“Want to try something funky?” Adi Badenhorst asks, as he grabs a half-empty, unlabeled bottle from his kitchen fridge and beckons me outside. Soon we are seated on the front porch of his farm house, looking at an expansive view out over the Swartland fields turned brown and yellow in autumn. He poured us each a taster of his latest experiment. “It’s Chenin Blanc. We made one barrel, from four different vintages,” he says, grinning, then adds offhandedly, “It’s just for auction, you know.” The wine is quite oxidised, with a distinct fino sherry flavour, yet there is some delicious fruit in it. This is just the kind of thing that has made Adi Badenhorst a household name. That is, if your household is into drinking some of the most unique and interesting wines made in South Africa.
Adi is a real character. He sports a silver-highlighted ponytail and sideburns long enough to land a plane on. It is no stretch of the imagination to see him as a 19th century pirate. He is undeniably confident, yet simultaneously self-deprecating and seemingly never serious about his wines, constantly playing down his successes. During our discussion, he repeatedly refers to himself as simply being “rustig” (relaxed). As the third generation winemaker in his family (his grandfather made wine at Groot Constantia and his father at both Buitenverwachting and Constantia Uitsig), Adi spent nine years as a winemaker at the esteemed Stellenbosch estate, Rustenberg. In 2008 he packed it all in and bought a 60-hectare piece of land in the Paardeberg with an abandoned winery and a “dodgy 60′s house,” as he jokingly refers his home. Just down from the house is a small aviary, evidence of another hobby. “We’re going to build a proper one,” he says chuckling, “My wife says this one looks a bit like a squatter camp, so my birds are lodging at the farm in the Karoo till then.” Adi might just be the only winemaker who breeds parrots, but then it somehow is not at all surprising that he does.
Why the Paardeberg? “It’s the old vines,” he answers, “There are some great old vines; Chenin Blanc and Grenache here.” He also mentions that the handful of new vineyard areas have yet to prove themselves in the long term, while here the land has been proven. He takes us to a Grenache vineyard, planted in 1951, where the thick vines’ roots reach out of the granitic soil like young oak trees. With only 24-hectares of his property under vine and much of it low-yielding, older vines, he needs to purchase fruit from neighbouring farms. As a result his wines are mostly blends. They are collectively sold under the Badenhorst Family Wines label. The A.A. Badenhorst red and white blends are the flagships, and each vintage sells out before the next release. His second-tier range is Secateurs, which is less expensive but still impressive. Both ranges have possibly the most distinctive and quirky label design of any South African wine. If you have seen a bottle you will not forget it and rightly so because the label is an important symbol of recognition in the modern, saturated market.
Adi’s old winery was last used in the 1940′s and a lot of work has gone into its restoration. On one side, there is a restaurant-size espresso machine and a row of barrels. On the other, a small desk in the corner, several large wooden foudres and a row of cement tanks with their undulating facing-wall stretching the length of the winery. “We’re making wine the same way it was last done here,” he mentions, “The only difference is we now have cool fermentation.” We taste some from a few tanks. All have a strong mineral element to them, most notably the 2009 A.A. Badenhorst white, a rich, dense blend with good acidity to keep it fresh. Adi’s using Clairette Blanc, Roussanne, Verdehlo and other lesser-used varietals in his wines. Walking through the cellar, the barrels have some pretty interesting names written on them in chalk, like “007 / Licence to Kill” and amusingly, “Dodgy.” Nothing seems to be done by convention here, which probably explains why his wines stand out so much.
He is excited about a new project of his, making sherry, and he has got some 90-year old casks for its production on the way. He talks about the old Colombard and Chenin vines that are perfect for sherry, but characteristically underplays himself by saying, “I’m not really sure how to do it.” Perhaps he really is not sure how to do a lot of things or he is just very lucky, but both are unlikely. Despite his dismissive nature and constant joking, his wines are proof of the talents that allow him to be an adventurous winemaker.
While we taste his wines, his four-year-old son, Samuel, almost certain to be the fourth generation Badenhorst winemaker, scoots up and down the cellar on his plastic motorbike, keeping us entertained. At the house earlier, Adi sat with his seven-month-old daughter, Ana, on his lap while we chatted. Family is definitely a priority for him. “Work and life are hard to separate,” he says, and then gestures around him, “Here it all mingles, as it should.” He looks off into the distance. “The intermingling destinies of man and vine,” he adds rather profoundly, contemplating a second before bursting into laughter.
