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MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Swartland uses old and young in its journey to the new wave
Once a source of bulk wine and the embodinment of the KWV model, this region has embraced authentic winemaking
For most of the 20th century the Swartland, the region now so important to “new wave” Cape wine, was a bulk wine source for wholesalers. In the late 1990s a joint venture between Charles Back (Fairview), Gyles Webb (Thelema), John Platter and Jabulani Ntshangase (newly returned to SA from a job as a wine salesman in New York) became the catalyst for change. Called Spice Route, with its original brand home and cellar near Malmesbury, it brought a fine wine operation to what had up to then been co-op wine space. The partners appointed as the route’s cellarmaster young graduate winemaker Eben Sadie. After a few years he moved on and created his Swartland-based business, which became the poster boy for authentic artisanal winemaking in the Cape. This coincided with SA needing desperately to break with the industrial image that years of subservience to the KWV model had inevitably cultivated. Sadie worked with viticulturist Rosa Kruger, scouting out and producing wines from some of the l...
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