Down the hatch
scene@ an Eagles’ Nest wine tasting
Wednesday, 11 May, 2022 at the Cape Diamond Boutique Hotel
Of the six wines sloshed and sipped under Eagles’ Nest winemaker Craig Barnard’s attentive gaze, there were some of the usual suspects bandied about by the approximately 15 clearly very thirsty tasters: cut grass, gooseberry, guava, litchi, spice, wood – marshmallow even popped up for nomination.
One person suggested that two to three bottles of The Little Eagle red blend (50% merlot, 37% shiraz and 13% cabernet franc) could quite easily slide down the gullet at a braai. “Depends what you can get into your funnel,” Barnard retorted.
There were some other corkers from the winemaker including “spreading koala bear and jam on your toast” as a reference to the eucalyptus/fruity flavour of something or other (precise reportage and wine tasting do not for a compatible combination make).
“Everyone in Constantia is sauvignon blanc befok,” he definitely said, prefacing the tasting of a sauvignon blanc that no-one else bar those working at Eagles’ Nest had tasted nor would taste: cloudy, raw and straight from the storage vessel, to be filtered and bottled later this year. “I come from the other blanc,” he continued, referring to his previous role as the winemaker at Cavalli in Stellenbosch, a winemaking area where chenin blanc is predominant on the white wine front. “I’m still transitioning from chenin.”
Contact Peter Gouws on +27 82 570 6370 for future wine tastings invitations
A shift to sauvignon blanc
Constantia is sauvignon blanc country: all nine wine farms in this scenically spectacular suburb of Cape Town produce one. It’s a cooler area by comparison with the larger winemaking region of Stellenbosch, and sauvignon blanc tends to thrive in cooler areas: the height above sea level, daylight hours and the side slopes are facing are all factors.
“It’s not like Stellenbosch where you get some farms that specialise in chenin and some in cabernet and some in chardonnay and some in pinotage, depending on where you are. There’s a lot more different varieties grown out there and each farm generally tends to get known for one or two varieties,” says Craig Barnard, the winemaker since January at one of the nine Constantia farms, Eagles’ Nest, who is well positioned to speak on this topic having focused for seven years on chenin blanc at his previous winemaking role at Cavalli.
A lot of the farms in Barnard’s previous stamping ground that do produce a sauvignon blanc will buy in the fruit from cooler winemaking areas such as Elim, Hermanus and Grabouw. “Those areas are a bit colder so wines there tend to be a lot fresher with a lot more of an acidic component to it. Whereas here we tend to get just that nice balance between acidity and a bit of roundness,” he says.
There’s a campaign at the moment to elevate awareness of sauvignon blanc from Constantia. Vinpro has gotten involved to look at what the soils and microclimate are doing “just to see what is it about Constantia that lends itself to producing world-class sauvignon blanc.”
There’s frequent interaction among the Constantia winemaking contingent, Barnard says. They have a tasting group that gets together, they do trials together. And a couple of weeks ago they were all in Johannesburg together on a Constantia wines oriented road show that included the launch of the latest Wade Bales Constantia, a sauvignon blanc/semillon blend that includes contributions from almost all of the farms in this tightly knit club.
Each time this blend is produced, a different Constantia winemaker is appointed to create it according to what he or she thinks is the best representation of each farm's contribution. This time it was the turn of the winemaker from German-owned Buitenverwachting, Brad Paton.
“Eagles’ Nest hasn’t officially contributed anything to the Constantia blend because up until last year, we never produced a Constantia sauvignon blanc. But as of last year we’ve now got one, so we can now play a role in it.”
“We’re not staking our name on sauvignon blanc,” Barnard is quick to add. “Our name is made in shiraz; that’s what we are known for. So sauvignon blanc has never really been a huge focal point. It’s always predominantly been about shiraz and merlot and viognier. So it’s kind of new territory for us, having a Constantia sauvignon blanc.”
The Eagles’ Nest Constantia sauvignon blanc is produced with grapes from Constantia Mist. That farm has just three vineyard blocks of sauvignon blanc and Eagles’ Nest will from now on take all of it. As you come into the entrance to Eagles’ Nest, on the left hand side is Constantia Mist. “But on the title deed, that’s actually Eagles’ Nest. That portion of land used to belong to the owners here.”
The vineyards at Constantia Mist have always been farmed by others and the fruit taken by them. Last year they decided they weren’t going to be taking it any longer so Eagles’ Nest took it over: now they manage the vineyard, pick it, harvest it and make the wine from it. The amount of sauvignon blanc produced equates to whatever the vineyard produces.
