Almost all the grape varieties wine is made from come from a single species: Vitis vinifera. But there’s a problem: two vine diseases came to France from America in the late 19th Century which vinifera varieties have no resistance to. As a result, vineyards must be sprayed with pesticides. These two diseases are downy and powdery mildew. The former is not a problem where there is no growing season rainfall; the latter is a problem everywhere. Viticulture is a very heavy user of pesticides and with it, repeated spraying causes soil compaction and raises the carbon footprint of grape production. As a result, there is now increased interest in new resistant varieties, made by hybridizing vinifera varieties with American and Asian varieties that contain resistance genes that reduce the need to spray by 80% or more. The question is: are we too wedded to our existing grape varieties to take these newcomers seriously?
A few weeks ago I visited the Rebschule Freytag nursery near Neustadt in Germany, where I met with the owner, Volker Freytag, and also Valentin Blattner, a grape breeder from Switzerland who has worked closely with Freytag since 1991, when Blattner developed the very successful hybrid Cabernet Blanc. Blattner began breeding resistant varieties which he then planted on his farm in Soyihères in the Jura mountains back in the 1980s. His first crossing was made in 1985 from a large vine growing on the wall of a house that was a hybrid that didn’t need spraying against grapevine diseases, and he began crossing this with vinifera varieties to make hybrids that are disease resistant, but which have desirable enological characteristics.
Blattner and Freytag showed us their experimental vineyards, where they try out new crossings. These crossings are made by removing the male parts of the vine flower in one variety, and then pollinating the female bit that’s left with the other variety. When grapes are produced, each will contain up to four seeds. Each of these seeds, if germinated, produce a new variety that’s a cross. If they are lucky, these crosses will have the resistance of the hybrid variety, plus they’ll make grapes that make wine that tastes nice. What follows is rounds of selection, some genetic testing (a bit like a Covid test, just to see which resistance genes are present), and then making some experimental wine from the new varieties (at this stage just numbers, not names) to check that these good-looking grapes are as promising as they seem.
We looked at the first selection seedlings, and then a more established vineyard planted with crosses of interest, and the comparison between these and Vitis vinifera vineyards next door was huge. As one of the reasons for this trial is to assess disease resistance, the crossings hadn’t been sprayed. Most had lush, green foliage, whereas the vinifera vineyards were ravaged with downy mildew despite having been sprayed 15 times that year. This was in late September, at the end of the growing season, where differences would be most stark, but it was illuminating. The grapes were still on the vine, and this allowed us to look at the crossings to see what sort of potential they had besides disease resistance. Clearly some were better than others, in terms of yield and cluster architecture, but it was so interesting to see this comparison. Blattner has some 3,000 new varieties here, another 3,000 at his home base in Switzerland, and a further 6,000 he’s developed with partners he’s working with in Spain.
Blattner’s journey started when, as a young man, he was sent from Basel to French-speaking Switzerland to learn French. He began working with a winegrower there, and loved it, apart from every Monday the vines would be sprayed with pesticides. So he bred his first vines in 1985. He wasn’t allowed to plant them, so he moved to the Swiss part of the Jura where no such restrictive rules were in place, and he planted a vineyard of resistant varieties. His work has continued, and now many of the successful resistant varieties are creations of his, including Satin Noir, Sauvignac, Cabernet Blanc, Cabertin and Pinotin.
Blattner is not alone. In France, the ResDur program started by Alain Boquet in the 1970s has yielded a range of modern crosses that have been accepted by the previously very resistant French authorities into the official catalogue, such as Voltis, Artaban, Floréal and Vidoc. Then there are breeding programs in Italy and Germany that have produced commercially interesting varieties. These are often marketed under the banner of PIWIs, an abbreviation of the German term “Pilzwiderstandsfähige Reben” – see here. The initial cross to create disease resistance is followed by a series of back-crossings with Vitis vinifera.
The story we hear is that hybrids were tried as a solution to phylloxera and then rejected because the wines tasted bad, and then when vineyards were replanted vignerons used vines grafted onto American rootstocks. But perhaps this story is a little simplistic. Of course, had the many French-American hybrids crossed in that first wave been capable of producing really good wine, then they would have been seen as the solution and grafting would never likely have been developed. But hybrids haven’t always been hated. Back in 1958, some 400,000 hectares of resistant varieties were planted in France, making up around 30% of the planted vineyard area (despite their plantation being officially banned in 1934). This was era when quantity was valued above all else. The demand was mostly for cheap, drinkable wine in vast volumes. This is something that the hybrids used at the time still delivered, and there’s still a widely planted hybrid (Baco 22A) in the vineyards of Cognac, since quantity rather than intrinsic wine quality is still demanded there. Since then, consumption in classic wine countries has gone down, and the hybrids were turned on as enemies of the quality revolution in France, where there were even some claiming that wines made from hybrids were dangerous to health.
