Magna Carta sets grapes free
Winemaker Mphumeleli Ndlangisa wants the fruit’s flavour to be paramount — and people’s palates to decide whether it’s good
It has become common for people to dedicate years to studying something at a tertiary level and then go off and do something completely unrelated. Some parents support these decisions but others threaten to disown their children, cut them off and other variants of behaviour which might be levelled at a leper colony. Mphumeleli Ndlangisa (28), the creator of Magna Carta, initially didn’t tell his parents he had become a winemaker, perhaps because he feared something like this.
When he made the decision to change his career from investment banking to winemaking, his parents were none the wiser. He grew up in a Christian home and his father was a minister, which meant “alcohol was formidably opposed”.
Eventually his siblings broke the news to his parents when they saw the release of his first vintage on his Facebook page last year. He found his mother’s reaction surprising.
“She was very proud and applauded my bravery to stray off the beaten path,” Ndlangisa says. “She discreetly commended me for having the foresight to focus my energies on a product that would become better over time.”
Naming
Some context regarding the name: although the Magna Carta was initially drawn up in 1215 to make peace between the English king and defiant barons, today it is a symbol of liberty.
“We use the term Magna Carta as a symbol of the philosophy we adopt in our winemaking methodology: giving absolute freedom to the grapes to be at the forefront of the taste by allowing them to ferment naturally without including any additives,” Ndlangisa says.
Intention
The label implies transformation, but implementing this change on the ground has proved more difficult.
“Revolution and transformation are necessary in this industry yet they’re left to those with power — government and the owners of the resources and land in the wine industry,” he says.
“My contribution is to try to offer opportunities for graduates of oenology or viticulture from Elsenburg Agricultural Training Institute or Stellenbosch University a chance to join us around the harvest period to make a vintage wine.
“This empowers mostly black students who often cannot get placement at big wine estates to receive experience and build up their CVs to find work.”
Pursuit
When Ndlangisa lived in Stellenbosch, he would end up in the town’s wine haunts having conversations about the industry and hanging about with rock-star calibre viticulturists.
“It became difficult, after having so many influential interactions in the wine industry, to withhold the force to start making wine. And to make the sort of wine for people who still haven’t discovered the full array of their palate and are still drinking the plonk available at supermarkets. This has to stop, and making affordable, great wine is the start,” he says.
“Too many South Africans drink average, overpriced wine because big labels and big money have whitewashed what a good wine should be about — not the estate or the popular house that made it but the expression of the fruit, its origin and the mastery in how it was ‘vinified’ in the cellar.”
He says many people miss out on great locally produced wine because the winemaker is either unknown or their brand is badly marketed.
“I would like to be able to completely obscure the label in order to force the person drinking the wine to consult their own senses and palate and decide how great what they’re drinking is. Basically, to encourage an approach to the wine that has no inherent bias or prejudice.
“We have already started doing this with our new releases, where the front label is an eye-catching pattern with no text or information. Thus you approach the wine with no preconceptions.”
Ndlangisa says Magna Carta wine day is dedicated to encouraging and educating consumers so that they can make informed decisions about wine based on their awareness of their pal- ate and not on what big brands say is suitable.
Land
The backdrop of wine marketing often includes vast areas of land — green, lush, expansive. Adults enjoy matured cheese and wine from long-stemmed glasses unpacked from woven baskets, while they lie sprawled out on checked blankets. Children with bouncing ponytails and flushed cheeks skip and chase each other.
This may be true for more established vineyards but there are also t h e g a r a g i s t e w i n e ma k e r s . T h e term originally referred to renegade small-scale winemakers in Bordeaux, France, working in their garages and who refused to follow the winemaking “rules”.
In my view, South African garagiste are underfunded, under-resourced, landless and rely on small-scale machinery in a “garage” or hired cellar. Magna Carta is of this ilk.
Ndlangisa says that owning land and an estate would give his label a home and space from which to interact with customers — “an anchor point to communicate our story, of wines made with minimal intervention. A landless winery often depends too much on exhibitions to gain traction in the highly competitive wine market.
“Considering that black winemakers don’t often crack the nod for exhi- bitions, they are left with no options to gain traction for their labels and often give up and close shop — to the satisfaction of big, established brands.
“On the continent, land has always been a contentious issue. Most people in this country struggle to talk about land reform and restitution without injecting racial connotations.
“That said, current racial demographics do point to black people being mostly landless, with the exception of traditional monarchs. This does not benefit aspiring black commercial farmers.
“The ANC and any other political parties trying to gain votes will always be vociferous about land reform but, when it comes to implementation, they leave a gaping vacuum.
“I do not look to government policy for land or financial assistance because there are still many other, less complex issues which have not yet been addressed.
“For example, there are still farmworkers earning less than what farm owners pay to feed their recreational horses. If I wasn’t educated and wanted to pursue a career in agriculture, this could easily be my reality.”
In terms of a workable solution, Ndlangisa recommends a consensus between society, government and landowners. But they would have to decide that this is important, that it needs to happen.
He adds that, first, politicians would need to stop using land claims and land reform as a token to try to win votes at election time. And, he says, landowners would need to be willing to let go of their insecurities in terms of allowing black commercial farmers to own land and compete in markets that previous generations have dominated for centuries.
The experience of producing wine in a racialised society
Penetrating the industry was much more difficult and less welcoming than Ndlangisa had expected. Because he cannot speak Afrikaans, he says he has to take a translator with him to meetings, as some stakeholders refuse to accommodate him by speaking English.
As a black winemaker, Ndlangisa says he faces additional pressure to be the best, to produce wines that are almost always flawless, because anything short of this is written off as “black incompetence”.
It’s a short leash. He says he has often found that, when people taste his wine, the result is a sense of disbelief that a black winemaker is capable of producing well-crafted wines.
On the flip side, he says white winemakers can get away with making poor wines, perhaps by blaming tough meteorological conditions. But a black winemaker can’t, because it is viewed as an indication of their incompetence.
Taste
At a launch of his label at an art gallery in Cape Town, Ndlangisa said: “I want people to have a revelation when they taste these wines.”
Asked which of his wines have produced that, he replies: “The Magna Carta Pinot Noir gave me a revelation when I tasted it the day before bottling was to commence. The wine had been sitting in barrel for four months since the last time I had sampled it and it blew me away. It’s now sold out.
“Our Chenin Blanc White Canvas, which we experimented with in terms of slight blending, doing about 12 permutations to find a blend that had an enhanced nose with an extended finish, was an ethereal wine. It is also now sold out.”
Consumption
The response from consumers has been positive and people are speaking about the label.
For Ndlangisa, becoming the “leading brand in Africa for discerning and nuanced palettes, being the wine of choice for the most unapologetically critical wine drinkers” is the end goal.
If the consumers’ reaction is anything to go by then he may well be on his way.