Summers can be brutal in the Northern Cape. Days are accompanied by the kind of intense dry heat that seems to make one’s skin scorch if exposed as the mercury regularly hits 40-degrees – and keeps going northwards.
It's why table grapes do so well and why there are raisin drying beds or pads so frequently visible when driving through the area.
But there’s a meandering artery that stretches through this beautiful, red-soiled scrubby territory; the Gariep – or Orange – river. It provides life and respite, particularly along the 400 or so kilometres from Grootdrink in the east, via Upington, to Kakamas in the west, where vineyards are cultivated and irrigated.
Orange River Cellars (ORC) has three production facilities in Upington, Kakamas and Keimoes and is responsible for millions of litres of wine and grape juice annually. The range is extensive and broad but the one thing it’s most recognised for is sweet wine.
At CapeWine 2022, ORC’s Ferdinand Laubscher provided a bit of insight into one particular wine, the Omstaan Wit Muskadal XI which was the only fortified dessert wine to get 5 Stars in the 2022 Platter Guide.
The Platter entry reads as follows: “Omstaan Wit Muskadel XI. Sublime fortified muscat, NV (95) blend of 11 vintages hence XI on label. Amber hue, with spicy, floral, musky aromas that lead to intensely sweet but poised palate, remarkably long-lingering conclusion. Very special limited release of 330 cases of 500ml.”
If ever there was the proverbial “sunshine in a bottle” this would be it!
Laubscher said this was a rather special muscadel – and coming from ORC which is renowned for the excellence of its muscadel through the years, that’s quite something! “It’s made in Keimoes and is actually a blend of 11 different vintages,” he revealed.
Apparently the winemakers at Keimoes over the years had always made a special batch of muscadel, putting it into barrel and keeping it one side to see how well it aged. A small portion of this was also back blended into each year’s entry of muscadel for the annual national young wine show “just to soften the entry a bit” Lauscher said.
In a facility the size of Keimoes, it’s easy to overlook (or even hide) a few barrels a year. So it was that a decision was eventually made to do something with all these barrels of wood-matured muscadel. “It was too good to lose in a larger blend, so we kept it to one side and created the Omstaan wine.”
One winemaker who has intimate knowledge of the sweet wine setup at ORC is Rianco van Rooyen, now part of the Robertson Winery team. “White and red muscadel at Orange River Cellars is like sauvignon blanc in Robertson: it just works!”
Van Rooyen spoke fondly of the making of the ORC straw wine. “We initially started making a straw wine with colombar but switched to chenin blanc,” he said, even identifying one particular block of chenin blanc grown on Keimoes island as the best parcel of fruit for this wine.
There was a lot of trial and error involved. “Lots of error,” he ruefully admitted, citing volatility and getting to grips with controlling the VA as one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. “We would make about six or seven barrels a year and we’d lose about two – but the rest were good.”
Indeed they were, with the 2018 ORC straw wine being awarded a Veritas double gold – along with sauvignon blanc and colombar. But that was no fluke or flash in the pan either, with the Kakamas sauvignon blanc and Grootdrink pinotage singled out for top honours at the 2022 national young wine show awards just a few short months ago.
Yes, the Northern Cape is a hot, dry region but it can also be cold, particularly overnight on the banks of the river. And while this diurnal temperature difference means that the grapes retain acidity, it also makes them vulnerable to frost. There have been years when the growers supplying grapes to ORC have suffered massive crop losses. And that’s before factoring in the occasional floods the region is prone to…
Grape growing in the Northern Cape is not for the faint hearted, but for wine consumers tasting the muscadels or straw wines, there are sweet rewards. But don’t overlook the still white and red wines either!
This article was originally published on WoSA's blog, Cape Chatter.