26 November 2025
By: Malu Lambert
Schapenberg slopes sweep in every direction, rippling in and out of focus as if riding the wave of the southeaster. The wind streams past unconcerned by our presence, whipping through bushvines of mourvèdre like a caring but busy mother. Funneled in from the Atlantic, itself a hot, pulsing blue. Everything is soaked in energy, the filter dragged to saturation.
Waterkloof has honoured this ever-present element with its logo depicting Greek god Boreas, furiously, and in perpetuity, blowing gales.In a freshly unboxed glass, the wind finds its way here too, brushing up against it for a crystal ring of Om going seawards. If maths is the language of the universe, then surely wind is its sound.
We were here to become reacquainted with its 149-hectares, 56 under vine, as things, they say, have changed. What hasn’t is its wealth of aspects, meaning it can grow a number of varieties successfully, the chenin and sauvignon are particularly accomplished.The road still winds up, up, up along a fynbos trimmed road. The glass box of the winery is the only angular geometry this rolling, rolling landscape will allow.
Once famous for biodynamics with white horses working the vineyards, the farm is now two years into a regenerative farming programme. The Pechrons in retirement. Much of the old thinking persists; but the focus has shifted firmly onto soil health; so tilling is verboten, rather cover-cropping and compost tea are the tools. To get to grips with this, we’ve been taken on a joyride to different sections of the farm, tasting the wines in situ.
Wind is both friend and foe: it keeps fungal pressure down, tempers heat, and thickens skins for more concentrated flavour and hopefully shapes fine yet firm tannins. Yet it can batter vines mercilessly and rapidly dry out soils (hence the shift in farming). To mitigate damage, there are bushvines all around us. Crouched low to the earth, they are naturally armoured against the wind, in comparison to say trellises with their arms flung wide open.
In my glass is the Circle of Life Red 2023, majority mourvèdre from the block in front of us, corseted with syrah and grenache. It’s a shape-shifter of a wine; opaque lipstick red at the centre going translucent to the edges, gaudy, almost orange. A wine caught between states, neither polished nor rustic. On the edge of decay in the most delicious way; the moment before the fall: cured meats, potpourri, truffles. There’s no other word for it, it’s sexy; supine and languid on the palate, a cat curled in the sun.
The word Vacqueyras is summoned, that little brother of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, for the wine’s wild, gamey succulence; the governing wind a common denominator between places. Though whereas the wines there can be more brooding, inland and inward; this pocket looks out onto the sea, and delivers all the insouciance and levity that such company brings.
“Mourvèdre needs to see the sea,” says owner of the estate, Paul Boutinot, the well-known importer and distributor. “Every great mourvèdre I’ve ever tasted has been grown close to the ocean.”
There’s an old saying, ‘Mourvèdre needs its feet in water, head up to the sun and to see the sea’. Unlike most other grapes, Paul believes the humidity gained from ocean proximity is key for the late budding/ripening grape. Mourvèdre is thirsty. These characteristics make long, yet well timed, sunshine hours key in its development; though not too hot, nor too dry. The goldilocks zone is the sun interception between flowering and ripening and the exact window of this. Here in the air-conditioned bowl of the Schapenberg, summer stretches out long and gossamer, in other words, just right.
We have the wind, the sun, the sea; by all logic the Cape should be a kind of heartland for the grape. And when fruit grows under these conditions, you can almost abridge the whole nomenclature to a single word: more. It simply tastes like more.
Award-winning wine writer and critic Malu Lambert writes for a variety of international and local publications, including Jancis Robinson, Decanter, Club Oenologique and The Telegraph. Notably she won a Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ award, and as co-author of Klein Constantia: The Home of Vin de Constance she was awarded an OIV in Paris. Most recently she was a finalist 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards. Malu is also a taster for Platter’s, as well as being a regular on South Africa’s top judging panels. Abroad, she has judged for Decanter, IWSC and Concours Mondial. Malu has achieved DipWSET and is a Michael Fridjhon Wine Judging Academy alum.