About 2 months ago it was decided that I would go to South Africa to source a new wine program.  Because I work at Precept, this was not a belaboured process; there were no meetings, no committees, no market research to determine the feasibility of the project.  I was at a bar with Andrew, the owner of Precept, and Petre, who works selling bulk wine from South Africa and whom I now consider a good friend.  "Why don't you go to South Africa and find a wine.  A good, AMAZING, red blend.  Old vines, young emergent winemakers, a premium $20-30 bottle of wine that really shows off the best of what's going on in South Africa right now."

Two weeks later, after some brief conversations with the most patient wife in the world, I was in possession of a round trip ticket to Capetown. At that point in time I could count the number of South African wines that stood out in my mind on half of one hand.  But this is part of what I do, and its one of the best things any winemaker I know gets to do. Maybe I'll make some t-shirts that echo those un-PC t-shirts that I would buy at the military surplus store when I was a kid: "Become a winemaker, travel to exotic destinations, meet interesting people, and drink with them."

This blog will be the story of that adventure.  I'm not going to pretend that South Africa is the newest emergent wine region in the world.  Hell, they've been growing grapes for so long that the colonists to Australia got their first vines from what we would back then have considered old South African vines.  But its not a region that gets a lot of play in the US and its certainly not a region that I would guess jumps to mind when you think to go buy a bottle of really special wine.  Truth be told, I've been sourcing out of South Africa for other projects for a little more than a year now and I've been actively looking at the region as a source of quality affordable bulk for about 3 years now, so I do know a bit about the region, but the premium side of things will entirely new.  I'll finally see more of SA than the wine region map that has been sitting on the wall of my lab for the last 3 years.

To prepare, one of the first things I did was to walk down the street to the wine shop and buy a bottle of every South African red sold for more than $15/bottle.  There were 3, Chocolate Block, Chakalaka, and The First Lady Cabernet.  I know, its a tough job.  None of the three contained any of the ubiquitous Pinotage that SA is known for, but all shared a certain umami flavor element that I am hard pressed to pin down;  mesquite smoke, or perhaps a tough of grilled game?  There is something there that I've only ever tasted in SA wines and I find it across them all from Chenin to Syrah.  This unique sense of place, terroir if you want, is what to me defines the wine regions that I find the most compelling.  As much as I'm one to want to push against tradition in what is still an industry that relies on tradition more than almost anything else, I also like finding those wines and regions that stand out as individuals and can't be replicated elsewhere.
Hopefully this trip turns into a program, and my hope is that this blog becomes part of the story about how and wine the came to be.