Saronsberg, Tulbagh
Where Tulbagh once fell through the cracks, it’s now firmly back on the quality winegrowing map. Joanne Gibson visits the biggest mover and shaker in town these days: Saronsberg Cellar. Life had always been peaceful in Tulbagh, a town about oneand- a-half hours by car from Cape Town, somewhat cut off by a ring of mountains. But late one evening in September 1969, it was hit by an earthquake, the epicentre of which was the mountain of Saronsberg. Boulders glowing like coals came tumbling down; quaint whitewashed Cape Dutch buildings were reduced to rubble; and a community largely dependent on a cannery, a shoe factory and the vicissitudes of agriculture was shaken to its core.
For a long time afterwards, Tulbagh’s only claim to fame was that it boasted more national monuments in a single street than anywhere else in the country. Despite a winegrowing history dating back to the 1700s, the district produced mostly large quantities of undistinguished white wines as well as some bubblies. But in the past decade, with Rijk’s Private Cellar blazing the trail, Tulbagh has literally risen from the ashes – and today there is no winery which embodies the modern era better than Saronsberg Cellar: all earthy textures, stainless steel, glass panels, contemporary South African art and wines made with the intention of conveying a true sense of their origin (Provenance) and of causing as many ripples as names like Epicentre and Seismic might imply.
In little over five years since successful Pretoria businessman Nick van Huyssteen bought two parcels of land straddling Twee Jonge Gezellen, namely Waveren and Welgegund, Saronsberg has enjoyed remarkable competition success, most recently winning the trophy for best Bordeaux-style red blend at the 2008 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show, while also getting several 4 Star ratings in WINE magazine. Meanwhile, perhaps raising the eyebrows of some of his longer-serving peers, winemaker Dewaldt Heyns has been invited to join the prestigious Cape Winemakers Guild.
“Competitions are a necessity if you’re new,” explains Heyns. “They’re the only way to prove yourself. And while it’s easy to pick up one or two medals here and there, over the past two years we’ve been one of only a handful of cellars performing consistently in all the competitions. It’s definitely a feather in our cap.”
The question is: how did Saronsberg come so far so fast? In fact Van Huyssteen intended to take things slowly when he purchased the farm in late 2002. “He was going to gradually plant fruit orchards over to vineyards,” reveals Heyns. “But within two months, in a raging southeaster, a fire ripped through the Waveren part of the farm, destroying 80% of the land. With the main part of the business gone, he decided to go for it. Looking back, that fire was probably a good thing!”
So why Tulbagh? “Nick specifically didn’t want to go to any of the traditional places because they had been done. He wanted more of a country feel – and more of a challenge.” To help him meet that challenge, he needed a winemaker – ideally one who saw the appeal (and potential) of Tulbagh and had experience starting a cellar from scratch – and Heyns fitted the bill perfectly. “I grew up on a grape farm in Malmesbury so this is what I like – an old, traditional farming community where you still speak to your neighbours!”
What’s more, he had been involved in building a new cellar at Paarl winery Avondale. “Designing the cellar there had first got me thinking about ways in which to maximise quality, and now I was being offered a second go – a chance to improve on what I had done before.”
Still, it wasn’t an easy decision for Heyns. “By nature I’m a cautious person. I wouldn’t leave a job on a whim, especially if I wasn’t unhappy. But I met Nick, and he’s such an exceptionally down-to-earth, modest guy that he soon eased any concerns I might have had. And when he showed me the plans, I couldn’t resist – there were absolutely no constraints. All cellars have one or two things that are better than other cellars; here we had an opportunity to combine them all.”
Then 30 years old, Heyns grabbed what seemed (and has proved) to be an opportunity to do things his way: “Nick is very passionate and supportive, but also very hands-off. As long as the results are there, he just lets us get on with it.” His first responsibility was to oversee an extensive replanting programme, with Saronsberg today boasting 41ha of vineyard, including the 3.5ha of bush vines already planted at Welgegund on the slopes of the Saronsberg. “We’ve taken our time because there’s no point having a nice cellar if you bugger things up in the vineyard.”
