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Henrie's Recipes
A taste of home winemaking
Marchelle Hermanus
Posted Thu, 30 Mar 2006
You're having dinner at a friend's home and you ask him where he managed to buy the superb wine. "Oh, I made that one myself in the back," he coyly replies and points to what looks like a wooden shed in the yard.
Home wine cellars, affectionately known as "garagistes", have been around since the late 1970's, but only caught the spotlight in the 1990s when a winemaker from the Bordeaux region in France, Michael Gracia, started up his tiny garage-like winery, and in the process split the Chateau systems into two opposing camps: those that supported tiny winemakers and those that stood by the larger wine cellars.
The word "garagiste" conjures up images of tired winemakers pressing wine in large barrels in a cramped garage, but most of these entrepreneurs merely use a simple building or barn in which to make and house their fermented brews.
Today garagistes have been established all around the world, even in South Africa, and it has acquired a fairly large following.
In the 2003 edition of the John Platter South African Wine Guide, small winemaking businesses garnered about a quarter of the five-star rankings. Publisher Andrew McDowell said: "It seems the garagiste movement is very much alive and well, and making some of South Africa’s top wines."
Joining the movement
A group of local winemakers in the Western Cape came together and established the Garagiste Movement in 2002. Started out by winemaking consultant Cathy Marshall, Clive Torr and Mark Howell, today the movement boasts mostly part-time enthusiasts.
Marshall started making her first batch of Pinot Noir in 1995 on a Muizenberg beach with a group of friends. Today, her small winemaking business has developed into a leading brand called the BWC or Barefoot Wine Company.
The SA Garagiste Movement now boasts about 20 active members, but to become a member, one has to fulfil these criteria:
• You can only produce maximum 9000 litres of
wine
• You have to be certified with the Sawis and the Wine and Spirit Board
• The project must be totally funded by garagiste
• The wine must be made by garagiste
Andries van der Walt, a member of the Garagiste Movement, is a qualified architect who makes wine in his spare time.
"I was always intrigued by wine-making. I used to share a flat in Stellenbosch with a student who was studying winemaking, and so I read his textbooks and we started making pineapple beer," he quips.
Passion comes at a price
Mass production, garagiste fans say, has taken the passion out of winemaking, and while some yearn for simplicity when grapes were stomped to a pulp and left to ferment in old wooden barrels, others prefer to do something about it by cultivating winemaking into not only a labour of love, but into something of which to be proud.
This is the beauty of hand-crafted wines — each batch gets special attention — and this is the reason why Van der Walt only sticks to 500 cases a year: "When going too big, you lose some of the essence."
He plans to increase his volumes to 1000 cases in the next two or three years, but for now, he's happy with producing his wines on a small scale, forty percent of which are exported to Belgium and Sweden.
And this is the major argument between the two opposing camps – while garagistes are allowed to painstakingly spend years perfecting a winning formula, their wines can only be afforded by wine lovers who are prepared to fork out anything from R300 to R1000 to a bottle of home brew. And the price can rise if you plan on flying over a bottle of the finest from St Emilion's Chateau de Valandraud in Bordeaux.
Coming out of the garage
In an issue of the Decanter, Richard Niell had this to say about garagistes: "The garage phenomenon has given Bordeaux a kick up the collective bum and there is no doubt that we are drinking better wines in a number of appellations because of the ripples that have spread out from the garagistes' activities."
Van der Walt's famous Syrah from his Katbakkies label has garnered four-and-a-half stars in the John Platter Wine Guide, while his Chenin Blanc managed to gain three-and-a-half — testament that garagiste winemakers are coming into their own.
The next time you walk into a wine shop, ask the salesperson if they stock garagiste wines. Taste it for yourself, even if it means shelling out a couple of more rands; you may find it pleasant on your palate — and it could provide you with the inspiration to be the star of your next dinner party.
Wine Concepts in Newlands will be hosting one of many Garagiste festivals on October 29, 2005 between 10 and 3pm. Entry is R15 per glass, with over 25 wines to sample. For more info, call Wilmari Borel-Saladin on 082 770-8001.
