Picture the Breede River Valley. I bet you’re thinking of Robertson, home to racehorses, red cannas, real-value wines, and the popular kykNET Wacky Wine Weekend, which attracted 16,701 visitors earlier this month.

Now forget everything you know about the valley, generally as broad and flat as its name implies, and head from Swellendam towards the river mouth at Witsand. About 45km along the gravel road, you’ll reach Malgas – a hamlet whose claim to fame is its pont, the last hand-drawn vehicle ferry still operating in South Africa – where the Breede River steeply incises the Agulhas plain, and where David and Rita Trafford, owners of De Trafford Wines in Stellenbosch, escaped for a relaxing weekend in 2000.

Some years later, to cut a long story short, they bought a holiday house on the river – but only because the farm directly behind/above it was also for sale. “It was the stony soils,” explains David. “The pudding stones over fractured shale reminded me of Châteauneuf du Pape in the southern Rhône. I thought it would be so interesting to plant vines here.”

After acquiring two business partners, he did just that, focusing on Mediterranean varieties. The result is Sijnn (pronounced “sane”), which was the river’s original Khoisan name and which has quickly become an internationally acclaimed brand. Previously the wines were made in Stellenbosch (a five-hour truck drive away), but Sijnn now boasts its own cellar, designed by former architect David to be in perfect harmony with the environment, both visually (e.g. dry stone walls) and practically (e.g. solar energy).

Open Saturdays from 10am to 3pm, Sijnn offers wine lovers a new experience – which you can actually taste in wines like the White 2012 (R150). Rich and full-bodied, with ripe apricot and honey-roasted nut flavours, this barrel-fermented blend of chenin blanc (84%) and viognier (16%) is the perfect winter white.

NOTE: First published in Sunday Times Food Weekly, 22 June 2014


more on winewriter.co.za