Now the next-generation hybrids are becoming popular. The older hybrids were less sophisticated and had odd wine chemistry (typically high pH with high TA, and for reds low tannins, as well as high polysaccharides), and sometimes some unusual flavours. The genetics of the modern hybrids, which can often be 90% or more vinifera in their genomes, varies widely, and the problems of the past no longer apply. Freytag’s nursery business in now 60% resistant varieties and 40% vinifera, for example.
But can we get serious winegrowers to begin to work with them? The environmental benefits are huge. Especially for those who want to farm organically in cooler, damper climates, they are almost irresistible. The challenge is selling the wines to customers.
Planting a vineyard is a big commitment, but already many have taken the leap, even if it is just on a trial basis. I’ve tasted a lot of wines made from resistant varieties, and they have largely been really good. But they have mostly been either techno wines made in a very fruit forward style, or very natural wines with a different set of flavours (read about UK supermarket Tesco’s recent release of a wine from hybrid variety Floreal here). I’d love to see some more serious winegrowers work with them to expand the palette of what these varieties are capable of. My prediction is that if a few well reputed growers who make very fine wines begin to adopt them, and make stunning wines from them, then there will be a much wider acceptance.
Belfield in Elgin was acquired by the late Mike Kreft and his wife Mel in 2000, the farm these days supplying grapes to several top producers.
David Trafford of De Trafford and Sijnn fame was keen to explore how Cabernet Sauvignon performs under cooler growing conditions and started making an example from Belfield beginning with the 2020 vintage.
The 2021 has just been released (R400 a bottle) and indeed has a markedly different profile to anything that originates from Stellenbosch. Containing 15% Merlot from the same vineyards, it was matured for 20 months in barrel, 20% new.
The nose shows red and black berries, fresh herbs including a touch of mint and oak spice while the palate is medium bodied with a definite coolness about it – pure fruit, fresh acidity and a nicely dry finish. Alcohol: 14%.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Recently, within the space of a few days, I visited two historic, neglected wine estates that are being handsomely invested in and revived by Germans: Alto and Vergenoegd-Löw (the last appendage being the new owner’s surname). I wrote about Alto here, and plan on something about Vergenoegd-Löw – but only after I’ve satisfied an itch prompted by these visits and said something more general about the remarkable, and not much noted, contribution of Germans to the Cape wine industry, from its beginnings to the renewed wave of investment following the turnabout of 1994.
There was a lengthy and remarkably fractious debate in the comments to an 2018 article by historian Joanne Gibson in which she, in passing, minimised the role in local wine history of the “vastly over-hyped French Huguenots”. In a measured intervention to the irritable “debate” that followed, Joanne suggested that: “If anything, in fact, it’s the contribution of the Germans that we REALLY need to talk about… (Cloete, Eksteen, Geldenhuys, Heyns, etc etc…).” Here I’m talking – but it’s a contribution that’s sketchy and incomplete, to say the least.
It is, of course, the Dutch that we know about in the Dutch East India Company’s settlement that got firmly underway in 1652, but there were also a significant number of Germans amongst the Company’s soldiers and servants, and doubtless among the free burghers who started planting vines in the years that followed. Jacobus Cloete from Cologne, for example, whose surname was to be so resonant in the development and fame of Constanta, was amongst the first 17 free burghers, in 1657. Other German settlers followed, and it seems that 5% of the 1000-odd Europeans here in 1691 were of German origin – but, as with the French, they were absorbed into the majority population and never formed a discrete sub-group.
The wine connections of a few of those early German soldier-settlers we do know about. One was Willem Barend Lubbe, who in 1692 began farming a site he called De Wolwedans (apparently having somehow confused the local jackals with European wolves). A romantic name – more so than the Neethlings Hof it became in 1828. That name was contracted to Neethingshof before another German, the financier Hans Joachim Schreiber, bought it in 1985. These days it’s French-owned.