Badenhorst Family Wines
www.aabadenhorst.com
(This piece originally appeared in G&W Magazine.)
Okay, Sunday nights are usually that last little bit of ‘weekend time’ for me, a time to relax and enjoy one more night of calm before the weekly storm. Not this Sunday. Instead I invited a few friends over for dinner, cooked an Italian lamb stew (with olives, tomatoes and capers, mmm) and smashed some decent vino. Stuff like this Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir 2007, all the way from Sonoma, California. “Kah-li-fornia,” as the Governator would say, makes some bloody good wine and we all know this. They were the ones to show up the French at their own game, back at that controversial tasting in Paris circa 1976 when the French judges blind-tasted a collection of French and Californian wines and saw their own arses, voting the Californian wines as the best! You can relive this in the rather humorous movie, Bottle Shock. No overstatement, but this single event pretty much opened up the world to the idea that good wine could be made outside of Europe.
Anyways, this Rivers-Marie ‘Occidental Ridge Vineyards’ Pinot Noir is a real beauty. Only five barrels were made, from three different coastal vineyards, all cool climate. What does this mean? It means that the wine is classic Pinot – light in colour, delicate in the mouth and subtle (but not short) in flavour. Aside from the most beautiful mixed, ripe red berry flavours, it actually has a touch of chocolate on the palate that hints at American oak being used, but this isn’t the case. A side note: if you appreciate design, you can’t help but love the label too. Everyone ‘oooh’d’ at it. A great Pinot, but at over R300 per bottle (I paid $45) I think the guys at Newton-Johnson, Oak Valley and Sumaridge offer much greater value.
We also drank the Sequillo Red Blend 2006, a heady blend of Grenache, Carignan, Mourvedre and Cinsault. Surprisingly, this big Swartland red wasn’t too much after the delicate Pinot, but actually had plenty of finesse itself. I’m a massive fan of this style of wine, which to me is far more representative of South Africa than the heavy-handed Bordeaux-style blends so many farms produce – wines that you have to chew as much as drink. I think a big reason why South Africa is obsessed with these wines are the fat cat owners behind the big estates who secretly wish they owned Chateau Margeaux. They want to make the same big, epic wines and it’s their show, hence their young winemakers must oblige. Given true free reign in the cellar, these young, talented winemakers would almost certainly be doing something more interesting, and probably better suited to their region. But then, with hundreds of millions of Rands spent by the owners, the young winemakers are not going to do anything too risky. The result: average wines that cost a lot to make.
Anyways, we also smashed some Julien Schaal Syrah 2008, an earthy and robust wine from Elgin & Walker Bay vineyards that could do with another year in the bottle, and then followed up with the Rudera Syrah 2006, which is on my top five list of Syrah’s at the moment. The fruit comes from vineyards near Botrivier, grown in what Jasper calls ‘koffieklip’ soils. He says he searched for an area conducive to making Pinot Noir for his shiraz vineyard, wanting the cooler climate for the more delicate pepper notes it brings to the finished product.
Sunday’s are not the best night for get-togethers. As usual, we sunk too many wines and the night ended with us fighting over iTunes trying to give our favourite songs airtime at high volume. Which is why today I’m probably not as productive as I should be, but then I’ve got a great playlist to show for it.
Situated at the end of Short Street, that short er, street across from The Royal Hotel in Riebeek Kasteel that has a few cute shops, a wine store and hosts a market every few Saturdays, Bar Bar Black Sheep is a rather ridiculous restaurant. Firstly, it’s ridiculously quaint. Assorted wooden tables and chairs. A leafy courtyard. Quirky old Scope magazine covers in the bathroom. Kitch wall art. A rather cosmopolitan crowd that seems to frequent it. The odd neighbourhood dog that wanders in. And an old railroad board on the wall with food quotes scribbled in chalk. The top one yesterday read: “I love you like a fat kid loves cake.” Perhaps the first restaurant to quote rapper 50 Cent on food?
Secondly, it’s got some ridiculously good wines on the list, almost entirely regionally loyal to the Swartland. Aprilskloof Red Red 2006 at R80 per bottle may just be the best ‘house wine’ I’ve had in recent memory. House wine? This stuff puts the big-talking, Ferrari-driving Stellenbosch set to shame. Local is lekker here, and though there are some bargains, the list also includes the big hitters: Chris Mullineux’s wine is there, as is Eben Sadie’s and Adi Badenhorst’s. Tempting options all round really, so why bother buying anything from outside the area? Makes sense to me. We also smashed a bottle of the Lammershoek Roulette Blanc 2008, a firm, steely white blend of Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay and Viognier that has great acidity.
