South African wine trailblazers: Pieter Walser

Thursday, 21 May, 2020
Wines of South Africa, Malu Lambert
In a tiny town in the Overberg, Baardskeerdersbos, there’s a tiny spider that creeps into your bedroom at night to steal your beard.

Or so the legend goes. This spider is fondly known by the town’s nickname, B-Bos. On this rugged slice of coastal land, small pockets of sauvignon and semillon grow, licked salty by the wind from their perch on the edge of the world.

It’s here winemaker and owner of BLANKbottle; Pieter Walser went story and grape hunting, his spidey sense tingling that he would find both.

The wine is the Blank Bottle B-BOS II, Overberg 2018—a graphic representation of Pieter’s face adorns the label, with a spider snipping away at his beard. I share this wine with him over a virtual connection; it’s how we do things these days right? The main component is that icy, tense Elim sauvignon; with that particular brightness of fruit, a reward from struggling against ocean gales. There’s also a small percentage of semillon, just giving the wine room to glide and evolve.

The story of BLANKbottle is an intriguing one itself.

“My goal was to create an honest wine brand that had no limitations when it came to style, vintage, area or cultivars in order to break down any preconceived expectations,” shares Walser. “Having no indication of cultivar on the bottle makes this possible. Not only does it demand complete honesty when it comes to quality, but gives me the opportunity to introduce once-off limited runs of interesting wines.

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