2021 Pinot Noir Saurwein Om

Jessica Saurwein is a small producer with just two Pinot Noirs and a Riesling to her name. Yet such is the quality that Saurwein has successfully built up a loyal following. It has not been an easy path. Saurwein told me how in the early days, after completing a BSc in Oenology at Stellenbosch University, she had to convince older, male winemakers that her ambition was to make wine and not just escort people around estates (as she did with myself when I visited Bouchard-Finlayson in 2011.) But, perhaps borrowing some of Samantha O’Keefe’s steely resolve, she took the plunge and now sources from three sites in Elandskloof Valley at 700m altitude, one on Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge and a Riesling from the Elgin Valley. (As her name suggests, her ancestors in the 17th century made “sour” wine for the Emperor of Austria.) Having recently moved with her young family to what sounds like the middle of nowhere, she hopes that eventually she will have her own vines to farm, though that’s a few years away. I have enjoyed Saurwein’s elegant and beguilingly pure Pinot Noirs from her maiden vintage and I must commend her take on Riesling that manages to impart that crucial sense of tension often missing elsewhere in the Cape.