“I’ve worked at numerous farms where we’ve made sauvignon blanc so it’s not a foreign concept for me. It’s just foreign in the sense that I haven’t made it for the last seven years. But the job that I had prior to that we were making it, and the job prior to that, and even the one prior to that we were making it.
“But this is the first harvest that I’ve done in Constantia. Making cool climate wines in general is a bit of new territory, but that’s purely just because I’ve been based out in Stellenbosch.”
Chenin requires warmer temperatures so it’s not going to do as well in Constantia “and then when you taste some of the sauvignon blancs that come from Stellenbosch, because it’s a lot warmer, the wines tend to be a lot heavier. Here it’s a bit more streamlined, a bit more elegant.”
Prior to Eagles’ Nest and Cavalli, Barnard worked at Hartenberg, Delheim and DeMorgenzon. He also did stints in Sonoma, in northern California, working mostly with chardonnay and pinot noir; and in Saint-Émilion, in the Bordeaux wine area of France, where he worked with merlot, cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc.
DeMorgenzon is perhaps best known for the melodies played to its grapes. Barnard said classical music was broadcast 24 hours a day in the cellar and speakers were placed in one vineyard outside the cellar. He’s not sure if the music had an effect but he did notice something the one year they were pruning.
“There was a block of shiraz to the left and a block of shiraz to the right of the cellar, and the block of shiraz to the right had the music played to it and it grew at a much more even tempo than the block on the left. The other one was a little bit wild. I’m putting it down that the music had an influence, but it could be any number of things that could have contributed.”
At Eagles’ Nest, the shiraz vineyards may not have musical accompaniment but they are positioned above sweeping vistas of the Constantia valley that only a poet could do proper descriptive justice. One block sits up on the hill to the left of a block belonging to Beau Constantia, with a slice belonging to Constantia Glen jutting in between the two. “Within that small space you’ve three farms’ worth of vineyards,” Barnard says, pointing to the highest planted Eagles’ Nest shiraz on the estate.
That elevated block plus another one much closer to the cellar forms the main component of Eagles’ Nest premium shiraz. Those two specific blocks were found to produce the best quality wine, he adds. It’s a delightful symmetry: growing contiguously with vineyards from neighbouring Constantia wine farms whose winemakers connect regularly – in a way, cultivating in close proximity too.
From the archive, a couple more for the road
In last month’s newsletter, I mentioned that I had caught up with a Wiesbaden connection in Franschhoek over gin & tonic sundowners while he was in town to meet with suppliers for his South African wine shop back home.
I discovered Frank’s shop in 2019 after googling where to buy decent South African wine in the small city where the German, my partner and playmate, lives.
The German had sent me snaps of the selection at his local supermarket asking which ones he should get, to which I responded an emphatic none. The South African wine selection in German supermarkets for the most part, I’ve since discovered, must give the impression to the average German shopper that South Africans do not have a clue how to make wine. They are horrid and their prices reflect that and they do our magnificent wine producing regions a disservice.
The online search yielded Procellar. Go there, I suggested. This guy sells a range of highly drinkable South African wines.
When I got to Wiesbaden for the first time, I made a beeline for it. Subsequently Frank has introduced me to some of the other South Africans in town who frequent the shop on Saturdays in summer, when tables and chairs are set up on the pedestrian lane outside and local wine, gin and beer is available to order by the glass or bottle.
Below is a feature I wrote on Frank two and a half years ago and, underneath, a piece I wrote three years before that on the rise of the craft gin movement in South Africa. In Franschhoek last month, the gin Frank used to make our G&Ts was from Hope Distillery, called Hope on Hopkins when I wrote about it. During Frank’s trip he visited the Cape Town distillery and met with its founders and this European summer, Hope gins will make their debut in Wiesbaden. I’ll be there to drink them.
Lekker, not lecker: Surrounded by Riesling country, a German wine seller says cheers
After two days in Cape Town, Frank Kastien bought a flat. It was his first trip to South Africa.
“It was a strange thing. It’s like, Liebe auf den ersten Blick: when you see someone and think, oh, that’s love. I saw the view and I saw Cape Town and I thought, I have to buy that property.”
His then girlfriend thought it was crazy. They had come to Cape Town at the invitation of her friends, a German couple that had bought a little house in Bloubergstrand and moved there. But in spite of her feelings about Kastien’s property-purchasing predilections, the girlfriend became his wife and they had two sons. They used the beach flat for holidays; her job at Lufthansa facilitated discounted flights.
