You can’t try to make top-level Chardonnay or Pinot Noir anywhere in the world without, at some point, the inevitable comparison with Burgundy being made. It may be lazy, it may be facile, but there it is: for many, the Côte d’Or remains the benchmark by which all others are measured.
A lot of winemakers, perfectly understandably, try to fight it, determined to forge their own identity and reputation, and to be the best expression of their location without the need for external reference. A suggestion to a producer in the Mornington Peninsula or the Russian River Valley that their wines are ‘Burgundian’ may not always be received as a compliment.
As for Anthony Hamilton Russell, owner of Hamilton Russell Vineyards, the cool-climate South African winery that celebrates its 50th birthday this year – well, he’s just come to terms with it. “There’s no language for wine,” he says. “All you have is analogy. Burgundy analogies are given to us; I’ve given up trying to avoid them.”
Making peace with the B-word has given Hamilton Russell access to an easily comprehensible vinous vocabulary. The 52-hectare vineyard that yields the estate’s flagship wines is described as a ‘monopole’, comprising 10 Pinot Noir and 18 Chardonnay parcels that are, where possible, vinified separately.
Hamilton Russell highlights the monopole’s stony, shale-derived soils, comprising 35-55% clay with high iron content, “but sadly no limestone” – a nod to the Côte de Nuits. Nonetheless, he says: “The aesthetic that emerges from that piece of ground is remarkably Burgundian at times … Some magic happened on that clay.”
It’s as good a time as any to assess Hamilton Russell’s place in the wine world. This year marks a half-century since, on 27 February 1975, Anthony’s father, ad agency owner Tim Hamilton Russell, bought a 170ha farm called Braemar in the Hemel-en-Aarde (‘heaven and earth’) Valley for ZAR58,000 (then about £36,000).
By coincidence, the winery’s 45th Chardonnay and Pinot Noir harvest concluded on 27 February this year, while Hamilton Russell, by his own calculations, has now been involved with the business for one-third of a century, or – as he puts it – thirty-three-and-a-third years.
It was only during the 1990s that the winery narrowed its focus onto Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and carried out the research that pinpointed the ‘monopole’ as the place to be for top-quality fruit from both varietals.
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