The outcome of the ANCs long-awaited KwaZulu-Natal conference was a win for the Thuma Mina crowd. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
My first stop was Klein Hemel farm, where Craig and Anne Wessels carefully make two Restless River wines. Tiny yields off vineyards where the fruit lingers into autumn, natural fermentation in the rudimentary cellar and restrained oaking give a pure-fruited, soft, but structured cabernet sauvignon that speaks its origins in a language different to most Stellenbosch equivalents.
The current 2007 is good, the soon-to-be-released 2009 is even better.
Chardonnay is more typical of the area and the Restless River version (currently a nicely maturing 2008) is full, rich and characterful. Tasting forward through as yet unreleased vintages shows steady progress, as the Wessels team learns to understand its vineyards and how best to express them with minimal intervention.
A little farther along the Caledon road, at the crest of a high ridge, is a small winery on the Elandsrand olive farm (where a small vineyard should produce a crop next year).
Here, three young winemakers each do their own thing and the place fairly crackles with excitement, comradeship and endeavour.
There is John Seccombe, formerly of Iona in Elgin and now striking out on his own. He was not there, but I sneaked a taste of a splendid sémillon still in the barrel.
Peter-Allen Finlayson has the longest-established label of the trio. He once abandoned winemaking in youthful disillusion, but rediscovered the “richness and depth of the wine world” among the vineyards of Europe. Now, here he is, making chardonnays and some of the Cape’s loveliest pinot noirs under the Crystallum label. His Peter Max Pinot is surely one of the most simply sensual pleasures available in a bottle, whereas the grander Cuvée Cinéma adds a touch more serious complexity.
Finlayson remains restless and full of intent. This year will usher in a new, single-vineyard pinot from the spectacular, high and hidden Elandskloof valley near Villiersdorp. And his 2013 Clay Shales Chardonnay promises even greater elegance and finesse, with less of a winemaker’s oaky thumbprint.
Perhaps he is pushed a little in this direction by the third denizen of the Hemelsrand cellar, for whom non-intervention (as little as is compatible with a human being nurturing a vine and its fruit) is a profound commitment. Chris Alheit is actually half of a fine winemaking team, but wife Suzaan has made her baby a priority for now.
The Alheit name emerged in spectacular fashion last year when their maiden Cartology was released to local and international acclaim — a blend of chenin and a little semillon off genuinely old vineyards ranging from the Skurfberg in Olifants River to Stellenbosch’s Bottelary Hills.
Old vines are what the Alheits are besotted with. To be released in a few months is Cartology 2012 (beneficially drier and more penetratingly focused than 2011) and a straight chenin blanc from those high-lying, formerly neglected Bottelary vines.
The Radio Lazarus chenin can simultaneously send shivers up your spine and delight down your throat. An even greater wine than Cartology, I believe, and certainly one of the Cape’s supreme expressions of this variety.
It is surely bound to confirm that Chris Alheit is among the most exciting talents and Cape winemaking visionaries to emerge here since Eben Sadie reinvented the Swartland at the turn of the century.