At the time, in 1997, Kastien owned and ran a petrol station in Hochheim am Main, a little wine town in a German wine region called the Rheingau, where he had grown up. During one of their holidays, Kastien attended a function in Constantia and met Dave McCay, co-owner of Constantia Uitsig. McCay didn’t have a presence in the German market and asked Kastien if he wanted to export his wines.
While Kastien was certainly “a wine drinker and wine lover”, he had never worked in the wine industry bar childhood school holiday grape harvesting jobs, nor in the import/export market. But McCay said he would give all of his German customers Kastien’s number.
The first pallet of Constantia Uitsig wines – 600 bottles – sold out in four weeks. “I phoned him and said, ‘Listen, your wine is gone. Please, more’.” And with that, Kastien started approaching other farmers. “Because I was there three to four times a year, I said, okay, let’s do this business.”
He opened a shop on the Wilhelmstrasse, a busy boulevard flanked by trees and lined with upscale boutiques in Wiesbaden, a city of about 280 000 people and the state capital of Hesse. There he sold kudu leather furniture in addition to the wine of four estates. Gottfried Mocke, the winemaker at Chamonix at the time, came to visit and they had a winemaker’s evening.
After a while Kastien decided to give the wine biz a go full-time. The petrol station was a 24-hour operation and he wanted a healthier lifestyle. He was also getting divorced. The first order of business was to find a shipping agent. “Everybody wants to rip you off in the beginning, so I had to pay my school fees – a lot. But I know all the tricks now.”
The next step was to buy overproduction from top farms and create his own brand. Under his Leeuwenberg label, there’s a house and premium range, made up largely of 4-4.5 star Platter reds.
Then Kastien met the woman who would become his second wife at a friend’s braai in Germany. It was love at first sight again. Tanja had never been to South Africa so Kastien invited her to spend time with him in his flat.
“We had a sundowner on Bloubergstrand, not on a windy day. You can’t do better. And she said, after the first day, ‘Frank, this is my country’.” Tanja was working in the pharmaceutical industry and they continued to travel to South Africa several times a year. “Frank, I’ve got an idea,” Kastien recalls her saying one day. “‘I would like to study at UCT. I would like to do my PhD’. So I said, OK, good. Why not?”
For three years while Tanja and their son Raphael stayed in Cape Town, Kastien would travel back and forth to Wiesbaden: spending two weeks a month in each city. During the two weeks in Cape Town, he would drive to the wine lands everyday. They enjoyed Franschhoek and decided to move there. And then they received bad news: Tanja, who was 35, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had an operation and treatment, flying to Germany for every chemotherapy session.
“The worst thing was to get that news because everything was in place. Raphael was so happy in Franschhoek. We had a nice flat. Tanja had a very good job, a PhD – her dream – and my business was actually running itself.”
They managed to treat the cancer and the Kastiens returned to South Africa to recuperate. But in February 2017, she started feeling unwell again. This time they discovered cancer in her liver and four weeks later she died in a hospital in Paarl. Raphael was turning six.
“She said, ‘Frank, if I’m going to die, I’m going to die in Cape Town’. She was 39. And we had so many plans. Living in South Africa, that was her plan and my plan. I had to make a decision: what’s the plan for the future?” He decided to return to Germany and except for a short trip to sort things out soon after Tanja died, Kastien hasn’t been back, although he plans to resume commuting every three months for business. In May last year he had a heart attack and wasn’t permitted to fly for at least six months.
“I still have a problem driving. I did it once after Tanja passed away; I went to Cape Town and I was driving the N1 from Blouberg to Franschhoek. If you drive a highway every time with your partner since two years, and you drive the first time by yourself, you feel, like, ooof. It hits me. It was not easy. So I said, Frank, I don’t need this.”
In his shop now, which moved 12 years ago to Grabenstrasse in the downtown pedestrian zone of Wiesbaden, he sells the wines of about 15 estates, although the selection changes every year. “If I don’t like the next vintage, then it’s out of the shop. I get sent samples to taste.” Every two months a few pallets are brought in. Last year he sold 20 000 bottles. Some wines he sells for less than €5. The most expensive is €75.
He follows the industry awards and tries to get the winners of local competitions, such as Veritas. He has personal relationships with a handful of farm owners such as Gerard Holden and Migo Manz (of Holden Manz), who have become good friends. Former Gabrielskloof winemaker Kobie Viljoen “taught me the most important things I have to know”, Kastien said.
“I don’t have a lot of wine. I’ve got a small selection because I know who’s got the best chenin, I know the best sauvignon blanc. We don’t need 500 labels, these gold medals. It’s the wine in the bottle. It’s a discovery, basically, the wine business.”
