Warwick Wine Estate celebrates 25 years of wine-making excellence
Thursday, 2 July, 2009
Warwick Wine Estate
Warwick Wine Estate is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Norma
Ratcliffe's first vintage as winemaker and proprietor of the Estate.
This quarter-century milestone is indeed noteworthy for Norma and Warwick but, perhaps most significantly, it is a landmark which bears testament to women and the pivotal role they have played in the wine industry. Norma Ratcliffe - the first woman to be inducted into the Cape Winemakers Guild in 1989 and thereafter the first female chairperson in 1993 - has paved the way for women and carved out a niche in this hitherto patriarchal arena.
Warwick Estate pays tribute to Norma Ratcliffe, as she reminisces and outlines significant milestones along this trajectory towards a winemaking aesthetic.
Stan Ratcliffe, Norma's then husband-to-be, bought Warwick Farm on 1st April, April Fool's Day, in 1964. Stan, the enthusiastic Elsenburg graduate, began planting fruit trees and Cabernet Sauvignon with a view to producing grapes, rather than wine. This venture facilitated an opportunity for the farm to remain financially buoyed, as the vision for the establishment of a high-end wine farm was born. This dream grew exponentially after Stan met and married the larger-than-life, Canadian-born, Norma Ratcliffe.
Raised in Edmonton, on the Canadian Prairies, Norma first discovered wine during family holidays in San Francisco, and it became a passion during her student days in France and Switzerland. After meeting husband Stan Ratcliffe in Greece, she returned with him to his farm in Stellenbosch. Since the wine-bug had bitten both, particularly Norma - who was more passionate about wine-making while Stan was more viticulturally inclined - the formidable duo deemed fine wine-making the logical conclusion.
Norma is acclaimed as the archetypal pioneering woman who successfully infiltrated a male-dominated agricultural sector. But Norma claims that, being both a woman and a foreigner, were advantageous in terms of receiving assistance and encouragement from fellow winemakers.
She made many friends and sought advice: the first vintage was encouraged by Jan Boland Coetzee of Kanonkop, Billy Hofmeyr of Welgemeend, Frans Malan of Simonsig, Spatz Sperling of Delheim, and Kevin Arnold of Waterford fame, who were during this time at Delheim. Norma borrowed tanks from John Platter and a cup of yeast from Harvey Illing at Uitkyk. Wine was crushed at Morgenhof, brought back in a grape 'bin' and fermented in the famous old packshed. Norma's winemaking career had begun! The Cape wine industry was, at the time, especially during the apartheid years, intimate and inter-connected. Kevin Arnold reiterated this hypothesis, asserting: "One of the reasons we helped (Norma) was that if anyone made bad wine it would have reflected badly on the rest of us!"
Despite no formal education in the wine-making arena, but hungry for knowledge and driven by this vision, Norma studied wine-making diligently from a book. She started making wine in the old pack shed on an experimental basis in the seventies. The year 1984 was a significant turning point in Norma's career when she released her first 'legal' Cabernet Sauvignon, the Femme Bleu - or so she thought. Unfortunately, the official paperwork was filled in erroneously and the wine was, by extension, not registered. Norma was also teased for omitting the 'e' on 'bleue'.
Norma was thereafter affectionately referred to as 'The Blue Lady'. Some deemed this blue label inappropriate for a Bordeaux style wine, but this 'transgression' in wine iconography and marketing, established the winery with a differentiator and point of reference which the consumer remembered. She produced 1 500 bottles of Femme Bleu that year.
The vision was fully ignited once the couple had travelled to, and experienced, the magic of Bordeaux. Here, Stan and Norma decided that the production of a Bordeaux blend was really where the market was headed and where the proverbial gap was. And so, Merlot and Cabernet franc were planted in the early 1980's. And the ephemeral vision was concretised and began to take shape.
A stint at Château Sénéjac in Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux in 1985, where she worked for winemaker Jenny Dobson, further honed Norma's winemaking skills and gave her an enduring love of Claret. Not surprisingly, Bordeaux varieties became a Warwick speciality. Norma raves, "Jenny gave information unselfishly. I embarked on what was totally hands-on work. Jenny broke her leg midway through the harvest and I was thrown into the deep-end! This vintage was characterised by lots of hard work, lots of new knowledge, tasting great Bordeaux wines, and being introduced to top Bordeaux winemakers. My French improved rapidly and I returned to South Africa armed with new knowledge and commitment."
Norma became one of the first winemakers to import, at vast expense, new 225-litre French barriques, though at the time it was unproven that the barrels would improve the quality of South African wine - of course they did.
1986 saw the first release of 'Trilogy' which has since become a South African icon - a blend of the three classic Bordeaux varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet franc. It soon ranked with the other leading Bordeaux wines in the South African market. Since then, Trilogy's accolades have included a plethora of high ratings in Wine Spectator, most noteworthy of which was being ranked amongst Wine Spectator's 2008 Top 100 Wines with 93 points at position 46 - the first time that a South African Bordeaux-style blend had been included in the highly influential 'Top 50' on the Wine Spectator list.
