THE WINEMAKER

Meets a local winemaker on her way to wow the French

hen I opened the e-mail, I thought it was a scam,” says South African winemaker Ntsiki Biyela, who will be the first Zulu to make wine in Bordeaux, France, later this year. Far from being yet another financial proposal from the widow of Nigerian strongman Sani Abacha, this invitation from Philippe Raoux, owner of Château d’Arsac in the Médoc, was the real deal.

Back in 2005, Raoux came up with the Winemakers’ Collection, a project that creates opportunities for cultural exchange. Every year he invites a well-known winemaker to select 10ha of vines from the 110ha which comprise his property. The grapes from these vines are used to make wine by the guest winemaker.

The first person chosen for this honour was Michel Rolland, who consulted on several vintages at Rupert & Rothschild in Paarl and at Remhoogte in Stellenbosch. The guru of sauvignon blanc, Denis Dubourdieu, who also makes a wine called G in Stellenbosch, has had a turn, as have winemakers from Italy and Argentina.

This year, cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes will be picked under Biyela’s direction in September and vinified. After being aged, first in barrels and then in bottles, they will be sold with her name on the label as genuine Margaux in 2015. Biyela travelled to Château d’Arsac earlier this year to check on the progress of her vines, and will make another six or eight visits between harvesting and release of the wine.

This assumes the weather gods smile sweetly on her corner of the Médoc. Earlier this month, a 10minute hailstorm affected around 20 000ha of grapes in Bordeaux, an area roughly 20% the size of the national vineyard in South Africa. As climate change increasingly becomes an issue, growing grapes has become an extreme occupation.

Biyela currently makes her own Bordeaux blend called Orion at Stellekaya, high in the mountains above Stellenbosch, where baboons rather than hail are the problem.

“The baboons have built a foefie-slide over the electric fence,” says Biyela. “When they get into the vineyard, they eat most of

ALPHA ZULU: Ntsiki Biyela of Stellekaya is going to make Bordeaux wine in Bordeaux the crop. They strip the grapes and leave the bare stems hanging on the vine.”

For local inspiration, Biyela looks to Vilafonté, whose award-winning Bordeaux blends are made by Zelma Long from California, an alumnus of the Winemakers’ Collection.

Biyela is also a big fan of High Road Director’s Reserve and De Toren Fusion V, a Stellenbosch Bordeaux blend inspired by Château Latour.

Next month, Biyela will be a judge in the “Battle of die Berge”, a blind tasting of rival wines from the competing Simonsberg and Helderberg mountain-range vineyards around Stellenbosch. Her home vineyard Stellekaya does not lie on either of these slopes, so she is unbiased.

Born in Ulundi, trained in Stellenbosch and about to make French wine, Biyela is living proof of the international sisterhood of the vine.