More about Badenhorst

Swartland means “black land” in Afrikaans, but if you visit this rugged country north of Cape Town you’ll see white, sandy hills and rocky valleys marked with the wild shrubs and herbs they call “Fynbos,” or “fine bush.” If you’re up in the hills before sunset you’ll think the desert-like heat could never fade, but once the sun goes and the wind comes, you’re freezing and wonder how the vines can survive a night, let alone a year.

Nothing here is quite as it seems. That sand, for instance, isn’t sand. It’s decomposed granite, which might not sound so different but matters to the vines. For one thing, decomposed granite holds a lot more water than sand: essential in this drought-prone land. For another, the granite is rich in quartz, iron, mica and other minerals, and the roots dive deep in the granite like they don’t in sand, and all those minerals infuse the wine with character much more complex than the sunny days and even the cold nights alone could promise.

The people too. When you meet Adi Badenhorst and his team it feels like you’ve found the wine party. They have a turntable in the cellar, vintage calendars on the walls, and they don't treat tasting here like going to church or a museum. This is not Bordeaux. Adi built a pizza oven off his winery and winemakers from all over South Africa meet there to drink wine, eat pizza, taste widely, and drink more wine.

But ask Adi or his team about any of their choices (like why they co-ferment the red varieties rather than blend them, or age the Chenin on the gross lees) after a joke or two you’ll get an answer that is the opposite of glib, the product of years of thought and experimentation. These are hard-won lessons and deeply learned.

Most of all, it’s the wines themselves. Even Adi’s entry-level bottles, the Secateurs white and red, are first about sheer pleasure. They’re priced like party wines. Pull the cork and you can drink them out of a tumbler. But slow down just a minute and you’ll see something altogether different. Beyond the deliciously forward fruit, these are wines of a particular complexity: granite minerality, the wild herb of the Fynbos. They are finely structured, with acidity that would shock you if you hadn’t been on the hill when the wind picked up and the sun went down.