Being born traditionalist French I have always expressed my doubts about the appellation systems based only on geographical demarcations.
In my old world which extends from the Northern Rhine to the Southern Guadalquivir, an appellation of origin is much more than GPS coordinates. Sometimes it is unknown to wine lovers but a majority of the European AOP (PDO – Protected Designation of Origin) are highly regulated. The rules cover almost every aspect of the viticulture, from the cultivars allowed or compulsory, the density of planting, the type of pruning, the number of buds per cane, the type of trellising, including the limited options to prepare the soil before planting or the way the grapes must be harvested. For the winemaking, the regulations can decide the size of the press, the use or not of conveyor belts, how much yields you are allowed to ferment, the style of barrels you can use, up to the shape of the bottle you are using to sell your wine!
It can sound like an awfully fascist way to crush any creativity. Many winemakers are tempted to leave the prestigious appellation schemes to release their wines under Vin de France or Vino da Tavola. It has always been a source of quarrel between Traditionalists and Modernists.
Such strict Appellation of Origin rules cannot guarantee that the wine is necessarily fulfilling the expectations of quality, however, it definitely guarantees a style and an identity.
Whether you purchase a bottle of Sancerre Blanc or a bottle of Ruster Ausbrush DAC, you know what you will find in the bottle. It is very reassuring for the consumer and for the wine lover alike.
With rare exceptions such as Luján de Cuyo DOC in Argentina focussed on Malbec only, most new world appellations are only geographical indications. In South Africa, most of our famous Wine of Origin appellations produce almost everything, from Cap Classique to Cape Vintage styles. No true stylistic identity, but merely an indication of how warm the vineyard of origin can be.
When I joined the Hemel en Aarde Pinot Noir celebration on the 29th of January, the program was mostly focussed on tasting the three wards of the area, Hemel en Aarde Valley, Upper Hemel en Aarde Valley and Hemel en Aarde Ridge. Subconsciously my first reaction pushed me to think it was another plot to upset competing sommeliers and MW students with an unnecessary division of a larger origin, made mostly to boost the identity of the producers or worse, their ego, and not to affirm the identity of the wines.
Leaving Hermanus on the following Sunday morning, the joy in me was not only fuelled by the extraordinary mature pinots served over the dinner Olive Hamilton Russell organised on behalf of the three wards. I had an epiphany. For the first time an appellation classification made sense in South Africa. For the first time the sense of the origin was overwhelmingly showing through the wines, regardless of the winemakers. This type of demonstration has been attempted many times by groups of producers, or wine route associations, but never has the sense of place been more loud and clear than through these 2020 pinot noir wines.
While an experienced grand cru taster will undoubtedly identify the Corton from a Chambertin, these three wards' wines were expressing individual common traits. The tasting was led by non-winemakers to avoid peer pressure, so it was not a marketing coup forcing us to anticipate what we should find in the glass. A very impressive panel actually. Sommeliers Miguel Chan and Joseph Dhafana were leading our palates alongside Cathy van Zyl MW and Roland Peens.
After this enlightening experience, I tried to boil down my understanding of each terroir to what defines it in the glass. Yes, this stubborn Frenchman just used the term terroir for South Africa!
The Hemel-en-Aarde Valley ward was represented by Hamilton-Russell, Bouchard Finlayson Galpin Peak and Storm Vrede pinots. As much as the attendees had very subjective preferences, for me, the three wines displayed a very similar palate texture. The skilled barrel maturation may have helped but clearly the relatively thin layer of poor clay, located mostly at the bottom of the slopes where pinot is planted, allows a perfect ripeness of the tannins, offering a unique palate of velvety texture not unknown to Vosne-Romanée. The wines are powerful, structured, ripe and elegant. On retasting the wines blind, the long lingering dense texture was undoubtfully revealing the origin of the wines!
Gaining altitude, the Upper Hemel-en-Aarde valley shows a completely different soil. Even the indigenous vegetation is different. Bosman Family, Whalehaven, Cap Maritime, Hasher Family, Newton-Johnson, Restless River, Spookfontein and Storm were showing a wide range of 2020 pinots growing on soils made of weathered granite sands. The effect of the soil on the wine is immediate!
Forget the luscious velvety palate, most of these pinots are sharp with a perceived acidity higher than what the analysis would imply. These wines are perfumed, restrained on the palate while expressing a long lingering minerality on the finish. Furthermore, the cherry fruit seems to be a common denominator among most wines, sometimes leading to a slightly haemoglobin (blood) taste finish. I remember tasting with Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, the world-famous bio-geologists, and they taught me that Granite always shows up in the wine with some specific fruits, but mostly it shows a tight grain texture, borderline impalpable dusty tannins offering a mineral and fresh overall feeling.
In my humble opinion, this terroir offers a very unique expression of pinot noir, not seen anywhere else even if I could relate them to the Arh Valley style. If I had been served in a blind tasting competition, and not talented enough to identify the Upper Hemel en Aarde Valley, I may still have been identifying a granite origin. Ignoring the intensity of the colour, I may have considered an elegant granite-based syrah from Saint Joseph, or more than likely one of the legendary Swiss syrah from the Bas-Valais, on granite soils as well. This ward’s pinots are crunchy and extremely lively, juicy and pure. This ward appellation will not face an identity problem in the market, it definitely delivers a unique style based on cherry fruit, tension and minerality.
Going even higher in altitude is the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge where vineyards almost reach the 400m mark. At the foot of the Babylon’s Tower Mountain the soils are deeper layers of Table Mountain sandstones and clay-rich Bokkeveld shale.
La Vierge, Tesselaarsdal, Domaine des Dieux, Ataraxia, Creation and Storm (Hannes Storm vinifies the three wards separately in a true “cru” spirit) presented their 2020 pinot noirs.
Once again, the common thread among the wines is screaming, even the bolder Creation Art of Pinot shows similar intense red fruits supported by specific flavours floating around; pomegranate, cranberry or blood-orange. The fresher temperature from altitude, a relative distance from the temperature-buffering ocean, and the clay-rich deep soil offers pinot noir a nest to express very perfumed, complex and multidimensional wines of elegant bright structures. The fresh texture and vibrant complexity are driven by a family of flavours comprising of fresh reds fruits, but pomegranate, cranberry and raspberry stand out as “markers” for the ward.
In the old world, it took centuries to identify what variety was the most adapted to the terroir, then even more time to demarcate the crus based on the way the grapes were expressing the soil and subsoil character. The clock is ticking, and the South African industry can look to this successful experiment in the Hemel en Aarde area. If you want the market to take an appellation seriously, make sure the identity is in the wine and not just in the marketing material. These pinots are world-class expressions of very unique terroirs, at the same time global in quality, but truly local and proudly South African.
Disclosure: I paid for my own ticket, this is an opinion piece.