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A Technical Guide for Wine Producers
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RECENT ARTICLES | WYNBOER HOME
Thanks be to nature and human efforts
Deep roots in bountiful soil
During the International Conference on Vineyard Terroir held under the auspices of the OIV (International Wine Office) in the Cape in November, delegates from fifteen countries - including those from which our winegrowing ancestors hailed - were able to experience the Cape scene on a day excursion. Visits were paid, inter alia, to Klein Constantia, Vergelegen in Somerset West and De Rust near Elgin, as can be seen from the photo-reportage below.
For a moment, forget about the buses crawling along the dam wall at Klein Constantia before dropping off their knowledgeable passengers from fifteen nations in front of a tasting table bedecked with white tablecloths and glasses.
Look at the humid sky cloaked in grey clouds, with a sun that puts in a flash appearance every now and then before disappearing again, and marvel at how this almost surrealistic aerial scenery must have looked sixty million years ago when new rock formations started to force their way upwards through the 100 million-year-old primordial crust that we know today as Malmesbury shale. Way back then the continents were still attached to each other. In the process the wonderful winegrowing soils of the Western Cape came about, enabling our wine industry to lay claim to being founded on the oldest formations of all industries anywhere in the world.
Even more remarkable is how these formations combined and intertwined with each other, or how one of them caused another to jut out, thus forming a hill or a mountain, and how in due course, Father Time with his weathering hand shaped them into three main types of arable soil. And that the three types of soil, depending on their height above sea level and exposure to wind and rain, in turn offer the Western Cape winegrower dozens of microclimates; as well as challenges for a budding corps of zoning experts whose task it is to see that their potential is optimised and that South African wines get preference overseas.
As far as the human touch is concerned, the legacy started with Jan van Riebeeck and was further developed by Malays and other slaves, French Huguenots, Germans, Europeans from other countries, Brits and everybody's joint descendants in the industry - and since recently, also increasingly by black South Africans - thus adding to the buoyancy of the Western Cape agriculture. Just like the melting pot of rock formations, the melting pot of people have contributed to the emanation of countless excellent wines of widely divergent nature from the southernmost tip of Africa.
Granted - Jan van Riebeeck was perhaps not the country's most gifted winemaker, but under the circumstances necessity was the mother of invention and perhaps it was good fortune rather than wisdom that had him establish his own vineyard on a hill, barely three kilometres from where some of the Cape's best vineyards, such as those of Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia and nowadays also Steenberg, take pride of place against the slopes.
The very same high calibre Table Mountain sandstone - with highly weathered, but stable soils, slightly acidic, well-drained, but with a good water retention capacity - also characterise zones bordering the Stellenbosch and Simonsberg, Groot and Klein Drakenstein, and the Helderberg and Hottentots-Holland basin.
We know that barely six years after landing at the Cape, Van Riebeeck used muscadel and "other round grapes" from the Dutch East India Company garden to make the first Cape wines, that were known for historic reasons rather than for their flavours and aromas. And, as mentioned before, he later established his own vineyard at Boschheuvel (nowadays the wealthy suburb of Bishopscourt) to supplement his sparse (for a governor) salary of £7,10 a month. The South African travel writer and historian Lawrence Green is of the opinion that some of the sailors who helped out from time to time with the harvest and winemaking, "were probably more inspired by thirst than talent".
Apart from Hochheimer vines from Germany, Van Riebeeck later also experimented with varietals from Spain, Italy, Madeira, Madagascar and St Helena. Later, French varietals such as Pontac were added by more judicious winegrowers such as Simon and Adriaan van der Stel at Groot Constantia and Vergelegen respectively, producing world-renowned Cape wines from the same type of soil on which Van Riebeeck started out.
In between the different mountain slopes, on the Cape flats and other low-lying areas that were often flooded by the sea in prehistoric times, there are duplex soils - coarse, faded sand on top of yellow-brown gravel and material rich in iron, with wet clay beneath - which also form part of famous wine farms.
Although the Huguenots in the Franschhoek basin, just like the Dutch governors, mainly encountered the highly useful weathered sandstone, the first Free Burghers were probably familiar with the third kind, today's highly sought after red and yellow-brown soils that occur in zones surrounding granite outcrops. The Free Burghers probably got to know the soils of Bottelary near Stellenbosch and together with their subsequent neighbours, the Huguenots, also planted vineyards against Paarl Mountain, Paardeberg, the Limiet Mountains and Malmesbury, while Darling became one of the discoveries of the late twentieth century following the abolition of vineyard quotas in 1992.
Another late and exciting discovery was Elgin, situated high above sea level and better known for its apples, which has Bokkeveld shale soils - a layer of gravel over thinly structured layers of clay - that have paid good dividends for investors such as Paul Cluver of De Rust and have zoning experts in the "quality above all" market rubbing their hands in glee. The reason being that the best combinations of varietals and region are the essential building blocks for quality, reputations and stable profit margins in oversupplied world markets.
Since South Africa started exporting wine in 1706, quite a few reverse ripples have impacted on the industry; for example in 1829 when 500 000 gallons per annum went overseas. Constantia wines remained in demand, but the quality of the rest did not grab the imagination. Were it not for the local Cape population - who hardly ever touched beer and considered local wines to be "clean, healthy and reasonably priced" - the industry would have taken a nose dive. (Why does this sound so familiar?)
This was the way of things until KWV was founded and started exercising control over surpluses, but in the process unfortunately also clamped down on areas which are today considered some of the most exciting in the world.
As new areas are being unlocked and zoning experts from bodies such as Winetech, the ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij, the Institute for Viticulture and Oenology and Stellenbosch University, in conjunction with numerous freelance colleagues, are meticulously gathering information and assembling the pieces of the puzzle, it becomes clear that out of Africa, there will always be something new.
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