Judgment of Paris Page 33

  The joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Denis Horgan began in 1975. The following year Mondavi told Horgan about the Spurrier tasting in Paris and how it had showed that the wines of the New World such as they were going to produce could rank with the best of France. In 1980 Leeuwin Estate bottled its first Chardonnay, the wine that has made it famous around the world. Leeuwin now produces seven wines under its Art Series label, all of which have original pieces of art on the label in the style of Château Mouton Rothschild. For a decade Mondavi and Horgan worked together, but eventually they went their separate ways after Horgan refused to let Mondavi buy him out of the Margaret River winery.

  In 1999, Jean-Claude Vrinat, the owner of the Taillevent restaurant and one of the judges at the Spurrier Tasting, published the book100 Vins de Légende (100 Legendary Wines) . In it he identified “the 100 most prestigious wines in the world.” They included two Australian wines: Penfolds Grange and Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay.

  Stellenbosch, South Africa

  While serving his obligatory military duty in the South African army in 1977, Simon Barlow, whose family owned a winery dating back to 1682, first heard about the results of the Paris Tasting, and he still recalls the impact that had on him. The French had been knocked off their pedestal, he thought, and a new world of wine was opening. At the time, South African wines were also-rans on the international scene and could not be imported into the many countries that had trade embargoes against the country because of its apartheid racial policies. Barlow had been making plans to go to France to study winemaking, but after finishing his military service he decided to go to California to see what was happening in the area that had just stunned the wine world. He got an internship at Hacienda Wine Cellars in Sonoma County in 1980, working from June through the fall harvest.

  South Africa’s vineyards predate some of the oldest in Bordeaux. The Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck planted the first grapes in South Africa in 1655. Dutch immigrants had noticed that sailors on Portuguese and Spanish ships that docked at the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip were not as susceptible to scurvy, an illness caused by a lack of vitamin C that could kill half the crew on the voyage from Europe. The Dutch surmised that the wine the Spanish and Portuguese sailors drank on board was perhaps the reason. Since the Cape of Good Hope area had a Mediterranean climate and soil similar to that found in Europe, the Dutch settlers planted grapes in the foothills of the towering mountains outside Cape Town, the colony’s principal city.

  South African wines, especially its sweet ones, soon earned a wide following. The most famous in Europe starting in the late eighteenth century was Constantia, the same wine Napoléon had asked to be comforted with on his deathbed. Wines from the Cape of Good Hope region flourished in the British market during the nineteenth century, while the country was a British colony. After London lowered tariffs on French wines in 1861, however, South African wine sales there plummeted and a slow decline began.

  In 1918, after an overproduction of grapes made prices plummet, ruining many grape growers, farmers formed the Ko-öperatiewe Wijnbouwers Vereniging (KWV), a state-run cooperative that dictated everything down to how much wine could be produced and where. The government in power was looking to win the votes of the big, rich grape farmers and established a policy of production quotas for each grower that favored the mass-produced, high-yield but low-quality grapes that they grew, the same grapes that go into sweet wine and brandy, rather than premium wine. Smaller producers of quality wines were given very low quotas. South Africa thus became known mainly for cheap wines and brandies, and even those sales abroad were blocked starting in the 1960s because of the country’s racial policies.

  The Barlow family was part of the white establishment that ruled South Africa for more than four hundred years and ran one of its few quality wineries. Peter Barlow, the head of Barlow Rand, a huge multinational corporation, in 1940 bought Rustenberg, a then rundown estate outside the university town of Stellenbosch. The three-thousand-acre property was located on the side of Simonsberg Mountain, which looked down toward False Bay and the Cape of Good Hope far in the distance. Settlers from Germany’s Rhineland built the winery in the late seventeenth century, planting the vineyard on the mountainside like an amphitheater, which gave it excellent sun exposure. Conditions for wine-grape growing were almost ideal. The deep red soils were made up of decomposed granite, clay, and alluvial material washed down from the mountain. At the lower level the ground became sandy. Rainfall totaled some thirty inches annually. Temperatures were moderate, ranging from lows of 43 degrees in the coldest months to highs of 84 degrees in the hot season.