Three years ago he started his own production in Franschhoek. In Switzerland he had tasted a white merlot. So, sample in hand, he recruited a local winemaker to make a version for the shop. Some of it went into new barrels and some into tanks and they blended them, producing 1000 bottles.
Kastien only drinks South African wine if he can help it, despite living next door to the Rheingau – Wiesbaden’s answer to Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl – where there are about 580 Riesling producers. He’s particularly keen on heavily wooded chardonnay and shiraz, from Jordan and Tanagra respectively, both of which he sells in the shop.“We found out that a lot of older people now have moved from the Riesling high acidity to more fruit-driven wines. Chenin blanc or chardonnay is a perfect solution.”
He’s also managed to secure the sole rights to sell Windhoek Lager, which he says is wildly popular. One of his best customers is a farmer from Namibia who is married to a German woman and spends part of the time in Frankfurt, about 28kms from Wiesbaden. Kastien served some of the farmer’s meat to friends at a braai to great fanfare. He now gets the meat at a wholesale price from the farmer and in turn sells it to his best customers at cost price.
On a weekend, he moves about 50kgs of roast beef, fillet, rib-eye and flank. “On a Saturday it’s like a supermarket here.” Saturday late afternoons are also drinks time at Procellar, when some of the handful of Saffers in town flock to the shop. Kastien sets up tables outside and sells wine by the glass, as well as G&Ts, Windhoek and Savanna (he stocks Inverroche and Six Dogs gin and for €7.50, customers can mix and match with the two tonics he carries).
Customers had prevailed on him to sell them wine by the glass for a long time, he said, although he doesn’t charge for tastings. So at the end of last year he applied for a licence from local government to rent the space outside. And in April this year, with the start of the summer season, he opened it up. The wine menu changes every week and is usually dependent on the weather “and what I want to sell”.
He endeavours to design a “wine route” with the menu. “I would like to give the South African vibration to the customer: good life, good food, fun and Spontanität.”
A lot of his regulars are on speed dial – a number of them board members of international companies living in town. “I would say Wiesbaden is like Constantia. Many old, rich people – conservative. They’ve got big bucks and big houses.” Typically Kastien will call them if he has a new wine in. “They say, ‘Okay, Frank, if you recommend it, we trust you. Just bring me 24 bottles’. It’s 20 years’ work.”
Apart from the availability of direct flights and the two countries being in the same time zone, Kastien attributes the appeal of South Africa for Germans to the pricing. “You get a lot for your euros. You’ve got everything what you need: you’ve got the mountains, you’ve got the wineries, you can do safari – you’ve got the animals. You’ve got the beaches, you’ve got good food.
“For me, South Africa is the most beautiful country in the world. My dream one day will be to have my last years in South Africa. I would like to retire there, in Franschhoek maybe. It’s really lecker. That is the future, maybe: to stay healthy and going back to South Africa.”
Originally published in the Daily Maverick in 2019
Botanical bonanza: the rise of the craft gin
“Mother’s Ruin” continues to capture an ever-greater “share of throat” in South Africa
Rum, or tequila, may well be the next big spirit on everyone’s lips. But gin, to quote one of a handful of Cape Town artisanal drinks makers, is “having a moment”.
When gin is no longer having a moment, Hope on Hopkins co-founder Lucy Beard reckons being a craft distiller rather than a craft blender will stand them in good stead. Despite the word “distiller” being bandied about quite freely in the burgeoning local craft gin industry, the Salt River-based operation is one of a small number countrywide and the only one in Cape Town to distill its own base spirit, before blending it with the various botanicals that make up its three house gins.
It’s also possibly the only local gin producing facility that doubles as the home of its owners. The dining table overlooks the factory and is positioned next to the tasting room, which is open to the public on Saturday afternoons.
Stilbaai’s Inverroche, however, is the best-known South African gin. And along with Wellington-based Jorgensen’s, it’s had roughly a five-year head start on the others. Inverroche is also the top-selling gin overall at national liquor retail chain, Norman Goodfellows, according to chief executive Solly Kramer.
While Roger Jorgensen was responsible in the nineties for lobbying to get a private licence to own a still – easing the process for subsequent local distillers – Inverroche is widely attributed by its promoters and competitors alike as the first gin to tilt consumers towards local. “They have laid the groundwork for all of us,” says Beard. “They have achieved getting local gin on the map in SA.”
The general consensus among a survey of those in the on- and off-trades suggests that most gin brands have achieved approximately 20% growth over prior sales in the past 18 months to two years – sentiment supported by IWSR industry sales data. And instead of stealing share from popular longstanding premium gin brands in this country, such as Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray, local craft gins have simply aided the general gin boom.
