Ben Radford
At the age of 30, he's making award-winning wines and taking on the challenge if heading-up three cellars in the Cape. Kim Maxwell probes Winecorp's Ben Radford for his secrets to successI first chatted to Ben Radford at 35 000 feet above sea level.
He was on his way home to the Barossa to catch up with the 'reli's' in Australia. Ben had just completed a vintage at Rustenberg in Stellenbosch, following a spell of making icewine in Ontario, and an earlier harvest in Burgundy's Nuits-Saint-Georges. Spread over three seats in economy, he graciously offered one up and saved me from a flight sandwiched between a noisy Chinese tour group.
A couple of years later I discovered that Ben was working at Longridge. Apparently he had headed to Central Australia in 1995 to earn some quick cash doing gold exploration, when a fax arrived from South Africa, offering him a winemaker's position at the then-new Slaley cellar. He moved to Longridge in mid-1997, and is now chief winemaker for the recently formed Winecorp group.
Winecorp produces the flagship Longridge, second-tier Bay View and value-for-money Capelands ranges at the Longridge cellar, Helderberg. And now also under Ben's charge are the wines produced at Spier Cellars (IV Spears) in Stellenbosch and Berg & Brook, Simondium, where winemaking encompasses the Savanha range, as well as newcomers Naledi and Sejana through a joint venture with Bordeaux's Alain Moueix.
"My job now," says Ben, "is looking after all our different wineries, as well as the purchasing of grapes in Stellenbosch, Durbanville and Malmesbury." He's pleased with the better clonal material coming in, and having a wide area to source from has given him a better understanding of site suitability. "To me, Durbanville and Stellenbosch, especially Helderberg, are still the best areas; other places are good in pockets..."
"I've got the most incredible team at each facility, so we don't run things on a dictatorial system. I mean, at 30, I'm the oldest winemaker in the company!" And having several winemakers involved allows him to concentrate more on viticultural aspects. "I'm actually not trained to be a winemaker, and since the merger to Winecorp, I've had more time to be in the vineyards, which is in line with my training, and also what I really like," says the Roseworthy graduate.
Drawing on his background in Barossa, where his father is a viticulturist and family friends include respected winemakers like Peter Lehmann and Robert O'Callahan of Rockford Wines, Ben feels South Africa could learn from Australia's grape growers. "The more time I spend in the vineyard, the better for the grapes. I discovered that in the past, some winemakers at the Helderberg Co-op had never even visited their growers! An Aussie winemaker will spend more money on a vineyard, instead of on a huge gate and an impressive façade, as sometimes happens in South Africa." He believes that while smaller estates have a better chance of controlling fruit quality, larger companies with widespread production needs should lead by example.
Winecorp sponsors an overseas trip for their best grower each year. Ben accompanied the winners to the Barossa in 1998, and Margaret River in 1999. "We're trying to change the mentality, so that local growers start to understand long-term contracts, instead of changing from one wine producer to the next. And instead of buying by the ton, we're trying to buy per block, so that we can control yields. It's what's got to happen to improve quality here. I know some of the farmers over the mountain wonder what right this guy with the funny accent has telling them what to do, but I've had a couple of breakthroughs with things like crop thinning. It's encouraging," he chuckles.
Ben has managed good placings for Longridge wines, which obviously helps to keep shareholders in this publicly listed company happy. In his first vintage at Longridge, Helderberg fruit produced good results with the Longridge Chardonnay 1998 claiming gold at Vinexpo and the Veritas Awards, 4 Stars in WINE and getting a first-class listing on SAA, BA and Virgin Atlantic. The Longridge Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinotage 1998 were commended too, while the Longridge Merlot 1998 made it onto SAA first-class, and the Cabernet Sauvignon 1998 onto SAA business-class.
The Bay View and Capelands ranges have also made their mark. For example: Bay View Shiraz 1998 is on SAA's first- and business-class, and Bay View Cabernet Sauvignon 1998 took gold in the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles. Capelands Classic Cape White 1998, designed as a large format quaffer in a 1000ml bottle, surprised a few people with a SAA first-class listing - perhaps a throw-back to Ben's origins, the Australians having near-perfected the knack of delivering quality in the desired style and price range.
He regularly takes on students from France or Australia, and visits vineyards in Oz and Europe whenever the chance arises. In recent years, he's lent a hand to producers in the Rh™ne (his favourite region) and Burgundy. He's a great believer in a system that Rh™ne consultant Edouard Labeye uses extensively in the south of France: called micro oxygenation, the wine is dosed after fermentation with ultra-fine oxygen bubbles to bond the tannin chains together. The result is longer finish, greater colour stability, smoothness and a feeling of roundness on the palate.
Using this technique for the third vintage at Longridge, Ben demonstrated its effect by offering a comparative tasting of Pinotage. When harvested four days previously, he explained that some grapes showed alcoholic ripeness but had green pips, so the softer batch was fermented, pressed and put into barrel, while the batch with initially harder, astringent tannins was left to macerate and given a dose of micro oxygenation after fermentation. Tasting a sample of both, the bubbles had certainly worked their softening magic.
Ben plans to return to the Barossa one day - he's already bought a 30ha piece of land with his 'old man'. Meanwhile, when not working for Winecorp, he's investing in himself - together with partner Alex Dale and a bit of French help. He describes Radford Dale Wines as a "weekend project" they started during the 1998 vintage, made from bought-in grapes and sold exclusively to Oddbins in the UK. "This is my Aussie style coming through. I can be a bit more loud with the wines, go radical..."
