Cognac-style brandy from the Elgin valley
OUDE MOLEN
At Oude Molen in the picturesque Elgin Valley, Cognac-style brandy is being made according to centuries-old techniques.
There is a place that is so special, so almost hidden from the outside world, it is like stepping back in time merely to go there. Accessible via one of the most famous passes in the country, Sir Lowry’s, the Elgin Valley is steeped in character and atmosphere and is just the place where one can imagine thousands of barrels of brandy gathering character through the years. Nestled here like a child in the crook of its mother’s arm lies the historic town of Grabouw and the famous Oude Molen distillery, home of some of the finest brandies in the world.
René van Elbergen Santhagens was a Belgian, born in Batavia in 1864 to wealthy Dutch parents. He was an extraordinary man, who became in the course of his extraordinary life an adventurer, explorer, cavalry officer and chemical engineer, graduating from the University of Brussels. He was also a passionate wine- and brandy-making scholar, a skill he learnt in France on the estate of the Marquis de Pellerin Latouche in Cognac, where he fell in love with the Marquis’ daughter, Laure Jeanne. In 1897, he answered an advertisement for a brandy maker in South Africa and arrived on the goldfields of the Witwaters rand, complete with a copper Cognac still carried all the way from France, raring to go. In 1903 he moved to the Cape, and shortly afterwards his wife-to-be arrived with her father, the Marquis. They bought the property of Oude Molen in Stellenbosch, in the shadow of the Papegaaiberg, using money lent to them by the mining magnate Sir Lionel Phillips, whom Santhagens had met in Johannesburg, then a sprawling mining town.
René and Laure Jeanne lived at Oude Molen in the grand manner until his death in 1937. His widow stayed there until she too died in 1961, aged 82. It was there that he made the very first Cognac-style brandy in South Africa, winning worldwide acclaim in the process. South African brandy legislation as it exists to this day was written in response to Santhagens’ product. A door led straight from the Manor House, where the couple lived, and which still stands today, into the distillery and maturation cellar, a situation that surely not everyone would find desirable.
The Santhagens’ family crest and motto is a parrot with an arrow through it and the motto “Touchant toujours le but,” which is very loosely interpreted as, “Forever striving towards perfection.” There is a less bloodthirsty story behind the crest. Apparently, in times gone by, the citizens of Stellenbosch held an annual pageant in honour of their founder, Simon van der Stel, a feature of which was a competition for marksmen.
The target was a painted wooden parrot and the competition took place at the foot of the hill where the Oude Molen Manor House stands. This hill became known as the Papegaaiberg (Parrot Mountain). A freer translation of the motto makes more sense – “Always hitting the target”, something Santhagens was always trying to do.
At the end of 2006, the Oude Molen distillery was moved to its present location at Grabouw. Urban expansion at its original site, and the fact that Madame Santhagens had sold the business, which she had continued to run for 10 years after her husband’s death, led to the cessation of distillery business there. Just as important was the fact that the Elgin Valley is infinitely better suited to brandy production, owing to its cool and misty climate, and the area was rapidly becoming famous for the production of fine wines. The current cellarmaster at Oude Molen, Dave Acker, had previously established a distillery there but it was only after the family-owned Edward Snell Company bought a controlling interest in the company that millions of rands were spent on vastly upgrading the facility. Dave Acker is still a shareholder of the company.
The distillery is located on a 12.6- hectare property, which includes a dam fed by spring water directly from the Nuweberg Mountains. The building itself retains its rustic charm despite being part of a modern company, with some of the roofs of the maturation cellars still supported by the original gum poles that were put in place when the building was built in 1942. It has a Visitor’s Centre, a very popular tasting room and vast maturation cellars, as well as the distillery itself.
There you will find what are probably the largest, and very impressive, copper pot stills in South Africa. They are the undisputed stars at Oude Molen, despite their age, fittingly placed in a most conspicuous way, immediately visible. Dave Acker calls them, appropriately, the big guns in the brandy-distilling business (affectionately calling them Big Bertha, Long Tom and Long Cecil, after artillery pieces used in the First World War and the Franco-Prussian War) and believes that their large curved surfaces allow for greater condensation of alcohol vapours. This creates a purer distillate, which is a characteristic of the smoothness of the Oude Molen brandies. Barrel selection and management also play a vital role in the brandy-making process. Every year a large investment is made in new French oak barrels, which are toasted to Oude Molen’s requirements. The toasting caramelises some of the sugar content of the wood, which alters the colour and taste of the maturing brandy perfectly.
THE BRANDIES
VOV RARE VINTAGE SELECTION
Superbly pale gold in colour, with a most delicious nose packed with glorious floral and dried apricot aromas. Made from the finest 14-year-old brandies, it is ultra-smooth in the mouth, with a nice broad palate exhibiting apricot, fig, and sweet tobacco and pear nuances, very interestingly balanced with just enough vanilla to carry it off. With no harshness whatsoever, it is a worthy successor to the fine tradition started by René Santhagens.
SOLERA GRAND RESERVE
The superb and delicious taste of this fabulous award-winning brandy owes a lot to the 54 300-litre sherry barrels in which it has been matured, but also to the patience that has gone into its creation. The solera system at Oude Molen is a three-tier one, comprising 20 barrels in the bottom tier, 18 in the middle and 16 in the top tier. It took the brandy makers six years to fill the complete system, starting off with brandy aged for a minimum of three years in the top tier. Bottling only takes place out of the bottom tier using a maximum of 20% of the volume per barrel every 12 months. After bottling, the bottom tier is refilled from the middle tier and the middle from the top, a kind of enclosed and controlled stream of brandy flowing gently downhill. The top tier is then filled with selected brandy also aged for a minimum of three years. This means that for the next 100 years the consistency of the brandy will be the same.
As slow as this process is, it yields a magnificent example of the brandy maker’s art. Last year was the first time that Oude Molen released Solera Grand Reserve, and they must be doing something right as it won the Gold Medal as Best in its Class at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London. It exhibits the trademark pale colour of these brandies, packed with plenty of ripe fruit and sherry nuances.
Full flavours in the mouth give a whole array of characters of which sherry is the main feature, with strong supporting roles from dried apricot, raisin, spicy oak and some sweet floral notes. It is smooth and soft with a good grip, a kind of iron fist in a velvet glove, complex, but achieving great integration with a nice long finish in which sherry again features strongly.
RENÉ SINGLE CASK
28/109
This single barrel, as indicated on the label, was cask number 109 of lot 28. On average, the lots in the Oude Molen ageing stores consist of 160 barrels each, and their master blender obviously has the task of tasting the brandy from the barrels before they are decanted and blended into different brandy blends. Whenever he comes across an exceptionally different brandy, he puts it aside for tasting by a panel, which then makes the decision on which barrel is good enough for René Single Cask.
All brandy starts off as a clear spirit, which is made from the finest wines, and the ageing character and colour are imparted by the wood. The size of the barrel determined by SA law is no larger than 300 litres, which means that after losses there are on average only 602 bottles available for bottling from a single barrel, making this one of the rarest you will encounter. It is, uncharacteristically, a deep golden, yellow to amber colour, with chocolate and dried fruit aromas as well as some prunes and nuttiness on the nose. Rich and round in the mouth with a soft lingering fi nish exhibiting a delicious chocolate and fruitcake character, it is available in very limited quantities.
