Top image caption: Johan Gerber

Johan Gerber has been appointed head manager at Org de Rac, the organic wine farm situated in the Swartland outside Piketberg which was founded by the late Nico Bacon in 2000. Gerber, who since 2016 was Production Manager and later winemaking manager at Origin Wine, has vast working experience at wineries in South Africa, as well as in California and Australia.

The latest release of the Chamonix Estate White Wine, made from Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon growing on this Franschhoek estate’s mountain vineyards represents an outstanding Cape white wine vintage, namely 2018 when the region was at the end of its crippling four-year drought. According to Niel Bruwer, Chamonix’s winemaker, the quality of the wines emerging from the 2018 vintage is testimony to the resilience of the vine as well its ability to produce extraordinary quality fruit under trying natural conditions.

Top image: Diemersdal team at Veritas. From left are Thys Louw, Mari Branders and Juandré Bruwer with Christo Pienaar, Veritas chairman.

Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville can record 2020 as its most successful year in the pursuing of wine accolades. The estate, which has been in the Louw family for six generations, ended the 2020 awards season with two Double Gold medals at the annual Veritas Wine Awards, South Africa’s most authoritative and most competitive wine competition. The medals were awarded to Diemersdal Winter Ferment Sauvignon Blanc 2020 and the estate’s Pinotage 2018, a wine in its premium The Journal range which was launched earlier this year.

By achieving the highest rating for unwooded Chardonnay at this year’s Veritas Wine Awards, De Wetshof Estate from Robertson becomes arguably the most awarded unwooded Chardonnay producer in South Africa.

Org de Rac, the leading organic wine farm in the Swartland, has a new ownership through a joint venture between the Bacon and Hartzenberg families. This follows on the passing of Org de Rac’s founder Nico Bacon, who has been the owner since establishing this wine farm in 2000.

The part of 2020 worth remembering is the welcoming cold and wet Cape winter that brought rain and cold units to the winelands, boding well for a good 2021 harvest. 

The rich and diverse indigenous fynbos of South Africa’s winelands has become a welcome ally to the region’s wine farmers, providing natural eco-systems between and alongside vineyards where the fynbos plants act as a natural pest controller, energising soil and creating a hardy crop-cover that helps retain moisture in the soil.

The most famous wine in the world is honoured on Friday, 23 October this year when World Champagne Day is celebrated on all four corners of the globe. There can be no doubt with its celebratory cork-popping, zesty bubbly composition and delicious freshness, Champagne is the most well-known and most celebrated wine style in the world.

Top image: Thys Louw from Diemersdal, middle,  with the Absa Top 10 Pinotage Trophy. Left is Beyers Truter, Chairman of the SA Pinotage Association and on the right is John Tshabalala, Absa: Managing Executive Western Cape.

One of South Africa’s most unique and awarded Sauvignon Blanc wines, the Winter Ferment from Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville, continued its winning-ways by taking the Trophy for Best Sauvignon Blanc at this year’s Michelangelo International Wine & Spirits Awards. Since the first vintage of Winter Ferment in 2017 the wine has won numerous accolades, including spots in the FNB Top 10 Sauvignon Blanc Competition, Veritas Double Gold accolades and the Sauvignon Blanc Trophy at the National Young Wine Show.