There’s a great deal of excitement about the wines that are coming out of the Agulhas Wine Triangle – South Africa’s southernmost vineyards. This is a region with ancient soils, extreme winds and a raw landscape that are producing cool climate whites and reds of remarkable quality and elegance. On a recent trip to South Africa, Geoffrey Dean visited the region, tasted the wines from the 10 wineries and talked with some of the key players – Bruce Jack, Dirk Human and Pierre Rabie about what makes this new frontier of winemaking so special.
“Those international wine judges who hadn’t come across Elim Sauvignons from the mid 2000s couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The wine was so fresh and had so much life to give still,” says Jack.
If the Swartland Revolution was the bright new force in the South African wine industry in the early years of the millennium, another is emerging in the form of the Agulhas Wine Triangle (AWT). It was set up by its 10 member wineries in 2019 as a non-profit organisation to showcase the wines, tourism and natural beauty of Agulhas, the most southerly point of the African continent. If the pandemic constrained its early momentum, the body is now well-placed to raise the profile of its top-quality wines on the international stage.
Agulhas Wine Triangle: ancient soils and extreme winds.
So who is involved in the Agulhas Wine Triangle?
More on its unique terroir shortly, but first an introduction to the triangle’s wineries. These are Black Oystercatcher Wines, Ghost Corner, Giant Periwinkle, Land’s End, Strandveld Wines, and Trizanne Signature Wines from the Elim ward; Sijnn from the Malgas ward; Olivedale from the Swellendam district; Lomond from the Cape Agulhas district; and The Drift Estate from the ward of Napier.
Some of the South African wine industry’s leading figures are involved, including Bruce Jack (The Drift Farm), David Niewoudt (Ghost Corner), David Trafford (Sijnn), Dirk Human (Black Oystercatcher) and Trizanne Barnard (Trizanne Signature Wines). These are all highly respected winemakers, but they will be the first to tell you that what makes the AWT’s wines so special are its hugely varied soils and cool climate. Soils of sandstone, shale, iron ferricrete, quartzite and limestone lead to a whole host of different flavour compounds and complex, intense flavours. Ocean winds cool the vineyards.
Dirk Human and Bruce Jack, two winemakers from the Agulhas Wine Triangle.
Unique soils and cool climate
“The soils are different from other areas primarily because of the way they were formed,” Bruce Jack told The Buyer. “When the ancient super continent Gondwana broke up, bits of other continents were left on the edges of Africa. So the soils in Agulhas were made up of other continents – Africa where the Drift is, Antarctica where Black Oystercatcher is and a mix of Australia and India at David Trafford’s Sijnn.
“While there are differences between the soils in the Agulhas Wine Triangle, there are differences with the rest of South Africa. That’s the first point, and the second point is that while a lot of the soils in the rest of South Africa are invigorating, our soils are devigorating leading to a naturally low yield, and naturally more elegant and concentrated wines as a result. And then when you combine that with the weather at the tip of Africa, it’s windy and the wind is cool. Those things have a big impact.”
That the western Cape is the windiest wine region in the world is another key factor for Jack. “The winds in the Agulhas Wine Triangle are predominantly coming from the south-east and the south-west, off the ocean,” he continued. “The majority of the vineyards are by the ocean and that has a significant effect in summer months. In winter months, it has less of an effect as there’s less wind and you don’t get as cold winters as you do on higher-lying areas or further inland. That’s one of the reasons why the white wines of the Agulhas Wine Triangle are so delicious.”
The AWT’s very isolation is actually more of a strength than a weakness in Jack’s view. “There’s a self-sufficiency here as a result, a philosophy if you like, that has a huge impact,” he declared.
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