South Africa - Part III

In the fields

Many of the people we spoke to on our travels were eager to emphasise that their wines were made in the fields, rather than in the wineries. These people are called viticulturalists – the people responsible for growing and harvesting the grapes, and they would say that. Viniculturalists are the wine makers, the blenders, who practice their dark arts behind closed doors. More of them later, but everyone seemed to agree that minimal intervention is a pretty good thing, and that wines should reflect terroir.

Despite it being harvest time, we were fortunate enough to get to talk to quite a few of the growers, who turned out to be a highly idiosyncratic bunch. They were in a flat spin, as the week before, temperatures had risen to 48 degrees and vines were suffering from heat stress and dehydration just as they were approaching harvest.

Vines at Durbanville, suffering in the mid-day fire-pit.

To a man (and they were all men) they each enthused about the miraculous God-given qualities of their soils; the nuggety resiliance of their rootstock; the unique micro-climate that wrapped their fields like a duvet; the extraordinary sponge-like water-retention of their subsoils; the sweet cooling zephyrs blowing in from the sea that helped calm the fevered brow of their baking vines, etc - they were a deeply empassioned lot. If you think we are obsessed with the weather in Britain, you should go a few rounds with these guys, who wander around with one eye squinting at the sun and a wetted finger sticking in the air, testing the breezes. They tend their vines and their grapes like their own children, and have a shared obsession with bugs, infections, pests and interlopers of all kinds.

Fungus - the bogeyman

On the subject of infections, you'll often see rose bushes planted at the end of a row of vines. This is because the rose is apparently more susceptible to mildew than the vine, so when the viticulturalist identifies mildew on the rose, he has advance warning of possible outbreak on the grapes and can spray copper sulphate to protect his fruit. Unfortunately the fruit cannot then be picked for two weeks, so timing can be a bit tricky.

Happy vines giving us a cheery wave.

I took the photograph above from our speeding coach, and you can just about make out the roses planted at the end of the rows of vines. As you might have noticed, yellow hands had been fixed to the tops of vines, which was a bit weird, because they wave at you as you fly past. The hands weren't there to deter birds, as I first thought, but were a work of art, and a very chirpy one at that.

Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc are particularly susceptible to mildew as the bunches are very tight, and for this reason the leaf canopy is pruned in such a way as to encourage as much air circulation as possible.

Densely packed, tight clusters of Pinot Noir grapes, attracting mildew, intently.

Cabernet Sauvignon benefits from loose clusters of grapes and is less susceptible to mildew:

The more relaxed Cab Sauv letting it all hang out, chillin' in the breeze.
Apparently, after making love, they light up a cigarette.

Bug stuff

Mealie bugs are a particular problem in South Africa. They are a tiny little pest about the size of a pinhead and look like white dust around the base of a vine, but they can cause a lot of damage by sucking sap from the roots, in the process killing twigs and leaves. Quite interestingly, they secrete honeydew which ants love to eat, so the ants actively protect mealie bugs from other predators. At the Neetlingshof wine estate, the head viticulturist Professor Ebben Archer cunningly controls mealie bug infestation by targeting the ants that protect them, as ants are easier to deal with. Without their bodyguards, other predators are able to attack the mealie bugs, so there you go – problem solved.

Professor Ebben Archer on the right, Master of the mealie bug. Knows loads of odd stuff.

At the Laibach estate on the slopes of the Simonsberg, they deal with mealie bugs by breeding vast numbers of ladybirds and setting them loose in their vineyards, where they happily tuck into the mealies. So effective is this that they have adopted the ladybird as a logo and display it on their foil caps, and have even named one of their organic wines 'Ladybird'.

You wouldn't want to be a Luddite sparrow

Small birds are particularly irksome pests as they have a passion for grapes and, unchecked, will destroy acres of vines. Niels Verburg, a giant of an Afrikaans, makes the renouned Luddite Shiraz, and he deals with the problem in a typically robust manner by encouraging birds of prey in his vineyards, which attack the small birds.

He has installed tall poles throughout his vines for birds of prey to perch on, and has cut down the gum trees that ring his fields so there is no foliage for the fruit-eating birds to hide in.

Valter, one of the tall Poles employed to stand around the
Luddite vineyards, for hawks to perch on.

Incidentally, the gum tree is a prolific grower and as a consequence of the hard pruning, sends up large numbers of straight shoots, which are used for roofing, broom handles and stakes. When he uses them as stakes to support the vines, Niels rubs them with Sunlight soap (as opposed to Imperial Leather, that is), to deter insects.

Stone-throwing hooligans

Birds, however, pale into insignificance as a pest compared to the problems experienced by Pieter Visser of the Oak Valley estate in the Elgin Valley. Baboons are his nightmare – the troop of baboons, that is, that comes down out of the hills, ravishes his vines, gorges on grapes and vanishes into the night, like a simian SAS.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Pieter once lost two tons of fruit in two days, so he sent a gang of men to scare them away. They threw stones at the baboons, which are ferocious creatures, but the animals retaliated by throwing the stones back at the men, who promptly ran away. Baboon - 1, Man - 0. The baboons are protected, but Pieter chases them away by firing his shotgun into the air (though it occured to me in an uncharitable moment, that occasionally his aim may be off and that he might actually miss the air, as it were). These days, however, the apes recognise the sound of his truck’s engine and scarper when they hear it approaching, though they won’t clear off if any other vehicle approaches.

By all accounts, the Baboon problem in Bordeaux is insignificant by comparison.