Another VOC German soldier namely Laurens Campher now even has a wine, the white blend, named for him by Muratie, which he farmed from 1685 and was granted ownership of in 1699 – it was then called De Driesprong. The German presence at Muratie has been strong. Little seems to be known what happened there for the next century, but Muratie says it was owned from 1763 to 1781 by another German immigrant, Martin Melck (a different account I’ve seen says it was owned by Melck’s wife, who apparently also owned Elsenberg, now the place of the agricultural college of that name). More certain is that Melck had been a mercenary employed by the VOC to “keep the natives quiet” where necessary. A longer-term German immigrant owner came in the 20th century, in the person of George Paul Canitz, good friend of Professor Perold. Some 30 years after his death, his daughter sold the estate in 1987 to Ronnie Melck, fully South African descendant of the 18th century owner.
The Huguenot settlement of the late 17th century was something of a once-off French contribution to pre-modern Cape winegrowing, but immigration from the German-speaking parts of Europe continued substantially through the centuries that followed. One significant contribution to the wine industry, that I knew nothing about till I discovered it on the internet as I was working on this piece, is told in the rather poignant tale of Graham Leslie McCallum’s search for the graves of his maternal great-great-great grandparents. They’d come to the Cape in 1859, amongst a 74-strong group of “German Vinedesser Settlers” and their families, as part of an “aided immigration” scheme that would, it was hoped, strengthen the Cape Colony’s wine industry. I trust it did so, though things were in such poor shape then that it would have taken more than some experienced German viticultural workers to turn them around.
Incidentally, a German-speaker at a rather more exalted level of viticulture arrived at the Cape just a quarter-century later, in 1884. (And at a rather more exalted level of society, the first in a surprisingly large number of Teutonic barons to grace the wine-world at the foot of Africa.) Baron Carl von Babo was a well-known Austrian, trained at the Viticultural School at Klosterneuburg near Vienna, and was appointed as government viticulturist, also acting as manager of the then government-owned winefarm, Groot Constantia.
The 20th century saw a decent influx of Germans investing their money and energy into the now-developed wine industry. Cape wine seems to have offered a particularly warm welcome to Germans, in fact, probably because the white Afrikaners who dominated its higher reaches had been grateful for German support during the British colonial wars against the Boers. I read in RU Kenney’s biography of Perold (himself with a German phD, married to a German, and a member of the Ossewa Brandwag that supported Nazi Germany), that there were so many Germans farming in part of the Stellenbosch area that it was known as Die Deutsche Ecke – “German Corner”. I’d guess that the area might be the Simonsberg. Canitz owned Muratie, while nearby Delheim was bought in 1939 by second-generation German immigrant Hans Hoheisen, who brought in winemaker (and future owner) Spatz Sperling in 1951. Uitkyk was bought in 1929 by another German bearer of the aristocratic “von” – Hans von Carlowitz, whose son George was to establish its reputation for wine.
Move sideways to Paarl, and we find a prime example of important, enduring German influence. The land of the original Nederburg estate was allocated as late as 1792 to a German immigrant, Philippus Wolvaart. Virtually the next significant date in its wine history came in 1937, when the neglected farm was sold to another German immigrant, Johann Graue, who, with his son Arnold, expanded crucially and innovatively – perhaps most notably in promoting the development of cooled fermentation of white wines. The business was merged with Monis in 1956 after Arnold’s tragic death. That was the year that the next German influencer came in, as Nederburg cellarmaster: the illustrious Günter Brözel.
In some cases the close winegrowing relationship between Germany and the Cape was expressed by South Africans going to learn their trade in Germany (remarkably few of those who travelled to learn about wine went to France, by contrast). Among the eminent wine-people who studied at Geisenheim or Weinsburg in the latter-middle decades of the 20th century are Danie de Wet, Anthonij Rupert, Braam van Velden, Peter Finlayson, Ross Gower and Nicky Krone; there are no doubt many more names for that list (I suspect one of the last South African wine students in Germany was Gottfried Mocke in the 1990s, when more attention was being paid to France, Spain and Italy).
The influence of the German academic origin is revealed not least by the (surely rather absurd) interest in German grape varieties in South Africa (riesling, gewürztraminer, sylvaner, bukettraube and even kerner) including crossings especially bred for a cold climate: it seems the scientists didn’t think that exploring and bringing in Mediterranean varieties would be more useful.
A few of those mentioned above studied at Geisenheim Agricultural Institute under the greatly eminent Dr Hans Ambrosi, who also spent over a decade in South Africa, from 1955, working at various wineries, and Nietvoorbij, as an agricultural engineer and consultant. A colleague at Nietvoorbij (though I’m not sure of his connections with Germany) was Hermann Kirschbaum, the fine winemaker for many years at Buitenverwachting.
