Three generations, one small farm
Oupa planted the first bush vines in 1974 on a piece of land nobody else wanted — too dry, too stony, too far from town. Fifty years on, those vines are still working. We are the third generation to farm them.
Dry-farming
We don't irrigate. The vines send their roots deep into decomposed granite and find their own water. Yields are small — often less than a bottle per vine — but the fruit is concentrated, and the vineyards look after themselves once they know what's expected of them.
Low-intervention in the cellar
Wild yeast fermentations. Whole-bunch pressed whites. Foot-trodden reds in open concrete. Older French oak — never new. Minimum sulphur at bottling and nothing else added. If a wine wants to be unfined and unfiltered, that's how it goes into the bottle.
A working farm
Sheep graze the cover crop in winter. Guineafowl work the vineyard for snails. The tractor is the same one Oupa bought secondhand in 1981. We open the gates once a year for harvest — usually a Saturday in early February — and anyone on the mailing list is welcome to come and pick.
Come and pick with us in February
An early start, a shared breakfast under the pepper tree, and a morning in the vineyard. We'll email the date to the club and the mailing list a few weeks out.