Viticulturist Kajo Malek joined the team in May 2006 (the result of a chance encounter at the Waterfront Wine Festival just as former estate agent Malek was packing his bags to return to Jo’burg due to the lack of opportunities in the beleaguered wine industry. The phonecall came at 7.30 the next morning: “Can you be here by 11?” And Malek was). But back in 2003, Heyns’ first port of call was hotshot Rijk’s winemaker Pierre Wahl, a classmate at Elsenburg Agricultural College. “He advised me to focus on Pinotage or Shiraz – and because Shiraz is a personal favourite of mine, the choice was obvious.”
Shiraz now accounts for about 40% of plantings, with Mourvèdre, Viognier and Grenache added to the mix for a Rhône-style blend. Meanwhile, intensive analysis of soils, temperatures, slope gradients and sun radiation (as well as a desire to avoid being typecast) led Heyns to plant the Bordeaux varieties – Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot.
“I wanted to do blends to show that we can be versatile – and so far it’s working!” Whites account for 35% of plantings, comprising mostly Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, with a Viognier due for release next year. But Heyns has also planted Chenin Blanc, Semillon and Nouvelle because, once again, “We plan to do a white blend eventually.”
He is upfront about Tulbagh’s continental climate: “I won’t try and fool you that it’s nice and cool here in summer!” But with part of the property located “smackbang” in the middle of the valley with shale soils, while the higher-altitude part with its clay-loam soils is typically three to four degrees cooler with almost double the rainfall, Heyns says the fruit diversity is “amazing”.
In fact, it’s worth emphasising that even Saronsberg’s single- variety wines are blends. “Each 1ha vineyard block [with an average yield of 4.5 tons/ha thanks to minimal supplemental irrigation and vigorous green harvesting] goes into its own tank, and each tank is treated differently because I want as many components as possible to play with. There’s nothing worse than ending up with 10 tanks of Shiraz which all taste the same.”
Heyns says it’s a big help during harvest that Malek is a trained winemaker, sharing his determination to keep fruit in optimal condition. Everything is handharvested early in the morning, and the grapes are then force-cooled to 4ºC within two hours before being bunch-sorted, destemmed and finally berry-sorted by one of two teams of 25. “We’re only a 280-ton cellar but we have 60 people employed on the cellar side alone. What’s more, we only process about one ton an hour. It’s very labour intensive – in fact, it would be too labour intensive to justify if it didn’t pay off in quality terms.”
The result is very clean, concentrated fruit flavours, with the Sauvignon handled reductively, the Chardonnay whole-bunch pressed, and the reds left on their skins for 15 to 25 days with lots of manual punchdowns (“Very hands-on to get a feel for the grapes”) before the free-run juice is gravity-drained into barrels to undergo malolactic fermentation. “The balance is pressed and kept separate, but 90% of the time we don’t use press juice.”
As far as wood is concerned, Heyns uses predominantly (95%) French oak, the rest American, and his red wines spend anything from 14 to 20 months in barrel. Red wines destined for the flagship Saronsberg range, which includes the Shiraz, the Full Circle Rhône-style blend and the Seismic Bordeaux-style blend, get a higher proportion of new oak to result in a powerfully concentrated, full-bodied style, while mostly (70%) secondfill barrels are used for the fruit-driven, elegant Provenance range, the reds of which currently comprise Rooi (the Bordeaux-style blend class winner at the Trophy Wine Show this year), a Shiraz and a Mourvèdre-Viognier blend.
“Some see Provenance as our second label,” says Heyns. “We don’t. It’s a distinctive style in its own right – and so far it’s holding its own against Saronsberg.”
Saronsberg also produces the Nick & Forti’s range, a collaboration with chef Fortunato Mazzone of top Pretoria restaurant Ritrovo, who asked his friend Nick whether Saronsberg could produce a food-friendly style of wine.
Friendship is also behind the striking Provenance label, a painting by acclaimed contemporary artist Paul du Toit. A passionate art collector (as evidenced by the gallery and sculpture park at Saronsberg), Van Huyssteen wanted Du Toit to convey the notion that wines are “artworks of nature”. Du Toit’s inspiration, however, remains a closely guarded secret because he wants to leave the label open to interpretation: “A winemaker often keeps his secrets close for the same reason.”
But Heyns insists he doesn’t have any secrets. “What have we done to be so lucky? Nothing. We just work harder. I am sure there are easier ways of making wine, but I doubt there is a better way.”