That Constantia winery, bought in its dereliction by German couple Richard and Christine Müller in 1981 and restored to glory, marks a bridge to the most recent period of German interest and investment in the South African wine industry, most of which took place after the collapse of formal apartheid, in 1994. That’s a bit easier to explore, and I shall do so soon – having already rambled on here more than lengthily enough.
The Michael Fridjhon Wine Judging Academy in association with the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business – will take place at the Devon Valley Hotel on 12-14 March 2025.
Aimed at industry professionals, the three-day course is an intense masterclass® on how to evaluate the intrinsic qualities of wine. It includes an extensive focus on major international and local appellations and wine styles, as well as the most commonly encountered varieties.
For more information or an application form, please email Michael Crossley: crossley@reciprocal.co.za
The cost for 2025 is R13 495, which includes all meals, two nights’ accommodation and all course material. Entries close on the 6 December 2024.
The Cape Bordeaux Red Blend called Signature as made by Louis Strydom for Ernie Els Wines deserves to be considered among the best in category but at R900 a bottle for the current-release 2017, it’s not exactly everyday drinking. More affordable are the Big Easy tier of wines, the 2022 vintage of both the Cabernet Sauvignon and Red Blend recently released. Tasting notes and ratings as follows:
Big Easy Cabernet Sauvignon 2022
Price: R145
Includes 12% Cinsault. A portion of the Cab matured in concrete egg. Red and black berries, floral perfume and attractive oak-derived notes on the nose. Clean fruit, vibrant acidity and fine tannins. A lighter style done well. Alc: 13.72%.
CE’s rating: 91/100.
Big Easy Red Blend 2022
Price: R200
50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Shiraz, 5% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot and 5% Malbec. Matured for 14 months in French and American oak, 10% new. Red and black berries, vanilla and spice on the nose. The palate is sound but there’s no great fruit depth, the tannins soft. Easy drinking but lacks the charm of its counterpart above.
CE’s rating: 89/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
An interesting exhibition opened at the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate, Kent in the UK a few days ago. The show is a substantial overview of the career of the 61-year-old Anya Gallaccio, a British artist who is renowned for her conceptual work, mostly with and in nature.
In other words, much of her art speaks to and of the natural environment. The passing of time, the ephemeral nature of things, change and demise are central features of her art philosophy. Decay, in a manner, of speaking is part of the concept. Only documentation and memories remain of her art.
The Art Newspaper recently wrote: “For nearly four decades Anya Gallaccio has been making work from organic, unpredictable materials such as fruit, flowers, vegetables, ice, salt and chocolate—all of which can change, decay or even disappear over the course of a single exhibition.”
This, in a number of ways, is a complete opposite of the view that artworks have a permanent value that increases in both cultural and social significance. Of course, as the contemporary power and influence of money have increasingly devalued that worth in public spaces, the vibrant modern art auction has increased its hold, and is now more often than not the arbitrator of the significance (and meaning) of art pieces.
The parallel with wine is easy to see.
So it is interesting to return to the concept that wine, by nature (!), has a temporal existence. At some stage that highly-paid-for bottle of auction wine will be wine no more. So why this gamble with the transient?
Well, Gallaccio – whose current exhibition carries the delightful paradoxical title preserve – faced this issue head-on. In 2004 she started to collaborate with Zelma Long, the well-known American winemaker and founder member of local winery Vilafonté, on a wine project in California.
The art project was finally released as a boxed set of six wines made from five different Zinfandel vineyards in Sonoma and one blend. Titled Motherlode, her artwork was part of a project, Terrain Terroir, by San Francisco’s New Langton Arts institution to “produce a portrait of the Sonoma county, using the essence of the land: its soil and the fruit it bears”.
At the time Gallaccio, who was to become an arts professor at the University of California in San Diego, spoke of capturing the “essence of the landscape”. But she – and Long – were certainly very aware of the paradox involving wine.
“Buying wine seriously is an act of faith that I believe replicates the act of buying the work of a living, evolving artist. Wine is alive in the bottle and continues to develop and change.”
“Once the bottle is opened it has to be consumed. Even though you can only speculate whether it is at its prime, this can be a very expensive gamble. I always have felt that there are similar conditions at play with collecting contemporary art. Wine being a living thing, a material in flux, representing a process with an anticipated conclusion but not one guaranteed of course struck a chord with me.”
