Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, Walker Bay
Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, Walker Bay
Walker Bay is a changing, growing place of beauty, fine Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and a little tension… Mike Froud visits the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley and then some.
One of the most attractive parts of the South African winelands, the hills and valleys between the Babylonstoring and Klein Rivier mountains and beyond include over a dozen wineries where 30 years ago there were none.
One way to compare them all is according to who has the best view. Surprisingly, the area is still fairly undiscovered relative to many other wine routes of the Cape, despite its proximity to the town of Hermanus, getaway destination and a magnet for people attracted to the whale sanctuary and more fantastic views from the cliffs and harbours.
Or maybe it’s not surprising. Some of the vintners on the R320 from Onrus to Caledon enjoy the peace and quiet, glad not to have students and tour buses driving up to their doorsteps, and mostly don’t charge for tastings despite the lofty prices of certain bottles on the winelists at some of the cellars. Although the wines on offer include some of the country’s most respected wine brands and more than a handful of national and international award winners in demand at restaurants and wine shops far and wide, it’s not as if these producers have been actively promoting the area. The Wine Village shop in the Hemel-en-Aarde Village shopping centre outside Onrus near the entrance to Hermanus does more to encourage wine tourism than anybody else in the district, albeit that those at the Village talk more broadly about the Overberg (and Cape Agulhas); about the wines made from Elgin to Elim and everything in between.
Perhaps this will change as the new Hermanus Winegrowers Association gets its act together, although the guys aren’t keen to have just anybody popping over… With the Hermanus Whale Festival scheduled for late September, members of the association weren’t planning on being actively involved – not the right target market apparently. Association chairman Mark van Halderen hopes to launch an annual weekend festival in October next year, something along the lines of Robertson’s Wacky Wine Weekend in terms of activities and special attractions on the various farms, but more elite. “It’ll be exclusive, classy, aimed at 100s rather than 1000s.”
There’s a bit of “them and us” to the area these days. This is partly to do with the nature of the businesses and the different wines produced, partly because of the personalities involved – and then there’s the geography of the place (not to mention that membership of said Winegrowers Association will be limited to producers with vineyards in Hermanus and by invitation only). But there’s more to it than this, and it’ll take a while yet before those at loggerheads with each other can sort out their differences.
Over the Houwhoek Pass south-east of Elgin, the area stretching from Bot River and the cellars of Beaumont and Wildekrans, past Barton and Benguela Cove, to the ocean in the south, was until recently regarded as a wine district in its own right. Today Bot River is classified as the northernmost ward of the Walker Bay district which encompasses the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley north of Hermanus and stretches east of the Hermanus lagoon to take in Springfontein down the road from Stanford near the border with the Overberg district.
For a long time the Walker Bay producers were mostly getting on with their own thing. For some, however, this changed when the Hemel-en-Aarde appellation became a bone of contention.
Those passionate about “terroir” or expression of place agree that the distinct roles of plant, soil, climate, weather and man all contribute to the character or “personality” of a wine… And in the heart of the Walker Bay wine district, there are two people who stand out as the most outspoken “terroiristes”: Anthony Hamilton Russell of Hamilton Russell Vineyards and Kevin Grant of Ataraxia Mountain Vineyards.
One is the owner of an established farm, the son of Tim Hamilton Russell who pioneered the Hemel-en- Aarde Valley as a winemaking area of note, a modernday aristocrat with a taste for good living. The other is a former winemaker at Hamilton Russell Vineyards, now the hands-on proprietor of a farm called Skyfields, yet to build a cellar of his own, planting away with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in a new, as-yet-unnamed ward several kilometres up the road. Hamilton Russell built a grand house near the top of his farm to look down over the HRV vineyards and across the valley. Grant is building a chapel-like tasting room in the mountains where, in time, invited guests will come pretty darn close to worshiping the product of the vine, right down to the angel on his Ataraxia wine label. And the two men are in opposing camps, the fuss revolving around what to call the new ward east of the Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley.
