MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Ex Animo: a new lifeline for boutique wines

There are more than 550 producing wineries in the Cape, a significantly larger number than in 1994, though perhaps a little off the peak of about 20 years ago. Most of them produce less than 10,000 cases, and many bottle less than 6,000 dozen. It’s a safe prediction that the biggest challenge facing boutique producers is how to get their wines to consumers as
cost-efficiently as possible.

The best known of them sell by way of allocations via a mailing list, the dreamed of (but hardly ever attained) gold standard when it comes to these things. There are at most a dozen producers who can dispose of their entire production this way. Several of the most successful of them choose to put aside a little of what they could sell to consumers to make sure that there is stock available for fine wine retailers, high-end restaurants and specialist importers.

This means that there are at least 300 relatively small, craft-orientated wine makers who are forced to engage in the uncomfortable business of smousing their “works of art” in the hard and often unfriendly space of the retail trade and the highly contested space of private customers.

Fortunately for about 20 of them, David Clarke, an Australian who worked as a sommelier in his home base before settling in SA, has set up a specialist operation called “Ex Animo”. The business focuses on ensuring that some of the most individualistic of these producers are connected to buyers who seek their atypical and artisanal wines.

In keeping with the aesthetic of the business, Clarke put together an unshowy one-day wine event for his Gauteng customers, and chose as his venue the indisputably edgy space of the Victoria Yards in Bertrams. I used the morning to sample new vintages of wines whose trajectories I have been tracking, and to make several vinous discoveries. It was time well spent.

There were several very fine Cap Classiques: the 2018 vintage of Jane Eedes’s Dainty Bess (made entirely from pinot and with a suitably appropriate pale pink hue) is simply delicious. Nearly four years of lees contact has given it textural depth, though not at the expense of its finesse. Melissa Nelson’s Genevieve Blanc de Blanc 2018 (made with mainly Botrivier fruit) is fresh and nervy — in the best sense of the word. She also showed a late release 2013 which she has kept back while it evolves into something altogether more voluminous and substantial.

Ex Animo also handles Pieter Ferreira’s own brand (unsurprisingly called simply “Pieter Ferreira”.) While there are still a few bottles left of his splendid 2016 Blanc de Blancs, the 2017 has just come to market — after about 60 months on the lees — and is superb. Likewise his 2018 “Birdsong” chardonnay-pinot blend, which walks the tightrope of succulence and purity with great aplomb.

Franco Lourens — who worked for years with Chris Alheit — is now making his own wines under the Lourens Family Wines brand. His Lindi Carien white blend (verdelho, Grenache, colombard, palomino and Chenin) is nuanced, detailed and very fine. I was also mightily impressed by his Skuinskap Steen made from a single block of ancient Piekenierskloof Chenin: intense, yet subtle, with a lightness of touch despite real fruit concentration.

Bernhard Bredell’s Scions of Sinai wines are already much sought after — and for good reason. Try to find his Gramadoelas Grenache blanc from a site in the Klein Karoo, his Atlantikas pinotage, made like a pinot noir, and thus delicate, vinous and refined, and his Swanesang Syrah, spicy, though still with lovely linear fruit.

A few other discoveries from my time at the show: Lukas van Loggerenberg’s Break a Leg chardonnay produced from Polkadraai and Devon Valley fruit, and his Devon Valley merlot — which is really very fine; two wines from Jessica Saurwein — her fabulous 2023 riesling and her Om pinot noir made from the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley; John Seccombe’s Menagerie range, which has two delicious Chardonnays and a wonderfully textured Vermentino made from grapes sourced from Morgenster.