South African, naturally.
I meet a young man who is, very possibly, South Africa's only properly natural wine maker. By Kate.
The plan was to do no work. I am tired and in dire need of an escape to a place which has nothing to do with every day, all the better for turning around and looking back on it. I also wanted to avoid, as far as possible, doing things and going to places I had last been with Jude.
So there was going to be nothing at all to do with wine on my holiday; apart from the drinking of it from time to time.
Then Doug ruined the plan 3 days before I left, telling me all about, quite possibly, South Africa’s only completely natural wine maker, a young man called Craig Hawkins. What could I do? I had to see him.
Craig was remarkably charming and accommodating. When dealing directly with a wine maker (as opposed to the person who organises shipping or logistics or even marketing), one generally has to be very patient. They are not, on the whole, people who relish ploughing through emails and mobile phones and messages, as often as not, go unanswered.
The very natural and remarkably charming wine maker, Craig Hawkins
Craig may be making wine entirely naturally but is he absolutely of the world of communication, which is a wonderful thing. Texts and emails were dispatched with great efficiency from a Blackberry in his corner of the Swartland and a date was set.
And so on Monday, after having landed on Sunday, I left Cape Town on the NI, past Century City, past Durbanville and Table View, turned left at Malmesbury and found myself in the Swartland. I don’t know why it is called this but I should find out. A direct translation means ‘black land’ which can’t possibly have anything to do with indigenous people as, from that point of view, all of South Africa
It is a region very much of the West Coast. I am more of a habitué of the East and this holiday was partially about exploring the West more. The East is greener and more lush and, the further north you go, increasingly sub tropical. The West is sparse and arid with a palatte of gold, khaki, faded yellow and dun and if you go far enough north here, you find the colours of the Kalahari dessert.
The Swartland is one ofSouth Africa South Africa and although the Black Rock we sell and love is a wine soaked in Swartland terroir, being a blend of southern Rhone varietals and showing delicious spiced rusticity, I am not a fan of much of it. Mr Sadie’s wines for example have never been my thing. Although technically very proficient, they are too big and the edges are too blurred.
I never did ask Craig how old he is – it always seems a slightly impertinent question – but he is undoubtedly young. Late 20’s, I would imagine. He finished studying wine making in 2006 and worked with Mr Sadie for a time before travelling extensively and working with Tom Lubbe (another South African) inFrance
This is amazingly impressive at any age.
He credits his brother (who got married on Saturday) with the fact that it was the flavour of untampered with, unadulterated fermented grape juice that got him. He never seems to have moved through a love or even liking of wines about extraction; fruit buried under layers of new oak. Something in the unadorned complexity of wines which are about their own fruit and terroir immediately appealed to him and these are what he most wants to make.
Since 2009, he has worked at the Lammershoek winery which is a bigg-ish farm of 96 hectares. This is a family business. His girlfriend, Carla, is the daughter of the owners; Paul and Anna. Paul, according to Craig, is a remarkably far sighted man who has recognized the importance of more natural ways of doing things from long before he got involved. Anna, I can confirm, grows some amazingly good tomatoes although I missed the opportunity to taste her apparently world class home made lemonade.
Some of the fruit from the farm is sold off, particularly Cabernet, Merlot and Sauvignon which are all utterly unsuited to the Swartland. The rest Craig is now vinifying along natural lines. Viticulture is organic and will soon move to biodynamic and he uses only natural yeasts, only new-ish wood (although he is moving towards even older and bigger, slowly but surely) and only very carefully controlled levels of sulphur.
These were good. We were tasting unblended components for both red and whites and all were instantly appealing – vital, fresh fruit that was ripe but not at all cloying. Craig puts this down to the fact that he picks on acidity. He is a man who spurns the refractometer (the handy little machine which measures sugar in berries and gives the wine maker an indication of when to pick) and in fact does no laboratory analysis at all, merely tasting the fruit and picking at alcohol levels of anything from 11% upwards although we didn’t taste anything which was over 14% (and most weren’t anywhere near this.)
