“Forget everything you’ve heard about South Africa from novels, nature films and lifestyle magazines, you’d best come and look for yourself how we make wine here,” Rolf Zeitvogel urged me over the phone. A German from Baden, Rolf is estate manager and winegrower at the Blaauwklippen Vineyards in the South African town of Stellenbosch. Within just a few years the trained cellarmaster at the estate belonging to the Munich entrepreneur Stefan Schörghuber – which though truly old (founded in 1690!) is largely unknown among wine cognoscenti, and supplies the likes of Arabella Hotels, the Paulaner Brauerei, Flugzeug-Leasing and the Bayerische Immobilien Group – has transformed this farm into a model vineyard.

Several months and eleven flying hours after his call I find myself seated next a beaming Rolf Zeitvogel in a horse-drawn carriage riding across the blue granite of the 80-hectare Blaauwklippen estate. Zeitvogel’s eyes sparkle as he tells me of everything that he, his colleague Piet Geldenhuys and their 120 staff have achieved over the last few years. The old Zinfandel vines have been uprooted and replaced by a new clone from California, grass sewn between the rows of vines, a new method of pruning introduced, the old cellar with its clay and straw roof restored, the big old oak barrels lined with glass fibre, the range of 27 wines reduced to nine and, and, and… Now the vineyard with its manor house in the Cape Dutch style is resplendent in all its beauty, set among well-kept gardens and lawns that are ideal for picnics in the summer, with a modern hospitality centre, a coach museum and a restaurant serving traditional Cape food.

The new mood of optimism in Blaauwklippen is symptomatic for the entire wine industry in South Africa. Everyone is busy restoring and modernizing, old vines are being replaced, new vineyards founded and more land made over for planting vines. Thanks to a new liberal law almost anyone, in principle, can grow wine – providing the climate remains cooperative. Unlike in Europe, South Africa places no restrictions on the strains of wine that may be cultivated. Consequently, one finds the full range of French, Italian, Spanish and German grapes, from Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Colombard to Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz and Zinfandel, in addition to South Africa’s sole indigenous grape variety, Pinotage – a crossing of Cinsault with Pinot noir. Numerous vineyards maintain model gardens where different varietals are grown for research. In style many South African winegrowers tend towards European wines, with a particular preference for the French region of Bordeaux. With almost youthful insouciance they imitate the kinds of wines that appeal to them from the Rhône, Burgundy, Languedoc or California’s Napa Valley – or simply invent their own “Cape Style” strongly based on Pinotage.

Since early 1998 André van Rensburg has been winemaker at the Vergelegen Estate in Somerset and is, like Rolf Zeitvogel, a stickler for quality. The grapes for his wines come from four different farms, some of which are cooled and shipped from over 400 kilometres away. It’s worth the trouble: in 2005 Vergelegen was crowned “New World Winery of the Year” by the US magazine “Wine Enthusiasts”. This title can only draw a laugh from van Rensburg, given how Vergelegen was founded in 1700. By 2 February 1659 Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company was already pressing the first grapes in Cape Town’s Table Bay below Table Mountain. “May the Lord be praised,” he noted gratefully in his diary. South Africa’s entire wine region covers 101,607 hectares (2005), stretching over 800 kilometres from Lutzville in the northwest, all the way round the Cape of Good Hope as far as Knysna deep in the southeast. The share of red grapes is currently around 45.7 % – and is rising. In 2005 the country produced 15 million hectolitres of wine, of which two thirds were quality wines. 2.8 million hectolitres were exported, mostly to Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and the USA.

The key issue of the moment for the South African wine industry is integrated cultivation, since conserving natural resources and protecting the environment are felt to be important. At considerable expense areas of stepped landscape have been freed of “aliens”, plants from other countries that have proliferated in South Africa, and renaturalized. Marce Ventrella, viniculturist at Graham Beck Wines in Franschhoek and responsible for the soil, the vines and irrigation, points proudly to the little flowers and grasses growing between the rows of vines. He scoops up a handful of earth, takes a deep sniff and holds it out to me. “That’s how good earth smells!”

By now almost all of South Africa’s winegrowers operate integrated vineyards, saving on water consumption, fertilizers and pesticides. Nowhere do people argue as candidly and honestly about the pros and cons of wine additives as here, where adding sugar is not allowed but acid is. Those who shun this option grow their white wine in cooler areas near the sea – or switch to red wine right away, but then have the problem of 15 or more percent alcohol. “Wine is not just a drink, drinking wine is a lifestyle,” Adi Badenhorst explains, who has been a winemaker at Rustenberg Wines in Stellenbosch since 1999. He lovingly describes the extraordinary aromas that grapes are given by the sun, especially in the morning and the evening.

For further information: www.wosa.co.za