence on understanding wine through analysis meant that virtually all local wines were routinely acidified—always to the point of technical safety and often to the point of hardness and imbalance. It was a given thing that the Cape’s acidic soils meant that the wines they produced were correspondingly lacking in acidity. But improved viticulture as well as more sensitive winemaking, the latter often achieved partly through the experience of working in Europe, means that now many of the Cape’s best wines go unacidified, and their natural balance—with a fine acidity—is all the better for it. This acid structure is one reason that white wines, where tannin is less of a vital component and acidity is more structurally exposed than in reds, are widely considered (by me for one) to be the stronger category in South Africa.
So much for inherent potential. The willingness of winemakers to learn to respond with new understanding—not just those who were young in 1994, but also many who had been making wine for twenty years or more—was much more than a technical response to a marketing challenge. It was part of, enlivened and encouraged by, a changing culture marked by huge social dynamism, which in certain ways carried along with it even the largely conservative individuals of the Cape winemaking establishment.
The larger bodies in which that conservatism found its most relevant wine-industry expression did, in fact, take longer to respond. The KWV was obliged to do so rapidly in terms of renouncing its dictatorial powers, but it took some fifteen years for it to show real signs of cultural and winemaking modernization in the best sense of that vague idea. Distell, the enormous wholesaler, which often still seems too monopolistically large for South Africa’s winemaking and wine-drinking good, changed more quickly, and started making better use of the range of vineyards at its disposal.
Nonetheless, it is to a few large private estates with uncompromising devotion to quality and, perhaps especially, to the small growers that one must inevitably look for innovation and real excitement at the highest levels of ambition. There are young—some very young—winemakers in areas like the Swartland who are trying radical experiments: a few fascinating barrels of old-vine Chenin Blanc fermented on its skins, or wines from rather despised grapes like Cinsaut and Carignan, picked unfashionably early, light-colored, and lacking massive concentration—and nevertheless rather profound and undoubtedly making for satisfying, pleasurable drinking. First-rate and fascinating wines have been made from old vineyards whose small yields had previously been lost in the massive anonymous vats of a cooperative. This is a trend of great significance, in indicating both an interest in the past and, even more, further recognition of the primacy of vineyard over cellar in producing fine quality. One of the Cape’s youngest wineries, Alheit Vineyards, declares its aim as being “to vinify extraordinary Cape vineyards,” and Chris and Suzaan Alheit have sought out old vines around the wine lands: “We love these old blocks not only because of their undeniable quality, but because they represent our heritage.”
So there is still fresh excitement in South African wine. It became apparent maybe fifteen years after the first important developments initiated in the early 1990s that a second, renewed qualitative shift had been taking place since the early 2000s. If the first phase of the vinous revolution basically involved catching up with accepted international standards and practices of growing and vinifying grapes, the second was predicated on responding to larger aspects of the Cape wine landscape: taking advantage of the new areas opened up to viticulture by the abandonment of the KWV quota system (Elim, Elgin, Cape Point, etc.) and reinventing and reinvigorating some of the old areas (Tulbagh, Swartland); making a useful start with the matching of terroir and grape variety; and forging styles of wine that accorded with what was offered by the (different) areas. A third phase of the revolution is now under way. One sign of it is the “discovery” of many scores of those old vineyards, because essentially this latest phase involves a crucial turn to detail—not in the winery, but among the vines. There are more professional viticulturists in the country than ever before, but of greater significance for the finest wines is the international experience brought to bear on local traditions of what we can no longer call straightforward winemakers—they are winegrowers, or vignerons, in the European tradition, uniting the processes of growing grapes and vinifying them, always with the emphasis on the former. An analysis of the real elite of Cape wine producers would show that the majority of them demonstrate this continuity between cellar and vineyard, often with the same person responsible for managing both.
Chris Alheit is “dead certain that the golden age of Cape wine is ahead of us.” Thanks, he suggests, to the pioneering work of figures like Eben Sadie and viticulturist Rosa Kruger (the woman responsible for tirelessly seeking out and “rescuing” so many old vineyards), “the Cape has never been so loaded with promise.” Another of the younger generation of winemakers remarked to me recently: “We have prepared the soil of the future, and we have made the roadway to it. Now, just the same as with democracy in this country, we still have to move forward to get somewhere really good.”
2
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICAN WINE TO 1994
BIRTH AND MATURING OF THE INDUSTRY: 1652–1795
The origins of winegrowing in South Africa can be fixed with unusual accuracy. A crucial moment was recorded on 2 February 1659 in the logbook of Jan van Riebeeck, commander of the tiny settlement at the foot of Africa. It was nearly seven years since he and his expeditionary force of some ninety men had gone ashore at Table Bay, intent on establishing a revictualing station. The Cape of Good Hope had been known to Europeans since Bartholomew Diaz had rounded it in 1488, but circumstances in international trade suggested its usefulness to the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company).
“Today,” wrote van Riebeeck, “God be praised, wine was pressed for the first time from Cape grapes . . . mostly Muscadel and other white, round grapes, very fragrant and tasty. . . . These grapes, from three young vines planted two years ago, have yielded about 12 quarts of must, and we shall soon discover how it will be affected by maturing.” Wine production was probably not originally envisaged among the “needful refreshments” to be provided by the station, but van Riebeeck’s early enthusiasm about this potential addition to the company’s garden, in what is now the heart of Cape Town, made sense to the practical minds of the ruling Lords Seventeen in Amsterdam. Wine not only keeps better than water but could also help prevent scurvy among sailors making the long voyage between Europe and the company’s possessions in the East Indies. Moreover, if production could supply even just the needs of the European residents at the Cape, that would help reduce the “overwhelming expenditure” that the administrators back home were to continually abhor.
At any rate, van Riebeeck eventually got his grapes. The first rooted vines seem to have arrived rotten in 1654, but at least some of a subsequent shipment were successfully planted, and other cuttings followed. The commander also asked Amsterdam for winemaking equipment and information. Before leaving in 1662 he had learned not only something about winemaking but also some of the natural forces against which viticulturists must contend: in that year the crop was virtually destroyed