Most of South Africa’s wine is almost exclusively produced in the Cape Wine region. This is itself a rather big region, stretching over various different climate regions – from the cool climate of the Hemel and Aarde Valley, to the extremely hot Stellenbosch and Paarl region, to the temperate Cape Wine region. But every so often, you get the weird statistic that does not make sense on one’s graph. And finding a winery with a vineyard north-east in the Drakensberg region was one of those strange statistical blips that does not make sense. At least, for my brain having grown up in the Wine region of the country, finding a vineyard thousands of kilometres away is a strange thing. The nearest vineyards that I could find were 1300km away.
That said, we visited and tasted some wine in the incredible Drakensberg Mountain region, at the Cathedral Peak Wine Estate. And what an experience was this to say the least.
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My fiancé is not that much into wine, but when we saw the board advertising wine made with grapes grown in the area, we both wanted to take a look. The vineyards are about 900-1100 meters above sea level.
To put this into perspective, the Cape wine region is at almost sea level. This surely had an impact on the grapes, the plants, and probably the wild yeast as well!
I love experimentation, I love that there are people out there, artists in their own right, challenging the preconceived, the norms, the status quo. And this place does that indeed. From growing their vineyards almost a kilometre above sea level, to ageing their wines (even if only by accident) for many years beyond standard practice, the very setting itself allows you to think about the crazy wonder of this winery.
I focused on their red wines, which were all deep and full-bodied wines. But interestingly, they made a mistake on their labelling one year, and due to covid restrictions and lockdowns in the country (South Africa) they could do nothing about the wines. The result was that their one wine had to remain in the wine barrels for much longer than they intended. This wine is already a wine that remains longer in the barrel than usual, so the added time resulted in one of the strangest but one of the best wines I have ever tasted.
They also gave us a tasting of a unique white "red" wine. Usually, the grape variety Pinotage, a unique South African variety, is used for red wines. But in this case, they made a white pinotage!
First of all, the wine was extremely heavy, and it almost had an aged balsamic taste and mouthfeel to it. But overall, it was also just an incredible experience drinking the wine. My palate is not as refined as wine sommeliers, nor do I claim to know what I am doing/tasting, but the wine was so smooth, yet heavy; it was like something aged beyond what needed to be, but it worked. Sadly, this is the last time they will be doing this as for obvious reasons, it was mostly a “mistake”. But sometimes mistakes lead to developing new ideas, new recipes, or new methods. Mistakes are what gave us all of the diversity throughout life!
In any case, we decided to embrace the incredible views that was up for offer when we walked to the vineyard. Lucky for us, it was an incredibly beautiful day, with the sky almost inviting us just to remain under its touch. The setting, as I already said, was underneath the Drakensberg Mountains, an incredible setting in and of itself.
The building is nothing spectacular, it does not feel the same as wineries in the Cape region with buildings older than 300 years. But the place had its own beauty in the simplicity if offered.
It was tucked away deep into the mountains; it was not close to any town. I think the closest town was Winterton.
For its simplicity, it offered an incredible range of wines. I only bought the very old and strange wine (poetry and art in a bottle if you ask me) because we had only so much space for extra luggage (i.e., wine).
But if I was there with more space, I would have bought many more bottles to take home.
In the end, we left this place with a sense of wonder, because where in this world would you have drunk some wine made so close to the Drakensberg Mountains? I hope to go there again!
For now, happy drinking, safe travels, and stay well!
All of the musings and writings in this post are my own, albeit inspired by the wine and the high altitude for an ocean lover. All of the photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 or iPhone.
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