| Posted on Friday, 25 February 2011
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| My South African Wine Heroes - Vol #5 - Adi Badenhorst |
In the contemporary wine industry, the story is more important than the terroir, and social media can be truly a great platform to achieve that. However, for the great story you need great people. Adi Badenhorst is undoubtedly one of the great South African wine personalities.
Adi Badenhorst is a true Ambassador of Swartland in any vinous sense of the word. When drinking Adi’s wines from Swartland, it is easy to feel the beautiful minerality and complexity of the Swartland terroir. Adi is an easy going, warm personality. Salt of the Earth! When he spoke about all phases of winemaking one thing caught my attention. Namely, any time when he attempted to describe the grape handling or grape crushing he used adjectives such as cruel, brutal, bloody and merciless, in other word he genuinely treated grapes as human beings and showed empathy for them. Awesome!
Watching Adi in action at our Cape Wine Academy classes was amusing, entertaining and highly educational. He shared some of his profound secrets with the class and demonstrated genuine passion for what he does - that is obviously unique property of great artists or artisans and we tremendously enjoyed that. With his cool style of humour and occasional inclusion of superbly colorful and informative Afrikaans words both informal and winemaking-related, he managed to explain intricacies of winemaking process to us within a couple of hours.
Adi's winemaking style requires all fruit - red and white - to be whole bunch-handled, and no crushing or destemming takes place. The whites are tranferred directly to old casks or into concrete tanks for fermentation and ageing. The red grapes are fermented in concrete tanks and open wooden kuipe. The post fermentation maceration is lengthy - up to 4 months, where after the wines are put to cask or 4000 litre foudres. No additions are made to the grapes other than necessary sulfur before and after fermentation.
AA Badenhorst Family Wines are made on Kalmoesfontein farm in the Paardeberg area; it falls in the Swartland appellation, between Malmesbury and Wellington. The two cousins Hein and Adi Badenhorst have beautifully restored a neglected cellar on the farm that was last used in the 1930s, in order to make natural wines in the traditional manner. The vineyards are very old bushvines: Chenin Blanc (average 40 years), Cinsault or Cape Hermitage (45 years), and Grenache (58 years). The vines are unirrigated and farmed as biologically as possible. The vineyards are planted on East, North and South facing slopes bringing tremendous variety to the fruit. Fruit from other selected sites within the appellation are also purchased to complete the final blends. Only two wines are made and bottled under the AA Badenhorst range, a white blend (Chenin Blanc, Roussanne, Grenache Blanc and Gris, Verdelho, Colombar, Viognier, Chardonnay and Semillon) and red blend (Shiraz, Mourvedre, Grenache and Cinsault). Adi stated that he derived inspiration for the AA Badenhorst iconic wines from both great old wines of South Africa and discarded varietals, the bottles of which can be found in the forgotten corners of old cellars before modern methods and fame came along and changed the purity of wines.
Madame Jancis Robinson, probably one of the top female palates on this planet wrote about AA Badenhorst White 2007, AA Badenhorst Red 2006 and Secateurs Chenin Blanc 2009 Swartland. Madame Robinson gave Adi’s delicious red blend (AA Badenhorst Red 2006) 18/20 points and wrote: "Shiraz 92%, Mourvèdre 5%, and Cinsault 3%. Seriously good South African red; I kept coming back to it. There is such confidence and complexity here (even after a week in an opened bottle). Some minerals, no greenness, not a hint of burnt rubber! Very serious, thoughtfully made wine that is still chewy but is SO sophisticated. Limpid and lovely texture. Layers. Leather, treacle, no sweetness, some minerality, schist? But it’s cool overall. Not quite ready but a coiled spring. 14.5% of alcohol". (You can see the entire article here: http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/a200911093.html)
It is wonderful when highly respected international wine experts recognize and prize true South African wine heroes and their wines. Adi Badenhorst is definitely and undoubtedly one of these heroes!
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POST # 137-2508
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Thursday, 03 March 2011
My South African Wine Heroes - Vol #6 - Madame Elizabeth Elsie Pells |
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Friday, 25 February 2011
My South African Wine Heroes - Vol #5 - Adi Badenhorst |
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Tuesday, 22 February 2011
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Thursday, 17 February 2011
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Wednesday, 24 November 2010
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