In addition, Wine Enthusiast 2006 positioned Trilogy at wine number 5 globally with a score of 95 points - still the highest score ever from South Africa. Trilogy has been served in the House of Lords and on the Captains table of the QE2, as well as by the Governor of the Bank of England. After more than 21 years of crafting Trilogy, the ongoing accolades continue to bring recognition to this small artisanal family winery. The recent 'Top 50' announcement in Wine Spectator shows that Warwick's philosophy of 'quality without compromise' is paying dividends. These accolades cement the winery's assertion that "we should measure our Cape wines against the toughest international standards".
1988 was a very difficult year and the year in which Norma produced Warwick's maiden Cabernet franc and due to a stuck fermentation Norma kept vigil in the winery night after night to keep the fermentation mobilised. Nostalgic recollections of this year involved Norma recounting the story of friends having visited her in the winery late at night, after having gone cray-fishing. Due to her not having eaten, the entourage cooked the crayfish there and then in the winery, after which she had supper and continued her faithful adherence! But her nurturing proved fruitful with her 1988 Cabernet Franc having been received with rave reviews. This wine was subsequently exported, even in sanction days, becoming one of the cores of the reputation of Warwick.
The Warwick Cabernet Franc has consistently been awarded 4 ½ stars in John Platter as well as 'Best South African Red' at the 1997 International Wine and Spirit Competition. In 1998, the Cabernet Franc was awarded 5 stars in WINE Magazine. The celebrated Jancis Robinson rated the Warwick Cabernet Franc as 'one of her favourites' in the highly-esteemed London Financial Times.
Another outstanding award was the Warwick Chardonnay winning the Chardonnay Trophy at the 2001Tri-Nations Wine Challenge, as well as being lauded as 'the Best Value Chardonnay in the World' by Malcolm Gluck and being awarded 4 ½ stars in the Platter wine guide.
But Norma was also keen to produce a wine with a South African 'stamp' and 1997 saw the first release of 'Three Cape Ladies', a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and the Cape's unique grape, Pinotage. 'Three Cape Ladies' was named after Norma's vision of three women being involved in Warwick estate in her lifetime. At that stage, her grand-daughter Eve, the 'third Cape lady' today, was not yet born but Norma and daughter Jenny were the first two generations and Norma predicted a third in her lifetime - another vision which has ultimately come to pass when her son Mike and wife Pippa had their daughter, Eve.
The Cape Blend style was gaining in popularity, and a special committee set about defining what it should comprise. As a leading industry figure and keen advocate of Cape Blends, Norma was much involved in those discussions, and cautioned that to prescribe minimum and maximum percentages of Pinotage would be counter-productive to the inherent flexibility which characterises the style which, as in Bordeaux, is at the winemaker's discretion. Flexibility, she believes, is key, so that, as in Bordeaux, the blend should be at the winemaker's discretion, according to the quality of the grapes in any given year. Norma is, despite her small stature, larger-than-life in a figurative sense, and unconventional in many respects and therefore certainly not one to follow rules doggedly.
Norma's vinous innovation, 'The Three Cape Ladies', has achieved record breaking export sales in America, Europe and Asia. In 1994, this wine's export results won her the President Mandela Trophy for Export Excellence, 92 points in Wine Spectator and the honour of being the first time that Pinotage was included in the Wine Spectator 'Top 100' wines in the world. More recently, the 'Three Cape Ladies' was also the only red wine served at the glittering, star-studded One&Only Cape Town launch in April this year.
Professor Black, Warwick's Sauvignon blanc, named after the creator of a hybrid peach variety, planted where the Sauvignon blanc now grows, was awarded 90 points in Wine Spectator this year and has been a consistent 'Smart Buy.'
'The First Lady', a Cabernet Sauvignon-driven red wine, eponymously named after Norma Ratcliffe, was launched in 2008. This new wine is a tribute by son Mike Ratcliffe Norma and her first wine ever released at Warwick, the Femme Bleu, of varietal Cabernet Sauvignon which was also packaged with a blue capsule and label.
The farm today is still very much a family affair. Stan and Norma's daughter Jenny, a Cape Wine Master herself, and a qualified Chef, is in charge of the Estate's special projects and is Warwick's ambassador in Gauteng. Mike Ratcliffe assumed the role of Managing Director in 2000. He graduated from Adelaide University with a wine marketing degree. Under his leadership, Warwick has continued growing in prestige and is today acknowledged as one of the standard bearers of quality in South Africa. It gives Norma much pleasure that her two children are both involved in the family business.
A keen cook herself, together with daughter, Cordon Bleu Chef Jenny, Norma is particularly interested in wine and food pairings, and has been at the forefront of promoting signature recipes that are complementary to her wines. Warwick is in the process of publishing a Warwick cookbook.
Though Norma has handed over the reins, she is still very much involved in Warwick. Since having stepped down from the day-to-day running of Warwick, Norma has been afforded the role of 'style director', advising on all aspects of making wine at Warwick - from the vineyards to the bottle and is still a very integral part of the winemaking team. In terms of her judicial capacity and pedigree, the CWG has conferred on Norma the illustrious 'Keeper of the Key' status, allowing her to retain honorary life membership of this celebrated committee. A benchmark of excellence which highlights her timeless stature.
Warwick Estate pays homage to a quarter century of innovative and ground-breaking wine-making with pioneer, matriarch, the iconic Norma Ratcliffe.