Pieter Walser
One of South Africa’s celebrated maverick winemakers, Pieter Walser has many wines to his name. Perhaps the best known is BlankBottle. The initial lockdown came after the end of his harvest, but there was initial uncertainty as to whether winemaking would be allowed. ‘We didn’t know what to expect, so we put all our stuff into barrels and tanks, closed them up and shrink-wrapped them in plastic. They looked like little spaceships.’
Although winemaking was subsequently deemed ‘essential’, Walser decided to go with the flow on the vinification front, which will have ‘a significant effect on the styles of the wines – red ferments with no punch-downs, mostly the later-harvested stuff like Cabernet’.
The subsequent South African export and sales ban ‘gave us a knock, as we didn’t earn anything for a whole month’.
Necessity being the mother of invention, Walser started selling to private clients – but without shipping. ‘They started buying like you wouldn’t believe. We had the whole team in, packing, with sales like never before. We sold huge amounts of wine.’ This enabled him to retain his personnel – whom he then deployed to ‘unpack all the winery, redesign all the systems to become more efficient’.
Walser bought a big new press ‘for a bargain’, a new bottling line and cork machine. ‘If it wasn’t for lockdown, people would not have sold those things.’
Importers also proved supportive once the export ban was lifted. Walser says: ‘I still feel it now, people all over the world supporting us. It had a massive positive impact.’
The conclusion? ‘It didn’t turn out bad for us – Covid was only good for us. We spent time in the vineyard, in the winery. We were geared up for the worst, and that means you work harder than ever before. South African wine will get better because of lockdown.’
‘We were geared up for the worst, and that means you work harder than ever before. South African wine will get better because of lockdown’
Pieter Walser, BlankBottle (left)
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