“The 2025 vintage reminded me that patience is rewarded. Summer took a while to warm up, and the vines loved the slower ripening and longer hang time. We started harvesting three weeks later than usual and the fruit was perfect. It was a smaller crop, but the quality was outstanding,” shares Tim Hoek, Haute Cabrière's cellarmaster.
The approach of our cellar is appreciated by not only our customers and friends, but continues to be recognised by critics.
In Tim Atkin’s 2026 South Africa Special Report, the revered Master of Wine awarded three of our 2025 Haute Collection wines more than 90 points, with our highest score to date:
It’s a proud moment for our team, and an opportunity for us to share the vision behind our range of legacy wines.
One block in two perspectives
The starting block is Franschhoek’s only certified Old Vine Chardonnay planted in 1983. This block is also the second oldest Chardonnay vineyard in the country, presenting our cellar with a unique opportunity to explore place and time through wine.
We hand-harvest and whole-bunch press the grapes, before dividing the juice between different vessels for fermentation and maturation. This is where experimentation and creative thinking begins. “The philosophy behind both wines is similar: to showcase the great terroir and vineyards we have in the Franschhoek Valley. But the goals differ,” says Tim Hoek.
The Haute Collection Amphora Chardonnay is about purity, texture and fruit expression. This is because the clay of amphora allows the wine to breathe without imparting its own characteristics like oak does which leads to the purest expression of terroir, in our opinion. The Haute Collection Chardonnay combines equal parts oak barrel and amphora aging, and is a study on old vine Chardonnay texture and ageability, supported by a fine tannin structure, as well as our interpretation of the toasted notes associated with classical Chardonnay.
The two wines show two ways of viewing the same thing, and that’s where ‘man’ in our philosophy of ‘sun, soil, vine, man’ comes in. While nature does most of the work, how we choose to creativity interpret that work can yield vastly different results of equal quality. This is clear in how highly and closely the two Chardonnays in this year’s Tim Atkin Report. Tim Hoek shares that, “The two most important aspects of old-vine management are: controlling how much fruit each vine carries and getting the picking window right. If you get those two things right, the work in the cellar is really about deciding what aspect of nature’s work you’re seeking to explore and then managing the quality of that expression.”
So what does a 96-point score mean for our cellar? “Every year we try to create a better wine and try a new trick we’ve been thinking about for the last 12 months. We have our foundations, but we also have to work with what nature gives us,” says our cellar master.
For us, the scores show the value of old vines, and tell us what Franschhoek’s terroir, a gentle hand, and thoughtful vessel ageing can achieve. As Tim Hoek puts it: “The only question left is how to take the next vintage another step up and keep moving forward.”