“Gin as a worldwide category is massive and there are unbelievable products that add drinkability and sexiness to a brand like gin: the whole category of artisanal tonics. It’s not like you can find artisanal soda waters to mix with whisky,” says Kramer.
And even though a disproportionate number of the local producers operate out of the Western Cape – with two dedicated gin bars in Cape Town and a newly opened one in Stellenbosch – it’s certainly not where most of the sales take place, he says. That happens in Gauteng. “What Cape Town leads in is putting in the bars and restaurants. It’s got the tourist population and a sort of, I suppose, hip population. But the real growth in any alcohol brand is in what we call the ‘main market’.”
One such bar is the meta-named The Gin Bar in Cape Town’s city centre. Manager Angelique Smith agrees that Cape Town is a trendsetter for food and drink, in particular. But as soon as a trend starts there, it’s saturated quickly. “And I think gin is getting to that point. People are a lot more willing now to spend more on a good bottle of gin that is really interesting or really good. People will continue to love it. But as far as how well each individual gin can do now, we’ll see.”
The Gin Bar carries about 80 gins of which roughly 55% are international, many obscure, including an Irish gin called Glendalough whose recipe is altered every season based on what is foraged in the area. “But we are a local gin-focused bar 100%. All our signature cocktails are made with our gins. We really try and punt the local industry,” Smith says.
Niki Reschke, co-owner of New York-style café/bar Arcade in Cape Town’s CBD – where Bombay Sapphire is currently the pouring gin – likens local craft gins to “an unfinished record” which will benefit from another decade at least to get production levels more affordable. “From a gin price point perspective, a gin that is 300 years old which is technically better with more well-balanced flavours is coming in cheaper than local craft-based gins. From our side, do we want to support local gin? Absolutely, we’d love to. But at what cost?”
Reschke recently teamed up with Arcade bar manager Johnny Bezuidenhout on a gin-infused pizza/cocktail combo. Pork belly was rubbed with Bombay Sapphire and cured for five days with a host of spices. Later some more gin was added to the pan-fried radicchio topping and it was paired with a magenta-coloured gin cocktail described by Bezuidenhout as “a sort of an unbalancing of a martini”.
No South African bar has a local gin as its house pouring gin – there’s simply not enough money behind them, says Caitlin Hill, co-owner of Cape Town’s other dedicated inner-city gin bar, Mother’s Ruin, where Tanqueray is the pouring gin. “Most of the SA gins are not your typical pouring brands based on flavour,” she adds. “Tanqueray is a very juniper-forward gin with four botanicals. When you’re making a cocktail, you still know that’s gin in there. Whereas you start using SA products and it’s going to get a little bit lost with the other flavours.” At its peak, Mother’s Ruin carried 180 gins, but now that figure hovers around 150 of which 30% are local varieties.
“As a category, gin is probably one of the trending spirits in the world at the moment. No two gins have exactly the same spice or herb component,” says Bradley Jacobs, Western Cape brand ambassador for the Diageo Reserve portfolio, of which Tanqueray is a part. Jacobs says craft gins are “good for the category” and good for SA to get exposure.
South Africa, with its prominent floral kingdom, is at a distinct advantage in the creation of a drink that relies on the inclusion of botanicals. From n’abbas (Kalahari truffle) to spekboom, buchu, kapokbos (African wild rosemary), devil’s claw, rooibos, impepho (African sage), rose pelargonium and wild dagga, craft gin producers are experimenting with up till now unheard of additions to gin blends.
“Africa has the biggest profile of edible and herbal plants in the world – especially southern Africa. It means things end up being quite perfumey and aromatic,” says Smith.
“It separates us from everybody else,” says Hill, of the range of indigenous flora. “Inverroche is a great brand and they opened up the market for SA gin, but if you were to ask somebody like me, a gin enthusiast and connoisseur, ‘What do you think of Inverroche?’, I would say it’s not very gin-like. It’s more of a fynbos spirit for me. I’m a bit of a purist; the flavour’s got to be predominantly juniper.”
Beard’s partner at Hope on Hopkins, Leigh Lisk, concedes that “a lot of people are now saying that: ‘Are these really gins if juniper is not forward enough that you can taste the juniper?’” Lisk prefers to describe them as “contemporary gins”.
Adds Beard: “It’s definitely still a gin – just a very different style of gin. And it’s a growing style throughout the world where people are using what’s available locally because that’s what makes them unique.”