Wednesday, 30 October, 2019
Wosa Blog, Malu Lambert
“I had never tasted anything like that, so different, at the time in South Africa there were very little dry white wines available.”
We’re upstairs in his office above the wine cellar, the vineyards are a green blur behind the rain-pummelled windows. The unseasonal deluge has everyone in the wine industry a little worried, considering the current onset of flowering. Gyles is poring over his vineyard management files at his desk, going back years he’s faithfully kept records of things like vine weights and ‘phenolic intervals’ to exact dates of budbreak, veraison et al.
The accountant in him is evident here. But it was poet and the philosopher that won out in the end. After that white Burgundy Gyles stopped counting beans, packed up his wife Barbara and their infant son and headed to Stellenbosch, to do a B.Sc (Agric.) degree majoring in Viticulture and Oenology. “I thought I may as well as get closer to it,” he says deadpan.
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