Spanning almost four decades, Finlayson has a career you could literally call groundbreaking—having set up the region’s first winery and vineyards (Hamilton Russell Vineyards in 1979), to planting and making the very first pinot in 1981. He’s credited with putting the Walker Bay area firmly on the map as well as on international stage as an area that makes some of South Africa’s finest wines.
“Back then the Hemel-en-Aarde was all wildflowers and honey,” says Finlayson talking about the early days. “We were told by many we couldn’t make wine here.” But Peter had an advantage. After graduating in Oenology at Stellenbosch University, he went on to study at the Geisenheim in the Rheingau. He came back saying: “If you can grow grapes in Germany, you can in Hermanus.”
He was proven more than right and received his just desserts in the form of the 1989 Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Award. This award led to a friendship with international judge and negociant, Paul Bouchard.
“Knowing how to make good chardonnay requires a lot of Burgundy…” says Finlayson and it was with this thought he went to go visit Bouchard in Beaune, where the Frenchman and the Capetonian decided to become partners in a new winery. Bouchard Finlayson soon became the second winery in the Hemel-en-Aarde. It also happened to be the first investment by a French wine family in the Cape.
At this new winery Finlayson implemented another first: high-density planting of pinot at 9000 vines per hectare. This style of viticulture created competition between the vines as well as smaller and more efficient canopies. The winery released their first wines in 1991.
Almost 30 years later and not too much has changed at Bouchard Finlayson. These days Peter is the cellar master, while Chris Albrecht wears the hat of winemaker. All around its squat buildings, as if crouched into the mountainside, fan tight, green vineyards. In the interleading decades many other wineries have sprung up in the beautiful, vertiginous valley, but it’s clear Bouchard Finlayson still operates within its own atmosphere fuelled by legend and its famed wines.
“It’s scary because it’s gone so quickly,” says Finlayson, musing over a glass of Tête de Cuvée 2013. “I had to regularly ask myself what I was doing in the exercise of winemaking.
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