One day, roughly 2 years ago, whilst visiting my Carignan block between Hopefield and Darling (West Coast), I received a SMS from a guy who needed me to be in Cape Town within the next hour. Being in the middle of nowhere I asked the farmer the shortest way to Cape Town (“kortpad kaaptoe” in Afrikaans – one of the 11 official languages of South Africa). In directing me, he said to drive towards the Carignan, past the Shiraz and Fernao Pirez….”The FERNAO WHAT??”, I asked him.”Fernao Pirez” he replied. Bush vines, unirrigated, planted by his grandfather 38 years ago.
So, on my shortest route to Cape Town ( the “kortpad kaaptoe”), I found Fernao Pirez. – a varietal I had never tasted a wine of and something I never knew existed in South Africa. And that brings me to something so very important to me. I love stories. So if I find a story like this – a bit of family history stumbled upon on the shortest route to Cape Town – I want to tell that story, represented by a bottle of wine, to as many people as possible. So it is not always about the wine. In fact it is never only about the wine. In life everything needs to be seen in context. If you take things out of context, wine becomes one dimensional and boring in a way. So I selected a few rows of vines.
Seeing that I knew nothing about the varietal I decided to pick the grapes based on taste, not by monitoring the sugar. Up to then, most of the Fernao Pirez grapes went to a kooperative winery. It then disappeared into a massive blend. Never before had the Fernao Pirez been bottled as a single cultivar. So with no past records I went to the grapes twice a week. Tasting it! I waited and waited until the grapes were 100% ripe, bursting of flavor. We picked it and I made the wine in a 100% natural way.
My one liner tasting note: massive food wine that smells and tastes to me like a Durban spice shop! So very exciting!
