Sadie distances himself from poisoned Priorat project

Swartland pioneer Eben Sadie is distancing himself from his wine venture in Priorat, which was poisoned by vandals last year. As reported on db.com, Sadie has made wine in the northern Spanish region since 2004 under the Terroir Al Limit label in collaboration with Dominik Huber and Jaume Sabaté, sharing a winery with Huber for the production of six wines, including Dits del Terra, meaning fingers of the earth, and L’Arbossar.

“Eben is phasing himself out of Terroir Al Limit. The project will be kept on by Dominik and Jaume, so it won’t close, but Eben has very little to do with it these days,” Sadie’s winemaker brother Niko told me at Cape Wine 2012 last week. Sadie will retain his 45% share in the company, but will be much less involved with the running of the winery.

“I’m snowed under with Sadie Family Wines in South Africa, so will be spending increasingly less time in Priorat. Dominik is doing a great job, I don’t need to hold his hand every day,” Eben Sadie confirmed. “I’ve scaled down my involvement with the project and won’t be flying to Spain to pick every last bunch,” he added. Last June, the Terroir Al Limit cellars were broken into at night by vandals who opened the taps of some of the tanks and contaminated casks with household bleach, leading to a loss of 25% of the year’s production.

As to why the poisoning took place, Niko believes jealousy of Sadie’s rapid success in the region had a lot to do with it. “The Catalans didn’t take well to the fact that Eben came over from South Africa and in a very short space of time was making one of the best wines in the region. They didn’t like him being there, especially as he was doing so well internationally,” he said.

Eben has yet to discover why the incident took place: “I’ve no idea why it happened, there were no unpaid bills. No one has been caught yet and the investigation remains open. It would be fantastic if we had closure but we don’t,” he said. “I’ve moved on from the poisoning. Things like this don’t get me down, it’s just an economic problem. So long as you’ve got your health and people around you that care about you, nothing else matters,” he added, confirming that has no plans to enter into any further wine ventures outside South Africa.

Vin de Constance to take on Sauternes

South African estate Klein Constantia’s new managing director is on a mission to pit its flagship sweet wine – Vin de Constance – against the best wines from Sauternes. “We want to benchmark ourselves against the best sweet wines in the world and go up against the likes of Château d’Yquem in the quality stakes,” Hans Astrom told the drinks business during a visit to London this week. Astrom plans to achieve this by focusing on strict selection: “We’re averaging around 15 hectolitres per hectare for Vin de Constance, which is incredibly low, so our prices will have to reflect this leap in quality,” he said. 

“We’ve started picking the Muscat de Frontignan berry by berry, so no sub-standard grapes sneak into the wine. We want to separate the good eggs from the rotten eggs,” he added. Astrom is unafraid of getting rid of wines from the estate’s portfolio if he doesn’t deem them good enough. “We’re discontinuing our Riesling next year for exactly that reason. I’d rather have a few high quality wines that a load of mediocre ones."

To assist his quality quest, he’s enlisted the help of go-to viticulturalist Rosa Kruger, who has worked for the likes of Eben Sadie, Solms-Delta and Rupert and Rothschild. 2012 will be the estate’s latest harvest in 30 years. “All the Muscat for Vin de Constance is still hanging on the vines a month later than it should be, it’s a risk, but if it pays off we’ll have one of the most concentrated wines we’ve ever made.” The company is expecting an abundant harvest this year, resulting in around 30,000 bottles of Vin de Constance compared to last year’s 10,000.

“Despite its name, the yields for Vin de Constance are very inconstant and vary hugely from year to year.” Astrom was made managing director of the company in January by new owners Charles Harman and Zdenek Bakala. Once voted Sweden's best sommelier, before joining Klein Constantia he was general manager for Hess Family Estates. Now installed, he’s keen to shake thing up, believing the family-owned company had become complacent.

“It’s easy for family companies to relax and fall into routines. It’s better now it’s not South African-owned. The new owners wanted a cage-rattling renegade and I’m on a mission to wake up the sleeping beauty, blow the dust off and restore it to its former glory,” he said. One of his big aims is to build up the Vin de Constance back catalogue by buying back old bottles at auction. “The farm didn’t save any wines so I’m having to buy back our liquid history. We’ve managed to get hold of a few bottles from the 1800s,” he revealed.

Astrom reports surprising levels of interest in Vin de Constance in France, given its own supply of Sauternes. “I have people writing to me every day wanting to taste Napoleon’s favourite wine. The Napoleon connection is a great sales driver for us,” he admitted. The French emperor was said to have drunk Vin de Constance every day in the week leading up to his death. Klein Constantia lies in the Constantia valley – the oldest vineyard region in the Cape.