2020 Skurfberg

Eben Sadie is a man of two passions…wine and the wave. I’ve no doubt his family is also high up on his list, but in my personal experience, these are what he dreams about. Hopefully, Sadie is still with us. He was about to celebrate a significant milestone by flying to Fiji to surf a famous, but no doubt dangerous, break. Couldn’t he just gather a few mates for a bit of karaoke? Far safer. Meeting him at his Swartland farm, I made sure that I had time to visit his small vat-room and tour his new acquisition of the neighbouring Rotsvas farm.

“We essentially started as a very tiny property,” Sadie explains, his dog running perilously close to his bakkie (pick-up truck) as we inspect the vines. “Of the original 17 hectares, only 8.5 was great soil, and so we planted three parcels: Slangdraai [snake bend], Twiswind [to argue with the wind] and Sonvang [sun-catch]. Still, as it stands, we never owned our old vines - we have about 25 hectares under lease contracts and those are predominantly very old parcels. There was one old vine parcel of Chenin Blanc that was literally 15 meters away from where our last vineyard stopped. I always walked there with my dogs and tasted the fruit over the last 15 years. I tried several times to buy it, but there was never an option [on the table]. So, in 2021, an opportunity presented itself whereby AA Badenhorst Wines and ourselves could buy the land that separated our properties. We managed to buy a small piece and Badenhorst the remainder [200 hectares]. So, we are true neighbours now. It just so transpired that after 14 years another neighbour that also owned this specific old vine parcel of Chenin agreed to a sale. Thus, we bought two pieces from two neighbours, and now the property stands at 37.5 hectares. In addition, we managed to acquire an exceptional two-hectare parcel named Rotsbank [rock shelf] and an additional five hectares of old vine Chenin Blanc called Antenna. Part of this parcel will ultimately make its way to Palladius once we have improved the viticulture and soil health. About 13 hectares of land have been cleared, and we are currently planting cereals and legumes. It has incredible soil, but we are in no hurry. For now, there are enough new additions that we first need to understand and farm well. It presents a massive opportunity, a responsibility we are happy to undertake. The timing is perfect since we have a solid, permanent team in the vineyards. We have a junior team in the group that is being trained and educated now, so they can grow with all the new responsibilities.”

I ask Sadie about recent developments apropos vinification since I last visited. “From 2015, we started trialing whole cluster and de-stemmed bunches to analyse the amount of acid that you lose in adding stems, especially in dry vintages. Since 2021, I don’t do any punch-downs - just wet the cap and spread the yeast. The alcoholic ferments are longer, about a month in concrete vats with no cooling as they peak at 24° to 25° Celsius. The Columella now spends six weeks on the skins.”

I tasted through Sadie’s complete range of 2021s plus a couple of 2020s a week later with Rosa Kruger, who has been instrumental in linking him with some of the Cape’s finest vineyards to create his much sought-after Old Vine Series. It’s probably playing the same old record in praising his entire range that possess so much nuance and character, cerebral yet delicious wines that you want to study as much as imbibe. Sadie has always been candid and critical where appropriate, occasionally scathing when it comes to his first vintages where his techniques were almost the antithesis of nowadays. I will let the tasting notes of his latest releases speak for themselves.

Finally, he mentioned his surfing adventure before signing off in his last message. “Fiji is a significant undertaking,” he wrote, “but I am excited. The rest is up to nature.” Just like wine, eh?