This last sentence of Gallaccio’s seems to me to sum up also that gamble during the hectic wine auction bidding.
But the best wine – made for the experience of drinking pleasure – is surely always a conceptual work that reflects whence it comes: the vineyard, the intention of the crafty winemaker and its final presentation to those who will pour it.
Some bottles of Long and Gallaccio’s Motherlode Zinfandel 2005 may still be out there. (I think some ten cases were released in a limited edition.) Whether drinkable? Who knows?
As part of her retrospective at the Turner Contemporary, Gallaccio has the art project for schools titled An Apple a Day which aims to explore Kent’s heritage, terrain and history through the county’s apple orchards.
If the 2020 vintages of Boekenhoutskloof’s two examples of Cabernet Sauvignon were a little underwhelming (see here), both wines from 2021 are very much a return to form.
Franschoek Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
Price: R525
Includes 12% Cabernet Franc. Matured for 22 months in barrel, 95% new. Attractive aromatics of red and black berries, oystershell, dried herbs and flowers while the palate is poised – pure fruit, bright acidity and firm but not coarse tannins, the finish long and savoury. A wine of substance but also energy. Alc: 14.97%.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
Price: R525
Grapes from the Helderberg and Vlottenburg. Matured for 22 months in barrel, 60% new. Brooding aromatics of dark berries, violets, incense, pencil shavings and earth. The palate is sumptuous and deep – a dense core of fruit, bright acidity and nicely grippy tannins. Seems particularly age-worthy. Alc: 14.87%.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Major equity in Wellington farm Diemersfontein and its operating companies has been sold. David and Susan Sonnenberg, who established a successful wine business on what was previously a family retreat in 2000, have sold to Esjen (Pty) Ltd, owned by Mssrs De Beer and Botha. Botha, a businessman based in Somerset West, has a background in banking and wine business while De Beer, based in Stellenbosch, has worked in many business areas and is today principally involved in property development. The new investors will retain the existing management team and staff, David Sonnenberg remaining as an active director of the company.
A light and summery dish which can work as a starter or as a light snack with a salad.
Serves 4 people
4 Tbsp olive oil
2 large white onions cut to medium thickness
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp thyme leaves (stripped from approx. from 4 small stalks)
4 – 6 anchovies, chopped
160gms fresh ricotta
100gms goats’ cheese or chevin
1 small garlic clove crushed
½ tsp mixed herbs (any)
1 x 250gm sheet of all-butter puff pastry
2 – 3 Tbsp toasted pine nuts
Small handful of rocket leaves to serve
Good quality aged balsamic to drizzle serve (optional)
Dressed leafy salad
Heat the olive oil in a medium nonstick pan or large heavy-based pot.
Slice the onions and then add them to the oil with the garlic and thyme and cook for about 30 – 35 minutes over a low to medium heat. Stir frequently and allow the onions to turn a golden caramel color but not brown. About five minutes before they are finished cooking, add the chopped anchovies and stir until they break down into the mix. The onions should be have an almost jam-like sticky texture. Set aside (this can be made in advance).
While the onions are cooking, add the ricotta, goats’ cheese, garlic and herbs to a small food processor and whip until you get a smooth, soft cream cheese consistency.
Half an hour before you are ready to serve, preheat the oven to 180˚C.
Place the pastry on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Score the pastry about 1cm in from the edge making sure you only cut about halfway through. Spread two-thirds of the cooled caramelized onion mixture over the base within the border. Then spread the whipped ricotta and goats’ cheese over that. Dot over the remaining onion mix and bake for 20 – 25 minutes until the edges are golden brown.
Scatter over the toasted pine nuts, fresh rocket and balsamic vinegar (optional). Serve with a leafy salad dressed with a vinaigrette dressing.
Goat’s cheese is best with crisp, dry white wines. Sauvignon Blanc is the classic match as it equals the cheese in intensity and weight – choose an example that’s more herbal and lean rather than full and fruity.
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The Syrah 2020 from Franschhoek cellar La Motte makes quite the impression. Grapes from own vineyards between 10 and 30 years old, winemaking involved 100% destemming before maturation lasting 24 months in barrel, 100% new. There’s also 10% Durif in the mix for extra vooma.
The nose shows some smoky reduction before dark berries, crushed herbs, earth and pepper while the palate has luscious fruit, bright acidity and pleasantly firm tannins, the finish dry. Alc: 13.83%. A lot of wine for R200 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
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