Hemel-en-Aarde winemakers have their eyes on becoming the next big thing

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

In most of the world's wine shops, you'll find South African varieties grouped under the label "New World". Rarely has a title been more inaccurate. Europeans made wine for the first time here in 1659, and South African vintages were in head-to-head battles with the French 150 years ago, when Constantia was the dessert wine of choice for the Victorians. There's no other country outside of the European/Mediterranean block with this kind of wine history.

But, as with so much in this country, apartheid stunted the wine industry's growth. With no export markets, the industry shrank. With no global competition, winemakers weren't prompted to the modernisation and innovation that characterises newcomers like Australia. So when South Africa re-joined the world markets in the late 1980s it came with a unique, yet bizarre wine industry: venerable history and vineyards, arrested development in wine making skills. One thing never changed. The Cape is a phenomenal place to grow grapes and make wine. Potential was writ large.

In 30 years, the South Africans have exploited that potential with gusto, while investment money, purchases and tourists from the Old World have poured in to help. Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are now words as familiar to most wine lovers as Burgundy and Bordeaux. But here's where the South Africans are acting very new world. They're expanding beyond the historic, established valleys, realising that almost every valley in the Cape offers combinations of soil and microclimate that could make a great wine.

A vivid example of this is the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, the entrance to which lies just a few miles west of Hermanus. There are a few established winemakers here, Bouchard Finlayson probably being the best known. But most are small, little known outside of South Africa and ... in many cases ... new. Vines have had their feet in the soil for less than a decade, wineries are freshly crafted beauties of sleek modern design. Even the road through the valley is new. So new, in fact, that it's still graveled dirt for one bumpy stretch. This is a place to watch.

Creation embodies the young, bold spirit of the place. Arable fields just five years ago, this is now a high tech winery with beautiful marketing and dining facilities, built in a circle of lush gardens with sweeping views of a lake and mountains. The vineyards provide the full range of grapes, allowing them to produce everything from a light, sharp sauvignon blanc (notes of passion fruit and pineapple) to a syrah grenache mix with soft fruit, spice and wood. We didn't taste anything worth the expense of shipping home, but there were wines that I'd happily buy if they turned up on our local shelves. Our favourite white was the sauvignon semillion blend, better than the sauv blanc alone due to more complexity and roundness, the green notes of the second grape variety rounding out the fruit of the first. Of the reds, we liked their Bordeaux blend best, a classic mix of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot that was full of black currant and blackberry notes, with a bit of smokey oak beneath. We suspected this one could be laid down and improved with age.

Suspected, because Creation let itself down on its staff. Pleasant enough, but entirely uncommunicative on any fine point of the wine. Our smiling server would pop over every 10 minutes to bring us a new glass and pour from a new bottle, but said little beyond "and this is our vigonier." When we tried to strike up a conversation to ask about details, she brought us a lovely coffee table book about the winery with tales of the founders (two couples who wanted to work together) and tasting notes.

Knowledge and conversation doesn't make the wine taste different, but it does help you to appreciate it and consider the nuances of what you're tasting. Which does, honestly, make the wine taste better. Case in point: La Vierge.

We went to this winery just after Creation. It is in a truly spectacular position just at a crest of a hill; the valley falls away before you to the sea, with mountains on each side, the bowl made by the sloping hillsides dotted with wine estates. They've built a glistening, high tech winery, through which you cross on a catwalk to get to their tasting room and restaurant, which has glass walls to take advantage of the remarkable view. Like Creation, the vines here are mostly new plantings, but unlike the winery deeper in the valley, La Vierge has its marketing tuned to perfection.

The woman running the tasting bar was knowledgeable, witty and conversant, not just telling us about what we were tasting, but joining in discussion about how the wines compared to others, what food you'd match them with, etc. All the names and labels are beautifully designed and relate closely to the location. Hemel-en-Aarde means "heaven in Earth", la vierge is French for "the virgin". Most of the wine names have something to do with the Adam and Eve story or other mythological explorations of love, temptation and desire. Original Sin was a sauvignon blanc tempered with 9% semillon, with tones of gooseberry and granny smith apple. Jezebelle a lightly wooded chardonnay that was nutty and lightly fruity. Nymphomane a lovely, fruity, balanced red with loads of tannins that would be worth laying down for two or three years to get a richer flavour. Again, we didn't taste anything so extraordinary we wanted to pay for shipping, but we'll be looking for British sources.

The Temptation restaurant here doesn't have its act quite so polished as the tasting operation. It's a stunningly beautiful room; basically just a lofty, open space with glass walls that let the view do all the work. It's a suitably foodie menu. I had springbok sausages followed by baked kingclip (both classically South African), he chose crayfish tails and chicken almondine, both came with a chardonnay, fig and honey sorbet between courses. All competently done and well presented. As you would expect, the menu has lots of suggested wine pairings, we went for the pinot noir, an excellent middle-of-the-road wine to match both the chicken and the fish. Service is cheerful and upbeat, but painfully slow. Our two course lunch took two hours, with the first food not hitting the table for an hour and it taking them half an hour to get us some drinks. This was probably because a bus tour had occupied three long tables at the front of the restaurant.

But bus tours don't just pop in; they book. Which means someone did not staff properly for the day. And the restaurant was still half empty. Lord knows how they cope with a full house. It was the only meal we ate away from Birkenhead, mostly because we didn't feel like the 40-minute drive home just to get lunch. A pleasant meal, overall, but one that could have been really memorable if served with a bit more speed.

Speaking of meals at Birkenhead, come back for the next entry, where I'll tell you why the hotel deserves to be known as a foodie destination all on its own.