From south-west of where Hamilton Russell and his business associates are building a new cellar at Southern Right, the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley ward runs north-east to include the Hamilton Russell, Bouchard Finlayson and La Vierge cellars. The Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley ward ends beyond Sumaridge, Newton Johnson and Spookfontein on the ridge that is the Hermanus/Caledon municipal boundary.
However, while the western demarcation of the new ward is now official, it’s proving impossible to come up with a name acceptable to all. Ataraxia and others among the wine producers to the east, including Creation, Mount Babylon and Domaine Des Dieux, want to include reference to Hemel-en- Aarde in the new name (better than Diepgat, which is how the Caledon municipality refers to the area). But some of those closer to Hermanus won’t hear of it, arguing along technical lines with the support of the Wine & Spirit Board that watersheds, rivers and so forth clearly distinguish the existing Hemel-en-Aarde wards from the new appellation.
Regardless of exactly where the Hemel-en-Aarde will begin and end, by and large this is the land of reds from Pinot Noir and whites from Chardonnay. Sure, Hamilton Russell diversified to embrace Sauvignon Blanc and Pinotage under the Southern Right label and now has a Sauvignon Blanc-based blend including Chardonnay and Semillon for release next year to complement the red blend that Ashbourne became from the 2007 vintage, having previously been 100% Pinotage. Meanwhile, Peter Finlayson of Bouchard Finlayson has Italian varieties in his Hannibal blend and others such as La Vierge, Sumaridge and Newton Johnson are doing more than exploring the potential for Shiraz among the varieties in their mix of plantings.
Sumaridge has also just put together a blend of Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Semillon for release in November and reports that its biggest success story to date is Merlot. Newton Johnson’s Felicité was one of the Cape’s very first dry rosés of the modern era, originally Pinot-based but now a blend of Shiraz and Sauvignon, and they too have a white blend in the making, a Sauvignon Semillon combo. La Vierge will launch a Cap Classique in a year to 18 months…
Yet no other wine-producing area in the country has been as consistently successful with Pinot Noir and this, together with fine Chardonnays from the valley(s), is what the Hemel-en-Aarde’s reputation is built on. It’s a reputation that has grown in value, which Grant and his camp feel they’re entitled to share – albeit that not all of the newest producers are as passionate about Pinot, with some excluding it from their range altogether.
What muddies the water for purists is that there are Hemel-en-Aarde cellars sourcing grapes from Elgin, Villiersdorp and elsewhere to supplement their own; Hermanuspietersfontein doesn’t have any vineyards to speak of and Whalehaven next door to the Hemel-en- Aarde Village is also home to Idiom, wines made from fruit grown in the Sir Lowry’s Pass area outside Somerset West. Hamilton Russell is the only registered estate in the Hemel-en-Aarde, but one suspects that when, for example, the famous actors Richard Gere and Brad Pitt wined and dined in Hermanus earlier this year, they were ordering Pinot on the strength of brands such as HRV or Bouchard Finlayson Galpin Peak, and not giving much thought as to exactly where the vines are planted.
The cool, moist conditions due to what Gavin and Sharon Patterson of Sumaridge talk about as the “massive air-conditioner off-shore”, the types of soil in the area and other factors all count in moulding the quality and character of the Walker Bay wines, and those in the Hemel-en-Aarde are distinctive and successful. “We’re benefiting from the long-term approach to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and it would be good if everyone in the area bought in,” says Finlayson, who’s riding the crest of a wave.
“We’ve arrived where we want to be with Pinot Noir. Our sales have more than doubled during the first six months of this year. On the other hand,” he counters, “our Pinot production is limited. 70% of our volume is white, with our three different Chardonnay labels but also Sauvignon Blanc.”
At heart he’s a Francophile, “not battling for extract and power but rather, for example, wanting an interesting interplay of flavours on the back palate”. To be sure, there’s little that is straightforward about Walker Bay, and no poor wines to speak of.
