Catherine Marshall - a Pinot noir Empress
Wednesday, 17 August, 2011
Dusan Jelic, WINE.CO.ZA
The Elgin Valley is a jewel in the Cape wineland's crown. The unique
climate and unique terroir has lured in many passionate wine-loving
people. One of whom is Catherine Marshall.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Ms. Catherine Marshall, one of the most exciting South Africa winemakers at her tasting room situated in Elgin where she told me of her youth and her love of wine.
Catherine’s mother worked as a bottle-store accountant and would often bring bottles of cheap wine home when she was a child. Her parents were open-minded and they would sometimes let her taste the wine. ‘I have passion for perfumes and liqueurs: orange blossom, citrus, cherry, whisky liqueurs, clean perfume style liqueurs … that’s partly where my fascination for smells and scents came from’, mused Catherine.
On the direction that her career took (from sport to wine), Catherine stated simply that: ‘I went to a wine farm to work as a tasting room assistant and I drank loads of Tassenberg, Taverna Rouge or similar wines. I left sport after learning more about wine, and enrolled in the Cape Wine Academy courses’.
She studied at Elsenburg College at the time when only Hamilton-Russell and Bouchard Finlayson were making Pinot noir. It was an incredibly difficult journey as she had to wait in line for grapes - the ‘big people’ first. In those days women were not as involved in the wine industry and Catherine was often getting second class grapes. Catherine says that this difficulty helped to shape her as a winemaker and that, “once you learn how to work with grapes of average quality when you move to the top quality grapes you can do wonders”. At the time of her studies at Elsenburg College, Catherine was one of only two female students.
After Elsenburg Catherine’s first apprenticeship was at Blaauwklippen Estate. ‘I was with Walter Finlayson who had an understanding of Pinot noir, and I wanted to learn everything about it. Mike Dobrovich also helped me a lot and in these years I learned to understand the technique of taste and how the wine is to be balanced’, concluded Catherine.
After Blaauwklippen she also worked locally at Delaire and Vergelegen and overseas in France (Burgundy and Saint-Émilion), USA (California and Oregon) and Australia. Resident winemaking positions followed her apprenticeships and soon she saw herself running the show at Meinert Winery, Amani Estate and Ridgeback Wines.
In Catherine’s winemaking philosophy it is essential for wine to represent a sense of place. She religiously keeps fruit from different soil types separately. And once the style and characteristics of each soil is understood, she starts playing around.
Catherine Marshall Wines was the first eponymous wine label for wines made by a women winemaker in South Africa. She started out with only one wine, a Pinot noir in 1997 and at the time there were only around seven producers of Pinot noir in South Africa. Today that number has grown to more than 70 producers.
Catherine believes that geography defines the wines she makes and muses that, ‘Elgin was exciting because it was cold and that equals quality as you cannot make a great wine in the wrong area. We have cooler night temperatures than, for instance, Hermanus region. Furthermore, Elgin has reliability in the soil structure’.
Her portfolio of wines includes: Pinot noir, White Label and Dark Lady, Sauvignon blanc, Woolworths Pinot Noir, SMG and Desert wine made from Pinot noir blended with Merlot and fortified with brandy!
When asked about her future plans Catherine responds with a lot of enthusiasm; ‘Focus, focus, focus, and what I want to make is the absolute best and perfect Pinot. There are new challenges every year and the idea is to keep doing it better and better and better. At some point I would also like to do something different like forging or blacksmithing’.