Hillcrest wine farm
All the small things
Studying prawns and winemaking have a lot in common. Just ask Graeme Read, scientist and cellarmaster at Hillcrest wine farm in Durbanville. By Jeanri-Tine van Zyl.
A few years ago, Graeme "Curly" Read approached WINE magazine. He was making wine at new Durbanville winery Hillcrest and damn proud of it. "But what have you achieved?" he was asked.
Today, Read laughs about this with a shrug of his shoulders. "How funny that you should be the one phoning me now."
The first bottling of Hillcrest wines was in 2002 and the wheel has certainly turned since then. The winery is increasingly winning awards, performing well at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show in particular. The Merlot 2005 won the trophy for best in class in 2007, while this year the Sauvignon Blanc 2005 (museum class) and the Cab/Merlot 2006 picked up silver medals and the Sauvignon Blanc 2007 bronze.Not that good Sauvignon Blanc from the Durbanville ward is a new development - think De Grendel, Diemersdal and Nitida. For the marine biologistturned- winemaker, this is no surprise. In keeping with scientific terms and thinking, Durbanville is blessed with the most important variable needed to produce award-winning Sauvignon Blanc: terroir.
"Dissecting wine in laboratories has shown three dominating ‘consistencies' that contribute to a good wine, those are sugar, pH and acidity," says Read, adding that if you don't get these right in the vineyard, then you can fiddle in the cellar, but you would in essence only be fiddling with the whole bio-system or bio-construction of the wine - and reconstruction, as the prefix implies, is always second best.
"As a biologist you learn that certain elements function at a certain time and these functions work together as a whole. When one element is out of line, then it influences the whole system," he continues, swirling a glass of Sauvignon Blanc '07 with evident satisfaction. With gooseberries and ripe fig on the nose and a lingering finish, this "system" is well balanced.
Studying and growing prawns as part of his PhD, taught Read to zone in on a few variables. In the end, with science, most structures are influenced by a small number of things - with wine it is the mentioned three, with his prawns it was temperature and salinity.
And, as with his prawns, Read does not like to intervene much in the natural processes of the grapes. For him, most of the work is done in the vineyard, after which he pretty much follows set procedures in the making of his wines.
He stresses the importance of allowing natural acidity to integrate with the wine. Ever conscious about harvesting at the right pH and acidity levels, acid adjustment is kept to a minimum in the cellar, with the reds manipulated even less than the whites.
His uncompromising attitude to these two variables delivers in the Sauvignon Blanc '05 that at "museum age" shows remarkable freshness. Confirming that, when done right, Sauvignon Blanc does not need to be drunk in the year it is made. There are whole lot of sensible techniques and a reiteration of much of the feedback from the international judges at this year's Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show - and this from someone who was only introduced to wine in his late twenties and never received any classroom training! "I was 28 when my father-in-law opened a bottle of French wine. I was fascinated by it - I'd never had wine before that! From then on I kept notes of the wine I enjoyed and pasted the labels in A4 diaries. At the first Nederburg auction I bought a 1970 Johann Graue Cabernet for R5.10 and my wife was furious," he reflects upon a passion-turned-profession.
Unschooled in winemaking - but with a PhD to his name and a whole lot of fervour for the vine - Read approached owners Haw and Inglis in 2000, who, after having been advised to plant vines on the farm, were without a winemaker at the time. "So I approached the good ol' folks, since their old man and my old man were friends and expressed my interest."
Pretty much all he had, after a winemaking venture in Pinelands failed dismally: "In 2000, just when the garagiste movement was starting out, I thought it well to try my hand at making wine from vines planted in my backyard. I had a Tshaped yard, quite big at approximately 15 000m², and planted 130 Shiraz vines - but all I managed to do was feed the bloody birds in the urban area," he laughs "it is just as well, because with those sand soils in that place my water bill would have been astronomical".
At Hillcrest he at least had the terroir. And after the "ol' folks" agreed to take Read on board, he eagerly started production with three "bullet tanks" and eight oak barrels. And "with no baggage" that often comes with winemakers taking over from daddy, Read enjoyed a lot of freedom in the cellar. His inexperience counted in his favour, he says, since at that time he would have not known how to recognise if he was doing something incorrectly. Apart from applying his somewhat stringent methods, Read allowed the sap to develop most naturally.
The Cab/Merlot 2002 and Sauvignon Blanc 2002 were the first wines to emerge from Read's stable and received a respective 4 and 4½-Star rating from Platter's 2004 accompanied by glowing tasting notes. A tasting of the wines on the day reveals that this was no empty write-up.
The Cab/Merlot spent 10 months in new French oak and has good structure and well-preserved character. It shows cherry tobacco, pencil shavings and earthiness on the nose with an integrated palate and nice lift. To this Read smacks his lips and nods his head in approval, although he shakes it in mock-shame when reading the back label - it is adorned with a technical treatise. "You can see how eager I was."
The enthusiasm has not waned, and even though output has grown, the Hillcrest wines are still produced from a rather modest building. From the 160 tons of grapes produced only about 30 or 40 tons are used in production. It is about as much capacity as they have, with a shipping container outside housing the second- and third-fill barrels. The majority of grapes are still sold to large-scale Durbanville Hills just opposite the farm.
Not that Read is interested in expanding operations much. Maintaining a boutique winery, and being an estate, means no grapes are bought in, allowing the wines to show a true expression of vintage and terroir. And terroir is of utmost importance, maintains Read, getting almost worked up when recounting conferences where viticulturists and winemakers are addressed in separate halls: "Now that scares me... it is crucial that winemakers spend time in the vineyard".
Which he does. The vines are planted on rocky slopes, with the higher Sauvignon Blanc block beautiful situated, both in terms of site and sight. These vines have a 270 degree view incorporating Hangklip, False Bay, Table Mountain, Robben Island and the West Coast. Situated a mere 10km's from the coast the weerstasie-clone vines benefit from cool sea breezes and longer ripening periods. "You would have to go a helluva long way to beat that site" says Chris Alheit, assistant winemaker and marketing manager at the farm. Indeed, Read is aware of only a handful of other Sauvignon blocks planted at higher, or the same, altitude. Other varieties include Cab Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, the latter of which the winemaker seems especially proud of - even if it is such a stubborn varietal, alluding to it being the "scapegoat" in recent wine debates.
Read's response is to "err on the side of under-ripeness when harvesting the grapes, and to rather produce low alcohol wines with ample freshness and finesse, rather than an overripe style that is a not in character with the Hillcrest reds". Though he admits that getting the harvest date just right for his critical varieties - Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot - remains a challenge. Deciphering and dissecting, quantifying and observing are still very much imbedded in Read's approach.
When asked whether he sees himself as a winemaker or a scientist he answers, after some thinking, that it is, actually, the same thing. "I have a scientific background and I read a lot - it is all in the books - and the cellar is my laboratory."
Feeling increasingly confident, the future will see a premium Bordeaux-style blend from this producer - seven French oak barrels are patiently guarding their contents in a corner, awaiting bottling later this year for release in 2010.
