It’s my first restaurant visit in 100 days. A Cape storm lashes at the glass doors of Chef’s Warehouse on Bree. Inside Ewan Mackenzie twists a knife around the wax capsule of his Costa del Swart Viura Vonkelwyn 2019, that’s right a bottle of sparkling wine with a wax seal.
“I do it to annoy people,” he says characteristically deadpan. “But honestly if you are into bubbly and don’t have a hatchet on your person…”
Loaded with lime and tangy citrus with a stony, super-dry finish, the MCC is a collaboration with Christa von la Chevallerie of Huis van Chevallerie. This is what the Wine Thief is all about, taking his passion as a sommelier and combining it with small-batch winemaking, producing each wine alongside a winemaker he admires.
“I wanted to use my skills as a sommelier to create truly unique expressions of wines as well as to learn along the way. It all started with Attie Louw of Opstal Estate, out in Slanghoek, where I pitched an idea to him about using petit verdot to make a barrel-fermented blanc de noir. Both him and his assistant winemaker Franco looked at me a bit funny at first, but then the seeds of passion for experimentation were sewn, and now we're on our fifth vintage!”
Ewan has an accent layered with origin; clues to a life lived in a few places. Born in Cambridge, a stint in Detroit as a kid (his dad worked for Ford), many holidays in the South of France, where his family once had a home—as his enthusiastic pronunciation of anything French shows.
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