THAT’S THE SPIRIT
Grappa was virtually unknown in South Africa two decades ago. Joanne Gibson meets a man who helped change that
When he came to South Africa on holiday in 1994, German restaurateur Helmut Wilderer was astounded when he ordered grappa after a meal at Sun City, and nobody knew what he was talking about. “At an international resort? I couldn’t believe it!”
He encountered the same problem on the Blue Train and at all the restaurants he went to in Cape Town: “There was all this fantastic fruit everywhere but no grappa, no schnapps, no digestives at all. I couldn’t understand it.”
By the end of his holiday, he’d learnt how heavily regulated the SA wine industry had been — but also that deregulation was under way. “Suddenly I had the idea to start my own grappa distillery, and half-a-year later I was living here. It was all quite unexpected.”
Acquiring the first licence in the country to produce grappa and schnapps, Wilderer set out to make “top-shelf ” products rather than the crude, mass-produced firewater imported at the time. “The few locals who had tasted Italian grappa hated its harsh taste, not realising that good grappa is soft and fruity.”
Grappa has humble roots: it dates to medieval Veneto and Tuscany, where wine was made for the wealthy, leaving peasants with the pomace or graspa — the skins, stalks and seeds — which they boiled down into a potent brew. Commercial production only began during the Industrial Revolution, thanks to the development of steampowered, continuous-column stills, but the focus was often
THERE WAS ALL THIS FANTASTIC FRUIT BUT NO GRAPPA, NO SCHNAPPS
on quantity rather than quality. Only in recent decades have some top wine producers realised that it’s a shame for so much of their beautiful fruit to go to waste during the winemaking process. Why not capture the essence of the grapes by distilling the pomace as soon as possible after pressing?
In South Africa, former Meerlust cellarmaster Giorgio Dalla Cia started making his “G” husk spirit around the same time as Wilderer, with other producers now including Chamonix, Iona, Kaapzicht, Mont Destin, Oude Wellington and Upland. Typically they use small stills that only distil one batch at a time, giving them hands-on control.
“I don’t believe in too much automation, because every batch is different and just one drop can make a batch faulty,” says Wilderer, who now has a small distillery at Spice Route in Paarl, giving him access to the Swartland grapes pressed by winemaker Charl du Plessis. “I get my skins directly from the press, even if it’s at midnight or 3am.”
Working alongside other passionate artisans at Spice Route, including craft brewer Wolfgang Koedel at the Cape Brewing Company and the De Villiers family of chocolatiers at DV Chocolate Roastery & Espresso Bar, he’s starting to get quite creative with his state-of-the-art 100-litre Ulrich Kothe potstill: “I’ll have a beer schnapps on market in the next few months,” he reveals. “I’d also like to make a chocolate grappa or liqueur.”
Wilderer’s award-winning grappa range includes a floral and fruity muscato, a smooth, coffee-nuanced pinotage and a spicy shiraz (all aged in French oak for 12 months), as well as a tempranillo made in a more typically Italian style (ie not influenced by oak). They sell for between R230 and R250 per 500ml, and visitors to Spice Route can watch the whole distilling process while enjoying a wood-fired pizza at La Grapperia right next door — perhaps finishing off with a caffè corretto (espresso with a shot of grappa). ........................................... Tel: (021) 863-4367, www.spiceroute.co.za, www.wilderer.co.za