Adventurous, young, daring winemakers are pushing back frontiers with new wine styles and colours. 

When you talk to the young movers today, you are swept along in a current of enthusiasm, energy, individuality and courage of conviction. Mainly with a Swartland thrust, they gush phrases like “pure expression of terroir”, “minimum intervention”, “low pH” and “old vines” and “going back to the people’s wines (Chenin Blanc and Cinsaut)”. Lighter reds are taken seriously, while whites with an orange hue from skinfermentation are hip.

Silwervis shines the Swartland light

Businessman Michael Roets partnered with fine wine retailer Roland Peens and Ryan Mostert as winemaker, for Avant Garde Wines. Silwervis Chenin Blanc 2012, according to the ebullient Mostert, was made from old vine grapes grown in an organic vineyard and 15% of the final blend consists of 2013 wine fermented with skin contact.

Its counterpart, Silwervis 2013 Red, is made from Cinsaut grapes sourced from selected single vineyard “pockets” on choice Paardeberg soils.

From Holland, and Zimbabweborn, Mostert later worked at organically-focussed Reynecke wines (Stellenbosch), before finding his spiritual wine home in the “Swartland’s sense of rusticity”.

“Silwervis was made to honestly and simply reflect the nature of the soils on which the grapes are grown. They are extreme and hard, and lead to clarity of expression, a sense of beauty in wildness amplified by the abundant schist soils” – the latter about which he can’t stop enthusing.

A rebel and a good bandit

Avid orange wine producer, Craig Hawkins, explains that the production of this style is akin to making red wine, where colour and special properties are extracted from the skins and the wine develops an orangey hue, especially with ageing.

It was first made centuries ago – but is now being revived by winemakers seeking to push boundaries. And rediscovered by adventurous wine lovers and the wine bar clan in the UK.

Hawkins started six years ago with his Testalonga El Bandito – named respectively after a leading Italian orange wine producer and a ‘good’ Sicilian bandit – and the wines were rejected by the Wine and Spirit Board when application was made for certification, for showing too much ‘oxidation character’. However, the Board is considering a proposal for five new categories, including skin-macerated white.

Meanwhile his production of skin-macerated Chenin has grown from 600 to 10 000 bottles since 2008, with a growing export footprint in the UK and six European countries – now also available in some restaurants and wine shops in Cape Town, for around R250 a bottle.

Mount Abora – achieving imagination

“Mount Abora is a mythical place of our collective imagination, as created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem Kubla Khan.” It is now also a Swartland wine label about “imagining a texture, a taste, a feel and then actively setting out to achieve the vision,” says Krige Visser, a partner in this Riebeek Kasteelbased venture, with Pieter de Waal and winemaker, Johan “Stompie” Meyer.

Stompie makes wine as “luminous” as possible by harvesting at low sugar to ensure lower alcohols and low pH, mainly whole-bunch pressing with stems and warm maceration with skin. “We harvest early, also to retain minerality and the brightness and life of our carefully tended grapes.”

Partner and marketing expert, Krige Visser, explains that Mount Abora is reviving the South African workhorse grape, Cinsaut, through its Saffraan Cinsaut. “Our vision is to create a Swartland wine from this forgotten grape that can rival the elegance and complexity of cool climate Pinot Noir wines.”

Mount Abora The Abyssinian 2012 is a Rhône-style blend of Mourvèdre, Cinsaut and Syrah, while the Mount Abora Koggelbos is an authentic expression of Swartland Chenin Blanc – an oxidative style wine made from three parcels of low-yielding dry land bush vines aged between 35 and 48 years, all pressed as whole bunches with skins, by foot in small bins.

One-third is fermented normally in large vats on the lees; the next is left for some three days on the skins “for extraction” before fermentation, and the last third is on the skins for five weeks.

Bosman’s faith rewarded

In Wellington, Bosman Family Vineyards has produced its first 1 200 bottles of orange wine, sold out within three weeks at R150 a bottle. Called Fides (“faith”), from the family credo, it was made from 2013 Grenache Blanc fermented on the skins “to give additional flavour and texture,” said winemaker Corlea Fourie. “It’s a modern interpretation of orange wine, which nevertheless remains faithful and true to this historic style.”

Craven couple’s new Stellenbosch flavours

Using Clairette Blanche and Pinot Gris for orange wine, is a young married couple from Stellenbosch, Mick and Jeanine Craven.

Hailing from Oz and SA, they met in 2007 after having studied winemaking at Adelaide and Stellenbosch respectively, while working the harvest in California where they had plenty of exposure to orange wine. “I believe this style is enjoyed more in California than anywhere else besides Italy and Hungary,” said Mick. “Of course it will never be critical mass; it’s drunk by the wine geeks. We find the wines offer amazing texture and different levels of flavours in comparison to ‘normal’ white wines,” said Jeanine.

Both their Pinot Gris and Clairette Blanche are from small old vineyards on Polkadraai Road. “We pick them relatively early, destem into a small fermenter and allow the vineyard yeasts to do their job naturally on the skins without any interference from us. The wines are all bottled unfiltered and unfined.”

Their 2014 vintage range comprises Pinot Noir 100% whole bunchpressed; Clairette Blanche, 50% whole-bunch pressed and barrelfermented 50% on skin; Clairette Blanche 100% skin-fermented; Pinot Gris 100% skin-fermented; and Syrah 100% whole bunch – all with varying degrees of old and large barrel maturation.

Pinot colour palette expanded at Newton Johnson

The wine colour palette is also being expanded at Dave and Felicity Johnson’s Newton Johnson Vineyards, by their son Gordon and wife Nadia, both adventurous winemakers. Their range of three Pinot Noir wines has grown to six, including three new single vineyard wines that also contribute to their Family Vineyards Estate blend. This, says Gordon, gives a “sense of place and perspective through natural processes in our granite soils and provides particular lightness, brightness and fine texture”.

Koen’s cool Pinotage dimension

At a new Elgin winery, Spioenkop, cellar master Koen Roose-Vandenbroucke (from Belgium), is applying green farming practices, wild yeast fermentation and limited wooding in his quest for “purity, elegance and minerality”. In addition to sophisticated new Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc styles, he’s come up with partly wooded, more delicate Pinotage, with remarkable subtlety and elegance.

“Pushing boundaries,” he says “is wonderful but we want to accentuate the terroir aspect and the micro/macro climate; to again give the wine a refined structure that goes back to the grape itself.

“Our vision was to accentuate the Pinot Noir character, but with its typical spiciness and colour structure. This is about giving Pinotage a new dimension that expresses the minerality, extraction and sensuality of a deep, concentrated Pinot Noir, but with its own distinctive colour and unique spiciness,” he explained.