  For Peter Barlow the estate was a rural retreat from the cares of a demanding business life in Cape Town, and he ran the winery as something of a hobby. Vintages from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s were well regarded, and Rustenberg was considered one of South Africa’s leading wineries in the years of apartheid isolation. After Peter Barlow’s death in 1975, his wife ran the Rustenberg estate and winery with professional managers.

  Their son Simon, who was born in 1956, studied at Britain’s Royal Agricultural College, returning home in 1979 to go into the family business. He started off selling Caterpillar farm equipment but began drifting toward wine while working for Distillers, a large South African liquor company, and then went to California for his internship. Just before leaving, Barlow bought his own property on the Helderberg Mountain a few miles south of Stellenbosch. He already had plans of turning the 378-acre farm that he named Nooitgedacht into a vineyard and winery upon his return.

  Back in South Africa after the California harvest, Barlow set out on his winery project. In effect, it became a test-run for what he would later do when he inherited the family winery at Rustenberg. He planted international grape varietals, specifically the Chardonnay that he had worked with in California. The rigid KWV, though, still ruled the country’s wine business and he had to smuggle the Chardonnay cuttings past its restrictions. Barlow experimented at Nooitgedacht to see which grapes grew best in various parts of his property and built a small winery from the ground up in 1982, equipping it with all the newest technology.

  Barlow took over Rustenberg in 1987 at the darkest hour for both his country and its wine business. The country was diplomatically isolated and its apartheid system was collapsing amid violence. The trade embargo was crippling the country’s economy, and many feared that South Africa was on the brink of civil war. Thousands of white professionals were emigrating, primarily to Europe and Australia.

  At the center of the racial struggle was Nelson Mandela, who had been in prison since 1962 after leading a campaign to topple the white-led government. Whites feared that if he were released race riots would break out, but there could be no peace in the land as long as he was imprisoned. Barlow watched and waited to see what would happen to his tense country. He told friends that his fate was like that of the pig in a bacon-and-egg breakfast. The chicken lays its egg and moves on, but the pig has to stay. He couldn’t pack up and move on; he was committed.

  To the surprise of experts both inside and outside South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s release on February 11, 1990, did not set off a race war. Radicals on both sides were controlled, and South Africa slowly began moving toward a resolution of its tortured racial conflict.

  While calm was taking hold in the country, Barlow was growing increasingly concerned about what he saw happening at Rustenberg: the winery and its reputation were declining. The equipment was so dated that Barlow felt it was like making wine in a museum. The facility was too small and too old. Bottling was done from a 1,022-gallon wooden tank that mixed up dozens of batches. There hadn’t been any new vineyard plantings in years. Barlow was worried that the Rustenberg winemaker, who had been doing the job for twenty-two years, didn’t seem open to new thinking or international developments. Rustenberg was selling a dozen different wines, too many to do well. The last really outstanding Cabernet Sauvignon vintage had been in 1982. In short, Rus
tenberg was living on its past reputation.

  Everything, though, began coming together in 1992. The white-controlled government started making the changes that would eventually lead to black rule. The KWV dropped its quota system for wine production and began loosening its control over the business. And late that year Barlow reached the conclusion that nothing less than a total makeover of Rustenberg would save the winery.

  The job was massive, would take several years, and required millions of dollars of Barlow’s own money to accomplish. One of the first steps was to get a new vintner. Kym Milne, the winemaker at Villa Maria Estate in New Zealand and one of the international flying consultants, led Barlow to hire fellow New Zealander Rod Easthope. Employing a Kiwi winemaker did not go down well with the South African wine press or trade. They were used to the days when South Africa rarely went out of its own tightly knit, isolated society.

