The new Sadie wines
The launch by Eben Sadie of a range of six site specific wines - the Ouwingerdreeks - is hardly an event to cause even a ripple on South Africa's wine lake. Sadie has been in the vanguard of new era Cape wine since he was first employed (by a consortium which included John Platter, Gyles Webb and Charles Back) to make wine at Spice Route in the mid-1990s. Within a few years he went on his own, creating first Columella, then Palladius, then Sequillo in South Africa, followed by Terroir al Limit in Priorat in Spain.
If his name - or his brands - are unknown to all but the most dedicated wine buffs, this may be because most of these lines sell in minuscule volumes to a small circle of camp followers and loyalists - in whose eyes Sadie can do no wrong. When his bottlings - all made in the minimal interventionist approach - collapse, those who bought Sadie's R500 artefacts of vinous truth don't appear to grump. Instead they seem to regard this as a fair price to pay for tablets hand-delivered from the slopes of Sinai. When a wine business functions as a religion (with annual gestures of faith - like buying whatever allocation is made available at whatever price), it is ordinarily not subject to rational scrutiny. But does this mean that it is bad, or even, that it is dangerously cynical?
There is no doubt about Sadie's passionate pursuit of place, of the idea that single vineyards express a potentially more intricate pleasure than a multi-site blend, a cloth woven of multiple strands. The nuance he seeks to express inheres in the detail which can sometimes be teased out of the fruit of deep-rooted old vines. This is the beauty of a faded hand-knotted village rug rather than the texture and velour of a brilliantly composed Tabriz. For those for whom wine is art, not craft, the pleasure and excitement are incomparable. This, presumably, is why the failures hardly matter - the shortcomings of Picasso's later paintings have not made him less of a colossus, and a threadbare but ancient Ersari is no less a masterpiece for what has been lost.
So his latest offering - which is only being sold in a pack which contains all six wines (each with Kentridge labels) for around R3500 - fits logically into the Sadie canon. There are only 250 sets, and they will sell in the blink of an eye. It's not as certain that many will be consumed. Firstly, the relative rarity of Sadie's wines (as well as their not inconsiderable price tags) makes them more objects of collection (or veneration) than of consumption. Secondly, since the range is only offered as a set, those who acquire them will be loathe to break them up. Thirdly, as with most vinous collectables, the pleasures of ownership and putative display far outweigh the transient joy offered by the contents of the bottle.
This is not a fault of Sadie's making, but a consequence of his chosen sales strategy. It is probable that he would rather have the wines consumed. He hasn't much to fear from what punters will think of them. Post-purchase justification and the certainty that they will be tasted sighted will determine the response in advance. If anything, depletions would help keep demand at fever pitch.
I don't believe that the Ouwingerdreeks is just about money. Unlikely as this might sound, Sadie could easily have squeezed more out of the price if this was what the project had been about. There is no doubt he cares about the preservation of the country's viticultural heritage. By imbuing the fruit of some of these blocks with considerable value, Sadie has protected these vines (and others like them) from the depradations of agri-business. His most cynical critics will have to acknowledge that the Ouwingerdreeks is an admittedly well-remunerated act of faith by the high priest of the Cape's most ancient vineyards.
- Michael Fridjhon's blog
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Re: The new Sadie wines
Gosh, Michael - this seems an unnecessarily sour piece by someone who hasn't even tasted any of the wines in question. Not to mention scurrilous in the insinuations it makes. Does it count as "rational scrutiny" to write as glibly as this without any knowledge of the wines you're writing about?
I'd like to take you up on a few more things. You speak of Sadie's wines selling "in minuscule volumes to a small circle of camp followers and loyalists". You imply that the only reason for buying them is a religious one of faith. How do you think that the "small circle" - which is now spread around the world - came into being? Why do you think that many critics, sommeliers and winelovers round the world came to admire the wines, buy them, and drink them? Why have they bothered to go and visit the winery and talk to Sadie (which is more than you have; I doubt if you've stepped into the Swartland in the past decade)? You may not care for the wines (the ones you have tasted, and I wonder how many that is), but that is no reason to assume that the only reason others do is because of a blind "faith".
You speak of his "bottlings" (in a very clear plural) "collapsing". You don't even say "if they collapse", but "when they collapse", as though this is quite a likely occurrence. Could you justify that statement, that plural, or is it a groundless bit of libel, insinuating Sadie's incompetence as a winemaker? As far as I know, the only problem there has ever been, with a huge number of bottlings, was some refermentation in some bottles of one early vintage of Palladius. Please tell us about the other "collapses".
Even though I doubt that you begin to understand the costs of producing these tiny quantities of wine from far-flung low-yielding vineyards for whose produce high prices were paid, quite apart from the enormous labour involved, you do generously, patronisingly grant that the wines are not "just about money". Clearly you think that it is a problem that they are even a little bit about money. This is a bit strange coming from someone who makes vastly more money out of the wine industry than Eben Sadie has or is ever likely to.