Then of course, the food. It’s ridiculous. Ridiculously tasty, well-cooked and cleverly put together. Creative yet not overly constructed, it is cuisine that belies the casual nature of the place. How about vine-leaf wrapped sardines stuffed with garlic, olive and chili. Or a nice cold gazpacho, served as a terrine. Or chorizo sauteed with red wine and onion. Or marinated octopus tentacles. Or how about cacciatore made from rabbit, lamb loin and pork belly. It was hard to choose so we had it all. You can’t really go wrong here, which is hmmm, how shall we say… yes, rather ridiculous.
I’ve had some pretty creative food here over the years. And the chef is not shy to use offal, something I think is applaudable. True, this isn’t light food that you could eat often, but this isn’t the kind of place most people get to often. So it works. The service is also keen and efficient, with some small glitches that are easily forgivable. Like yesterday, when our waiter’s cellphone rang while he opened our wine. But with a rather cool West-African sounding song as a ring tone, it didn’t spoil the vibe at all.
Overall though, perhaps most ridiculous is that Bar Bar Black Sheep isn’t better recognized as a top restaurant. Maybe because it is so casual. Or because it’s tucked away in Riebeek Kasteel, though the town is certainly not the sleepy country spot it once was. Either way, you’d think word would be out about this place as a top winelands restaurant. You’d think they’d be booked every day through summer. You’d think pictures of the chef would be on magazine covers. But it isn’t, they aren’t and the chef hasn’t graced any cover. Though if you’ve sat in the courtyard after a terrific Sunday lunch and enjoyed a good espresso with a grappa, it’s not really anything to complain about. At least you already know about it.
www.bbbs.co.za
I really hate anticipation. Namely when one anticipates a delicious dinner at a good steakhouse with a close friend and instead one gets them bailing on dinner at the last minute so they can drink bad tequila at the Fat Cactus and send you drunk texts all night. Not cool. So if/when this happens to you, I suggest you do what I did. In fact, it’s something I think EVERY wine lover should do from time to time: drink the best bottle of wine you have on hand. All by yourself.
Last night, this bottle happened to be a random bottle Eben Sadie had given me, unlabeled aside from a small sticker proclaiming it “2003 Cask”. He’d told me it was Syrah. And he told me he’d made 300 bottles that spent 48 months in oak. He also told me he’d done “nothing to the wine: no sulphites, no fining, no filtering – nothing!” So that’s one barrel of wine sitting away for four years in the corner of his winery, which at one point three years ago he decided to rack off into some bottles, cap them with a wax seal and that’s it.
That’s pretty different to how he makes his wines. Columella, he’s usually used a combination of 500l barrels and old 2,000l (I think) wooden casks, or foudres. But he stays away from 100% new oak, since it masks the fruit. He was one of the pioneers of using old ‘foudres’ and letting the wine do its thing without massive oak interference. The same way they do it in the Rhone. Since Columella became a cult wine, there are many using this technique. Now he’s experimenting with clay pots and other things. He’s definitely one of the wine mavericks out there.
But to get back to this syrah… The thing was pretty meaty. Big, dark fruit flavours and quite funky at first. Lots of Pinot Noir-like truffle notes. It opened up to show a more delicate side though. Raspberry and black cherry fruits emerged and the tannins softened up. A chalky edge stayed, but it was pleasant. With seared sirloin and some sauteed mushrooms in red wine (okay, so I used 50ml to cook with), it went perfectly.
I knocked the whole bottle back and then had a few sips of 2009 Lammershoek straw wine, made from Chenin Blanc. It felt great to finish a whole bottle of something so good on my own. A little selfish maybe, but not much. I did feel pretty oiled after. Not enough to send drunk texts. Or open another bottle of something. But I was definitely er, intoxicated. And the good thing is I didn’t have a hangover this morning. Not even a hint.
Eben Sadie’s wines.
Who is the Foodie? It doesn’t really matter. Bacon is god. Wine cures anything. If you believe those two facts, then we’re going to get on fine. This means you have discovered the power of food to make life better. This knowledge is imperative to the art of living well.
