The Wilder Shore of Chardonnay: South Africa

“Look, a leopard!” exclaims Abrie Bruwer as he excitedly points to tracks in the dusty soil.

Needless to say, we’re not in Napa anymore. Bruwer is winemaker at Springfield Estate, a winery close to Robertson, South Africa, three hours’ drive northeast of Cape Town. Springfield sits on the bank of the Breede River, whose waters make Robertson’s vineyards an oasis of green in a semi-desert and, at least occasionally, lure leopards down to drink.

Despite the unlikely setting, Bruwer is at the center of one of the most exciting wine revolutions in the world today. At a recent blind tasting in Europe of top Chardonnays from around the world, everyone expected that the top wines would come from the grape’s homeland, Burgundy. But as the bottles were uncovered afterward, one shock followed another.

First place went to the 1996 “Ashbourne” Chardonnay from Hamilton Russell Vineyards in Walker Bay, South Africa, second to the 1998 Chardonnay from Mulderbosch in Stellenbosch, South Africa, third to the 1996 “reserve” Chardonnay from Rochioli Vineyards in Sonoma County. Fourth came the 1997 Velich “Tiglat” Chardonnay from Burgenland, Austria, and fifth the 1999 Rustenberg “Five Soldiers” Chardonnay from Stellenbosch, South Africa. The highest rated white Burgundy placed 15th.

Though Springfield’s 1999 “Methode Ancienne” Chardonnay was not among that top five, it wouldn’t have been far behind. Made under extremely trying circumstances, it is as elegant as it is rich, discreetly oaky with an intense orange peel character.

How can Bruwer make such elegant wines in the semi-desert of Robertson? “The desert climate is actually an advantage,” he says. “While it can get real hot during the day, the temperature plummets when night turns. Those cool nights prevent the aromas and acids being burned out of the grapes.”

The climate and the leopards are not the only challenges Bruwer faces in making his Chardonnay. “Methode Ancienne” refers to the fact that the wine is barrel fermented with wild yeast from the vineyard. Fermentation can take months, during which bacterial spoilage is a danger since the wine is unsulfured. In 2000 there were so many problems there will be no “Methode Ancienne.”

Chardonnay is a newcomer to South Africa, first arriving during the apartheid era in the suitcases of vintners anxious to beat the government’s policy that effectively banned the introduction of new varietals. It was Bruwer’s neighbor, Danie de Wet of the De Wetshof Estate, who made the first successful South African Chardonnays more than a decade ago. Then the variety accounted for 1.5% of South Africa’s vineyard acreage, compared with 5.5%, or 12,500 acres, now.

The recent leap forward in wine quality has come about because South Africa’s leading winemakers have reduced crop sizes in the vineyard and taken the kind of risks in the cellar that Bruwer does. Today South African Chardonnays have more subtle oak character and more intense fruit aroma than before. Though they often have more than 13% alcohol (14% is not rare), the wines have more freshness and taste lighter than Californian Chardonnays with a comparable alcoholic content. The combination of liveliness and balance promises that they should age more gracefully than the wines of the past.

“There is now really no excuse for producing Chardonnay that will not hold for a few years in bottle, and a decade ought to be no problem with the healthy natural acidities we get,” says Mike Dobrovic of Mulderbosch in Stellenbosch, a pioneer of the new-style Chardonnays. The 1993 Mulderbosch Chardonnay was his first serious experiment with the new winemaking ideas and it is still full of life. “The only thing wrong with it is that the oak is a little strong,” says the self-critical winemaker.

Raised in Yugoslavia, Dobrovic came to Mulderbosch in 1989. Since then he has become a master at marrying oak and the vivid peach and passion fruit aromas that his grapes give. “The harmony is so much better if the wines spend a full year in oak, rather than only six months,” he says. That’s how his 1998 Chardonnay was vinified, and it is explosively fresh, with an intense dried-peach character and an extremely elegant and persistent aftertaste. Delicious now, it should easily live up to Dobrovic’s goal of surviving a decade in bottle in good shape.

The weakness of South Africa’s currency makes for modest prices and has fueled an export boom for producers such as Glen Carlou, just north of Stellenbosch, which sends more than 20,000 cases of Chardonnay a year to the U.S. In spite of that scale of production, winemaker David Finlayson also manages to combine seamless texture and elegant balance. His 1999 Chardonnay has intense lime, pear and toast aromas and a supple aftertaste. “The quality of the grapes is the most important thing,” he says. “And though the climate is basically Mediterranean, we benefit from cooling sea breezes almost every afternoon.”

On the Indian Ocean coast near Hermanus, those sea breezes have the force of modern air conditioning. This leads to the crispest and most elegant South African Chardonnays, most notably those from Hamilton Russell Vineyards, where the grapevines are grown less than two miles from the ocean.

“People always told us we make very Burgundian wines, but when we examined the climatic statistics back in 1993, we were surprised to find that it is much warmer here than in Burgundy,” owner-director Anthony Hamilton Russell says. “Now I’m sure it’s the clay-rich, shale-derived soil which is responsible for the wines’ style.”

Hamilton Russell, 39, was a merchant banker in London before returning to South Africa after the fall of apartheid to run the wine estate his father established during the late 1970s. The most important change he made to the Chardonnay production was pulling all the vines planted on sandy soils. (This land is now planted with Sauvignon Blanc and is sold under the Southern Wright label). The 1999 Chardonnay he has crafted with winemaker Kevin Grant has a complex lemon, smoke and hazelnut character and is tight and sleek without being lean. It is just beginning to open up.

With his wild black locks and bubbling enthusiasm, Adi Badenhorst, Rustenberg’s new winemaker, may be the opposite of the cultivated and cosmopolitan Hamilton Russell, but he shares the latter’s belief that the secret to making great Chardonnay is, in his words, “Pick fully ripe grapes and capture all that’s good in them.” Rustenberg’s 1999 “Five Soldiers” is a rich, grand wine packed with passion fruit character and features a breathtakingly long, clean aftertaste.

The 2000 and 2001 vintage wines tasted from cask at Hamilton Russell and at Rustenberg in Stellenbosch suggest that, rather than having reached the end of a learning curve, South Africa’s leading winemakers are just beginning to master the Chardonnay grape.

When the spectacular 2000 and 2001 “Five Soldiers” march out of the Rustenberg cellars, there are going to be even more upsets in Chardonnay blind tastings.

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Pigott is a British journalist and wine writer.