It’s a land of daisies and diamonds, of red longitudinal dunes which geometrically precise gemsbok roam, uniquely adapted to this scorching environment where temperatures regularly top 40-degrees in summer. With a scant few hundred millimetres of rain every year, this area is classified as desert.
The Northern Cape was only proclaimed in 1994 after South Africa’s first democratic elections and is South Africa’s largest single province – bigger than Germany – with the lowest population density. That lack of people, light and radio wave interference is the reason the Northern Cape was selected as the site of the Meerkat radio telescope installation, part of the globally significant Square Kilometre Array.
But as the world’s scientists probe the very origins of life and planets in the furthest reaches of the known galaxy from this remote area, there’s a case to be made for looking inward, significantly closer to home, for those who love wine.
The Northern Cape is such a bundle of contradictions – and is genuinely misunderstood by the larger wine loving fraternity which focuses almost solely on the produce of the Western Cape. Ask people about the Northern Cape and they will invariably mention the heat and lack of water, big yields or tonnages, perceived (lack of!) quality and also propensity for making great sweet wines.
There’s no argument about the latter. Northern Cape muscadels are like drinking the nectar of the gods. Sweet, ambrosial, jasmine-scented liquid sunshine, for sure, but there’s more to wines from the region than splendid soetes.
Yes, the Northern Cape is arid and dry – but it’s also prone to flooding at least once every decade. November saw abundant rains in the Gariep river’s catchment area upcountry, prompting water releases from the Bloemhof, Gariep and Vanderkloof dams and water flows of around 4 400 cubic metres per second were anticipated this week. The Augrabies waterfall is set to be in full spate, making for dramatic viewing as the water plunges over the 56m high cataract from multiple channels. Yes, the area is scorchingly hot in summer – but its vineyards are also susceptible to frost in springtime. Temperatures of -8˚C were measured in the devastating frosts of September 2013.
One point Ferdi Laubscher, laboratory and research manager at Orange River Cellars made about modifying perceptions is that other wine regions in the world – because of the increasingly dramatic reality of global warming – can be related to the Northern Cape. “South West Australia is closer to our climate,” he said, “and the way that parts of northern California are going, they’re comparable to us too.”
Anyone who has ever flown into Upington will recall passing over the reddish brown landscape riddled with evidence of ancient watercourses and now dry pans which were once vleis and marshes. The urban hub appears like an oasis, a veritable emerald jewel snaking through the barren plains. The Gariep or Orange river provides the sustenance for the abundant agriculture cultivated on either side of its banks. Where water is available, the land is profusely fertile.
Crop yields from vineyards alongside the Gariep are one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people to wrap their heads around, Orange River Cellars (ORC) viticulturist Natasha Eeden concedes. “That’s just one of the challenges we face – but it’s also a positive for our viticulture,” she said.
“What people don’t realise is the fertility of the rich alluvial soils on the binnegrond vineyards.” (Vineyards are either classified as binnegrond or buitegrond: the former being either on islands in the middle of this large river or immediately adjacent to it, with the latter being a little further afield – but still benefiting from irrigation by the river.) Laubscher said mainly white wine varieties were grown on binnegrond with predominantly red varieties planted on buitegrond. “The buitegrond vineyards are more chalky with rocks and sand than the deep, fertile flood-deposited soils in the binnegrond,” he said.
There can be up to 10-degrees temperature difference which creates unique micro and mesoclimates. After all, plantings stretch nearly 350 kilometres from Grootdrink and Groblershoop in the east all the way to Keimoes and Kakamas further west. That’s extensive and provides a variety of different terroirs to draw on.
Yields are not the be-all and end-all of determining wine quality, Laubscher and Eeden state. The fertile soils, abundant sunshine and heat are positives and growers can comfortably crop vineyards at three, four and five times what their Western Cape counterparts would. It’s not unusual for 30 to 40 tons of grapes to be harvested from a hectare of vineyard. “It’s important to realise that the vines are in balance – and also trellised differently,” Laubscher said, citing the use of gable and T-cap trellises.
“Those trellis types serve more than one purpose: they allow the vine to carry heavier yields with bigger bunches but it also allows for good canopies to shade the grapes in the hottest months of February and March,” Eeden said. It means hand picking rather than machine harvesting but that’s not a bad thing for the fruit or for local labour either.
It’s a summer rainfall area – not that there’s a lot of it, Laubscher pointed out. “But when it does rain we don’t have to worry about mildew, fungus or plant disease because humidity is not an issue in our dry atmosphere – so we don’t have to spray preventively the way that growers further south do.”
What about quality? ORC is the current Sauvignon Blanc and Pinotage champion according to the SA Young Wine Show judges. And that’s no vloekskoot or flash in the pan either: Sauvignon Blanc has a good track record here. The first time eyebrows were raised was in 2018 when ORC’s Sauvignon Blanc was awarded one of only three double gold medals for the grape variety at Veritas. (It also took double gold for a 2018 Colombard and 2017 straw wine.)
“People seem to forget that it’s an early ripener up here – so by the time the worst heat hits, it’s already in the cellar,” Laubscher said. It benefits from cooler spots near the river and the ORC winemakers have shied away from trying to conform. “We’ve tried making the sort of Sauvignons that the Western Cape produces, but we realised we were copying. Nowadays we make a riper, more tropical toned wine which is what nature gives us up here.” Ironically, that’s the style which the market wants – more ripeness and with bolder fruit expression!
While it might be the biggest producer in the Northern Cape, ORC isn’t the only one. Landzicht at Douglas has strutted the awards stage too, having won top honours at the Trophy Wine Show for its 2015 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. And on the international stage Lowerland’s organic wines are increasingly sought after, with its Colombard regularly considered one of the country’s best examples.
Lowerland, which is near Prieska, is an organic operation with the first vines planted in 2000 although the wines debuted in the 2016 edition of the annual Platter Guide. Bertie Coetzee trucks his grapes down south where winemaker Lukas van Loggerenberg vinifies them. “Every year this is one of my favourite vineyard blocks to enter the cellar,” Van Loggerenberg wrote in a Facebook post about the Colombard. “During pressing the cellar smells like an apple orchard in harvest time. The grapes naturally have unbelievable acidity and low pH.” He recommended the regular 4½ star wine be paired with Lowerland’s organic pork chops and an apple/ginger sauce or freshly caught galjoen.
Furthermore, Lowerland Vaalkameel Colombard was singled out for special attention by UK wine writers at the London Wine Trade Fair earlier this year. Tamlyn Currie, one of the influential voices on the website JancisRobinson.com, wrote: “Quite simply stunning. A wine that stopped me in my tracks.”