You may suspect that this would lead to mean, green fruit and you would be entirely wrong. The one constant in almost everything from his Viognier to his Mouvedre was perfumed aromatics. This is unusual in a new world country and undoubtedly, this has to do with his picking time. He does let everything go through full malo lactic fermentation so the acidity throughout was perfectly balanced but beautifully vibrant. So much so that he says many South African’s find them a challenge. Not so for a European palate and I am convinced that the difference is nothing that can’t be fixed with more exposure to flavours as vital.
He does foot pressing in a basket press for many of his wines and in fact, treats many of the reds as port – pressing by foot and then allowing only around 5 days maceration. Is it this fact which gives them their amazingly fresh elegance? We tasted from barrels of both Syrah and Mouvedre which were both full of fragrance, unbridled by excessive tannin or fat alcohol. And yet, they keep just a hint of the delicious depth of fruit that only a lot of sun can bring. This is a wonderful combination.
The whites are the real point though. His own whites, more specifically. Alongside the wines he makes for Lammershoek, there are precious few barrels of wine under his own label – Testalonga and El Bandito. These are both made from that perennial Green & Favourite – Chenin Blanc and are made with no sulphur at all.
Truly, there is nothing here for us not to be utterly mad about.
We tasted his 2010 Testalonga first. This is foot pressed in a basket as well and was blended about 5 months ago and then put back on its lees. Craig is a great believer in lees. He clearly recognizes the need for hygiene (there is not a whiff of anything untoward on his wines) but also believes in not ‘over sterilizing’ barrels. He also likes to keep some lees from older fermentations to mix in with the new.
This is the kind of behaviour that would have a generation of squeaky clean-ists howling with horror; it being everything the 20 century moved so far away from with spotless stainless steel and a host of other controls. Everything here is working precisely as it should though, at a level that rigidly sanitary wines simply don’t.
The minute I lifted the wine to my nose, I was smitten. Peachy fruit and abundant honeysuckle exploded all over the cellar; layer upon layer. It was ripe but it wasn’t overblown. I had committed to buying as much as I could lay my hands on before I had even put it in my mouth and that really doesn’t happen very often.
“It gives you that thrill”, Craig said. And that is exactly right; the same feeling all beautifully crafted things give. They hit you right at the core and this is indeed a very thrilling sensation.
As you would imagine, this wine is less about aromatics and more about texture. The former are not entirely lacking though; they are just more spicy than floral. The texture has a honeyed sheen and is fabulous.
We talked about the tannins while tasting from a barrel of his 2010 El Bandito which is STILL in whole bunches and has yet to be pressed. Again, this is not normal behaviour but it works like you cannot believe.
Compared to the wines of Princic from Fruili in Italy
Craig insisted that I eat a berry and it was immediately obvious that the tannins were very much there, only contained. We were of course only tasting the free run juice and there will have to be a pressing at some point, with the subsequent blending introducing more bite. Not too much though, I hope. I realise how economically unviable it is to even think something like that, but preserving the heavy silk feel of this wine in the mouth would be an incredible thing.
Which Craig is more than capable of. For lunch, he got one of his precious bottles of 2008 El Bandito. Not only that, but he very generously gave me 3 additional bottles to take away. I can’t wait to drink one with the team in London
This is astonishingly good wine. The 08 was his first vintage of this and had a 5 week skin maceration, the very clever and classy label informs. In the glass, this is pure old gold and looks, if you did not know about the skin contact, like a considerably older wine. Apparently, it completely flummoxed a group of blind tasters in Europe recently who were convinced that it was an old Loire Chenin.
It certainly has the aged Chenin nose – bruised white fruit, cooked, honeyed peach; but there is also a hint of flowers. This only had 5 weeks with the skins (compared to the year plus for the 2010), and on the palate the texture is spot on – exactly that smooth, heavy silk that is so satisfying.
The flavours are amazing – partly the fruit of the nose, but an added dimension of grapefruit zest and then, towards the back, a noticeably salty tang of minerality. It tastes ripe and if you think about it, too ripe to be a typical Loire example but that is a good thing. This comes from the Black Land
Why do I so often have to be driving when I so much just want to sit back and let everything else but the taste in my mouth recede for a while?
