Last November I attended the sixth annual Celebration of Chardonnay at the De Wetshof Estate, in South Africa’s Robertson Valley. When I last visited South Africa, in 2004, I was more impressed by the beauty of its wine regions than by the wines themselves, but this time I was amazed at the progress that has been made. South African wine represents extraordinary value, and I tasted quite a few truly thrilling wines, including many exceptional chardonnays.
The conference was hosted by 67-year-old Danie de Wet, along with his sons Johann and Peter, genial giants who must have inspired terror in opponents during their rugby days. I doubt any visitors to their 1,480-acre estate ever rolled out the cliché about white wine drinkers being effete. The family started farming in the Cape Town region in 1700, and while the De Wetshof men are sophisticated world travelers, they seem first and foremost men of the soil—the embodiment of the rural Afrikaans tradition. Over dinner, as I sip a glass of the stunning 1993 De Wetshof Chardonnay, Johann tells me that his wife lords over him the fact that her family owns more land than his, the ultimate determinant of social status in this agricultural community.
For years Danie de Wet was a lonely advocate of South African chardonnay, which represented less than five percent of planted vineyards and tended to be a bit clumsy, often overoaked. Australia seemed to be the role model, but at the time Australian chards were about as subtle as the headlines in Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids. Among whites, sauvignon blanc was the star, although chenin blanc, known locally as steen, was by far the most widely planted, having arrived in the 17th century with the earliest Cape settlers, who mainly used it to make cheap plonk and brandy.
In 1968, Danie de Wet left the family farm to study oenology in Germany, with the aim of starting a winery back home. De Wetshof produced its first vintage in 1973. During his European sojourn de Wet developed a taste for chardonnay, and in 1981 De Wetshof became the first South African winery to market the varietal. However, the plant material in South Africa at the time was virused and inferior.
So, outing laws against the importation of vines, de Wet smuggled chardonnay into
the country from France - along with, accidentally, some inferior auxerrois—an act for which he was investigated and is now celebrated. The vines from de Wet’s original smuggling operation now provide the raw material for the estate’s top bottling, Bateleur (named after a local eagle), a powerful and complex chardonnay that’s one of South Africa’s best.
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