Boela Gerber
2002 Diners Club Young Winemaker of the year
The 2002 Diners Club Young Winemaker of the Year Competition challenges vintners under the age of 30 to vie for the title of the country's top young red winemaker. With his sights set on making a classy Merlot, Groot Constantia's Boela Gerber may well be a contender. Leonie Joubert reports.
The sight of a set of crutches propping up various bits of office wall and furniture is an ominous one, especially when you know their owner likes to throw himself down acute and very narrow strips of root-ragged paths on a pair of gravity-defying wheels.
Groot Constantia winemaker Boela Gerber was quick to assure that his injury wasn't from tumbling from his mountain bike while assaulting one of Tokai Forest's more notorious downhill rides. Nor did his other hobby, fly fishing, reduce him to this. His braced-up knee was the result of an old motorbike accident, aggravated by a rough-and-tumble game of touch rugby.
It proved a minor handicap for this 29-year-old Durbanville progeny who proceeded to hobble, barefoot, from barrel to barrel, wine thief (pipette) and tasting glass in hand.
It's a year since he moved from Rickety Bridge (Franschhoek) in the wake of Bob de Villiers who left Groot Constantia to take up a post at Klawer winery in the Olifant's River area. At that time Gerber found a team playing catch-up with the rest of the industry.
"The market has moved very fast since 1999. Groot Constantia was government-owned until 1993 so the transformation process here has taken a bit longer. But, now owned by the Groot Constantia Trust, it has been restructured… and money is coming in to make changes."
When he called for smaller lug boxes for harvesting Sauvignon Blanc, he got complete co-operation from vineyard manager Callie Bröcker; when he requested permission to move from 300l barrels to 225l barriques (a pricey exercise), he was given an unequivocal thumbs up; and his decision to return the Gouverneurs Reserve to a Bordeaux-style formula by removing Pinotage from the blend, was also given the go-ahead. He echoes the team's concern about putting Groot Constantia back on the public's radar.
"Groot Constantia is the oldest wine farm in South Africa but the perception is that it's just old and rustic. (To improve the perception) we need to make some good wines - the whole industry needs Groot Constantia to make good wines."
So, to make "GC" a little more sexy, he's got a few tricks up his sleeve: to produce a reserve range - hopefully starting with the 2001 reds - and to make a really classy Merlot.
Gerber has made his way to this point after six years in the industry. His post-graduate grooming began at Stellenzicht under the mentorship of André van Rensburg (currently at Vergelegen). After two years Van Rensburg resigned, leaving Gerber as cellarmaster for the 1998 harvest.
"That was awesome! It was a premium year… (with fruit like that) you don't have to make wine, you just sit back and watch things happen…" That harvest went on to produce a 5 Star Stellenzicht Weisser Riesling Noble Late Harvest, two 41/2 Star wines (a Syrah and Reserve Sémillon), a 4 Star Pinotage and a 3 Star Cabernet Sauvignon. Not bad for a season's work.
The following vintage saw him running the cellar at Rickety Bridge where he was able to broaden his experience to vineyards and bottling and "the bigger picture". He made some more 3 and 4 Star wines from the 1999 and 2000 harvests in Franschhoek before jumping at the opening in the Constantia valley.
This valley, he's found, is a whole new paradigm.
"You get such big wine in Stellenbosch and Franschhoek that if your acid is a little too high or your alcohol is out, it's hidden behind the fruit and tannin. But here if anything is wrong or out of balance, it shows!" Toasting in barrels is where it's most apparent - if the char is even slightly out of balance with the wine, it screams a lack of integration, says Gerber.
"You'd never pick it up on those bigger wines…" he maintains. Back to his pet project: the Groot Constantia Merlot 2001 is subtle, elegant and complex, even as it lies in wood. Not a New World blockbuster, it's crafted very deliberately, in a more classic style. Which is what all Groot Constantia's wines will be if Boela Gerber is allowed to play his hand.
