2012 Red AA Badenhorst Family

Adi Badenhorst, who gained a reputation as one of South Africa's most talented winemakers during his years at Rustenberg, began his own label with wines from purchased fruit in 2006, then bought his estate near Malmesbury in Swartland in 2007. He currently farms 30 hectares on his 60-hectare farm and plans to plant another 5 in 2016 to such varieties as Palomino, Petit Manseng and Trousseau.

This is a distinctly low-tech operation that produces wines long on personality, even if they are "not technically spot on," as Badenhorst put it. He noted that he and his colleagues in Swartland pick about 15 days earlier than in Stellenbosch, and even though winemakers always talk about hang time, there's actually a bit less of that here. "I pick on psychological ripeness, and on freshness," he told me, adding that he never picks on Mondays or Fridays. "We have no choice here but to pick early and to work with sulfur."

Badenhorst does not own a destemmer or check his wines for the completion of malolactic fermentation. He co-ferments his blends in open-top fermenters and ages them in large foudres. Incidentally, Badenhorst makes a wonderfully complex sweet vermouth he calls Caperitif, using 45 different botanical ingredients, most of them local. Lot 3 of this elixir will soon reach the U.S. market.