Craig solved that problem too though, by offering the rest of the bottle to take with me on my journey to Hermanus; up over some very high mountains and down to the sea.
Not before we had a look at some vineyards, though. The Lammerhoek farm lies in a a shallow – by South African standards – valley and the terrain is remarkably close to the Roussillon , as Craig pointed out. Granite outcrops loom over the dusty, faded colours of the landscape, the vibrant green of the vines standing in stark contrast to the dry soil. There is a strong, warm wind blowing from the South East, as there often is here.
Most of the Syrah vines are trained as they do on the perilously steep slopes of the Northern Rhone , in almost a tepee shape, with the stems gathered and tied at the top. This innovation of Paul’s, even before Craig started here was, according to him, an amazingly clever move. Apparently, it helps to preserve the acidity in the berries and with the memory of the fruity tang of the Syrah still fresh, I can confirm that it does.
We visit the old Chenin vines too. There will be no Testalonga from 2010 which is a great shame but I know that I want to sell as many of these wines as I possibly can, when ever we can get hold of them. These are honest to goodness bottles full of beautiful stuff. An amazing amount of intelligent thought and hard work has gone into them and as if all of this was not enough, Craig also feels that the over pricing of wine is a travesty which he does not want to be involved in.
Craig's Chenin vines, Swartland
I don’t know what the price of Testalonga and El Bandito will be on our shelves yet but given all of the above, I am sure it won’t be out of line with the experience of drinking it. Anything but.
Two days later, my open bottle of El Bandito is still giving great pleasure. It has lost nothing of its fruit or aromatics and the minerally finish seems even stronger. The pleasure it gives me to be drinking a South African wine made this way, bursting with these essential flavours is immense. Every sip is a sinking into something wonderful that brings all the sense sharply to attention, focused on this marvellous stuff in my mouth.
This completely made up for the fact that there was no-one else to experience my impromptu dessert - a splash of the wine over a chopped organic peach and a drop of honey. Peaches in wine is of course nothing new in parts ofFrance
I made Craig promise that he would do a ‘meet the winemaker’ dinner at Green & Blue when he is in London
The plan was to do no work. I am tired and in dire need of an escape to a place which has nothing to do with every day, all the better for turning around and looking back on it. I also wanted to avoid, as far as possible, doing things and going to places I had last been with Jude.
The very natural and remarkably charming wine maker, Craig Hawkins
Craig may be making wine entirely naturally but is he absolutely of the world of communication, which is a wonderful thing. Texts and emails were dispatched with great efficiency from a Blackberry in his corner of the Swartland and a date was set.
The Swartland is one of
I never did ask Craig how old he is – it always seems a slightly impertinent question – but he is undoubtedly young. Late 20’s, I would imagine. He finished studying wine making in 2006 and worked with Mr Sadie for a time before travelling extensively and working with Tom Lubbe (another South African) in
This is amazingly impressive at any age.
He credits his brother (who got married on Saturday) with the fact that it was the flavour of untampered with, unadulterated fermented grape juice that got him. He never seems to have moved through a love or even liking of wines about extraction; fruit buried under layers of new oak. Something in the unadorned complexity of wines which are about their own fruit and terroir immediately appealed to him and these are what he most wants to make.
We talked about the tannins while tasting from a barrel of his 2010 El Bandito which is STILL in whole bunches and has yet to be pressed. Again, this is not normal behaviour but it works like you cannot believe.
This is astonishingly good wine.
Craig solved that problem too though, by offering the rest of the bottle to take with me on my journey to Hermanus; up over some very high mountains and down to the sea.
Craig's Chenin vines, Swartland
I don’t know what the price of Testalonga and El Bandito will be on our shelves yet but given all of the above, I am sure it won’t be out of line with the experience of drinking it. Anything but.
This completely made up for the fact that there was no-one else to experience my impromptu dessert - a splash of the wine over a chopped organic peach and a drop of honey. Peaches in wine is of course nothing new in parts of