Re: The new Sadie wines
Tim, useless to post a question as Fridjhon rarely deems comments to his postings as worthy of reply. Unlike yourself I am no Sadie Imbongi, yet am puzzled by Fridjhon's decision to write an article which displays such an obvious degree of envy at what Sadie is doing in the industry. Sadie has made a major play at redirecting the narrative of South African wine, and Fridjhon has not had a part in this. Hence the envy. For anyone doubting the degree of spite and envy driven by delusion of grandeur, note that it is on record that Fridjhon had written to then President Nelson Mandela requesting that he - Fridjhon - be made Minister of Wine. I kid you not. Ask any industry heavyweight to confirm. This self-imposed vinous monkhood makes it hard to stomach the arrival of a new guard - Sadie and Co - who are rewriting the books without looking to Fridjhon for guidance or endorsement. We are all looking forward to Fridjhon's appearance at the Swartland Revolution where he is supposed to be endorsing the activities of said new guard and the Swartland. The smart money says that, for once, he will feel out of his depth.
Re: The new Sadie wines
Tim – what about freedom of speech. Your reaction seems a bit over zealous. Maybe Michael does not worship Eben in the same way as his other disciples at Grape.
He does however acknowledge the work that Eben (and Rosa) have been doing to preserve some of our vine heritage, and gives credit to Eben’s role in the niche market of hand crafted wines.
Who knows, maybe he feels that R600.00 for a bottle of wine with no track record or real indication of aging potential is a bit much.
Re: The new Sadie wines
I love wines that display a sense of place and I believe in the advantages of old vines. There's nothing wrong with what Eben's doing. Wouldn't most of us daydreamers want to make 'natural' wine from old vines and charge a bunch of money for it?
However, (like Bordeaux First Growths, Opus One, Penfolds Grange, etc.) Sadie's wines will remain the domain of people with lots of money. Some of those will be people with a real passion for wine, but many will not. Your average passionate wine lover in South Africa will generally buy other more affordable wines.
When's the last time anyone heard about a Sadie wine in a blind tasting? I guess he can only lose by entering them... I was at a blind tasting some months ago where a Sequillo White 2008 came tenth out of thirteen white blends, tasted by nine tasters (the tasting was jointly won by Hermanuspietersfontein Die Bartho 2007 and Constantia Uitsig White 2005). One tasting will never be definitive and I would love to hear more about Sadie wines in blind tastings. I'm sure they will do very well at times, but don't expect the steamrolling victories they obtain at sighted tastings and in the media.
Re: The new Sadie wines
Would this debate even exist without wine critics?
The author's response
Tim James's response precisely vindicates my observation that at least some of the Eben Sadie cultists follow him with something akin to blind faith. The inquisitorial assumption that I couldn't have tasted his wines (otherwise how could I have communicated anything negative about them), the denial of my right to comment on them, followed by a ritual burning at the stake are about as fundamentalist as you can get.
For the record, the whole point of recounting some of the negative remarks about Sadie's wines (and which I have often heard, even if those closer to him are protected from them), followed by what I intended to be an approving and admiring response to the Ouwingerdreeks was to show that, while I am not unaware of the adverse comment, I think the range has great potential significance for the whole South African wine industry. If I failed to make this clear, I must apologise. Recognition by those who clearly do not speak out of blind faith is generally held to carry greater credibility and it is easy to test this: conduct a survey among people who are not hugely wine literate in which you ask them if they would be more likely to believe the views of the author of the Sadie piece in the Mail & Guardian of a few weeks back, or those which appeared in the Business Day article/Grape blog of last week.
As for apparently excoriating Sadie's commercialism, I'm not sure how my comment in the text that he could easily have charged more for the wines could be construed except as a tribute to pricing restraint.
Of course, I have not yet sampled them, so I refrained from commenting on how they tasted, or whether, under the circumstances, they represent good or bad value. However, I have bought a set which should arrive in due course, so that I can do exactly that. I would hardly have done this if I believed the Ouwingerdreeks was just another puffed up non-event in the wine industry.
Finally I would like to deal with Kalla Sutra's comments - at least insofar as the relate to the Minister of Wine anecdote he recounts with all his usual blustering authority. As with most of Emile's remarks, this is unadulterated junk. It has its origin in how Thabo Mbeki introduced me ahead of an auction I conducted at Madiba's 75th birthday party in 1993 - when he said, obviously in the spirit of the occasion, that if South Africa were to have a Minister of Wine, I would be it. I assume it has crossed Grape's readers' minds that if, even in the days when the Nats depended hugely on the votes of grape farmers in the Western Cape, they never saw fit to create that office, why would the ANC - which doesn't give a damn about the wine industry?"�
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