  Wine tastings are a lagging indicator of quality in part because the vintage being tasted is at least a couple of years behind developments due to the time required for barrel aging. In the early 1990s, Rustenberg was still bringing home a good number of awards, and so in public things seemed fine. Reality hit home, though, at the annual South African Airlines wine tasting in December 1994. With the 1992 vintage on display, Rustenberg drew low scores, and wine writers told Barlow privately that his wines seemed to be slipping. Barlow was getting similar reports from friends in South African wine clubs.

  A sense of urgency began to take hold. Barlow had decided to build a new winery in the old dairy, but since the building was an historic site he needed government approval of the plans, which involved gutting the insides and putting in totally new equipment. After removing the cows, construction started in 1996. Under the thatched roof of the classic white Cape building, Barlow put up a shining new, four-story, gravity-fed winery that used the natural flow from higher to lower levels to avoid mechanical pumping of wines between tanks, a process that can sometimes damage them. Picked grapes come into the winery at the first level and drop down to the second level for crushing and fermentation. Then the new wine goes to the third level for barrel aging and finally to the fourth level for bottling. An Italian-built bottling line was followed by French presses, South African fermenters, and French oak barrels. Another sign of going first-class all the way were the Riedel glasses in the tasting room.

  Meanwhile, Barlow continued looking around the world to pick up people, equipment, and new winemaking techniques. In mid-1997, he felt that by studying both old Rustenberg records and the latest international developments he had an idea of what he wanted to do with his red wines, but he was still struggling with the whites. In September he traveled to Burgundy with Kym Milne and Rod Easthope for three weeks to see what was going on there with Chardonnay. Out of that trip came plans for a new, single-vineyard Chardonnay that is now marketed as Rustenberg Five Soldiers, named for five Stone Pines that Barlow thought looked like they were standing as sentinels over the estate.

  Rustenberg’s old vineyards got both new vines and new technology. Barlow imported more than two hundred thousand vines from France for planting. He also installed forty-two weather stations to identify changes in microclimates around the property. Aerial photography and satellite surveys helped determine when the harvest, particularly of grapes for red wine, would take place. For three centuries, Rustenberg had been dry-farmed, but a new drip irrigation system was installed starting in 1997. New soil studies confirmed that Rustenberg was indeed an exceptional place to make wine.

  With so much going on, Barlow decided to take the Rustenberg label off the market for 1994 and 1995. He didn’t want to go through this high-wire act in public and perhaps damage the Rustenberg name. Instead the wines were sold under the new Brampton brand, which was named after the estate’s prize-winning Jersey bull Brampton Beacon Bloomer. Rustenberg, however, did not disappear entirely from the market. Old Rustenberg wines came out of South African cellars and began appearing in wine auctions. At the end of 1998, Barlow relaunched Rustenberg with the 1996 vintage.

  Then in late 1999, he brought in a new South African winemaking team. South African Ari Badenhorst was named winemaker, while Nico Walters took over as viticulturist. Badenhorst was twenty-seven; Walters was thirty-two. Badenhorst is typical of the new international winemaker. He has worked harvests in New Zealand as well as at Château Angélus and Chateau de La Colline in France.

  Despite Rustenberg’s more than three-hundred-year history, Barlow, Badenhorst, and Walters are still searching their vineyards to find the best slopes or microclimates to grow particular grapes. The three believe interroir and envy the French and other Europeans who centuries ago discovered what did best where and now can get on with the job of producing the best wine possible from areas that have already proven themselves. They know they have greatterroir on their mountainside, but they’re still uncovering the mysteries of their vineyards.

  Rustenberg today has two lines of wines and two styles of winemaking—Rustenberg and Brampton. Rustenberg wines are made in a classical French style. The top-of-the-line Rustenberg red wine, named Peter Barlow in honor of Simon’s father, is a single-vineyard, 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon made from grapes grown high on the main estate’s mountainside vineyard. It is aged in French oak for twenty-two months and has French-style, artisanal handling. Only about a thousand cases of Peter Barlow are made each year. The winery also sells a Merlot blend named John X Merriman after a Cape Prime Minister. The top-of-the-line Rustenberg white wine is the Five Soldiers. The grapes are grown without sulfur and aged about fifteen months in French oak. Walt Disney World in Florida bought some fifty cases of 2000 Five Soldiers, the entire U.S. allocation, to serve in its restaurants. Other Bordeaux-style reds and Burgundy-style whites also carry the Rustenberg label.

  With the Brampton label, the winery markets a variety of New World–style wines at less expensive prices. These include a Cabernet-Merlot blend, a Sauvignon Blanc, and an unusual Chardonnay that is not aged in oak.

  Great changes have been taking place in South African wine in recent years, as the country catches up with international developments. When trade embargoes were removed in the early 1990s, the quality of many of the South African wines that reached new markets was poor and set back the whole field. More recently, however, a half dozen or so South African wineries are in competition to turn out their country’s first international icon wine. Rustenberg is on everyone’s short list of wineries that could do it. Vintages of the top-of-the-line Peter Barlow Cabernet have been receiving ratings in the 90s from international critics.

  In December 2002, Barlow hired a boat and took all of his eighty-six employees to Robben Island, seven miles out to sea from Cape Town. It was here that Nelson Mandela spent most of his years in prison, breaking rocks in a limestone quarry. The prison has now become a South African national monument and Barlow wanted his white and black employees to share the experience of visiting it. Some of his white staff warned Barlow that the trip could cause trouble in view of the country’s tortured racial history. Barlow, though, had been promoting a racially mixed staff. His assistant winemaker, who had an internship at France’s Château Margaux, is black, and another black employee studied in Burgundy. Instead of splitting apart employees, the visit brought them together around a particularly poignant time in their shared history.

  Pinhão, Portugal

  Jerry Luper made not one but two of the wines that participated in the Paris Tasting. He produced both the 1972 Freemark Abbey Chardonnay and the 1969 Freemark Abbey Cabernet Sauvignon. Nearly three decades later, Luper is the chief winemaker at Real Companhia Velha in Porto, Portugal. This is one of several Portuguese companies striving to upgrade the quality of their country’s table wines. Portugal is known to American wine drinkers mainly for its Port and Lancers, the sweet, fizzy rosé wine. With Luper the New World of wine has come back to the Old World.

  Since he graduated from the wine program at California’s Fresno State College in 19
69, Luper has been bouncing around the global wine scene, so it’s not surprising to find this American now making wine in Portugal. When he first went to the Napa Valley, the protest movement against the Vietnam War was going strong and because he wore a beard he couldn’t get a job until Louis M. Martini offered him one at three dollars an hour. The following year—and a shave later—Luper was making wine at Freemark Abbey as the protégé of Brad Webb. He soon grew back the beard.

  In the summer of 1976, though, Luper and his wife pulled up stakes and moved to France, where he did some consulting work and learned more about European winemaking. The following year he was back in the Napa Valley and the successor of Mike Grgich as winemaker at Chateau Montelena. In 1978 Luper started the estate Cabernet Sauvignon production there that had always been the dream of owner Jim Barrett. Three years later, Luper moved on to Bouchaine Vineyards, a winery in the Carneros region of the Napa Valley, where he stayed for four years before going to Rutherford Hill, another valley property.

  From 1972 until 1993, Luper was also the winemaker of the Napa Valley’s Diamond Creek Vineyards, a boutique winery that won widespread critical acclaim—and high prices—for its Cabernet Sauvignons. Diamond Creek was the first California wine to sell for more than $100 a bottle—to the eternal lament of wine drinkers everywhere.

  By the spring of 1993, Luper was ready to move again. He had grown tired of producing, as he said, “just another Cabernet and just another Chardonnay.” He and his wife, Carolee, also didn’t like what they saw happening in the valley, as big money and snobbish society moved in and a lot of the spirit of adventure and cooperation moved out. The Napa Valley, for them, wasn’t fun any longer.