Natasha Williams

BOSMAN FAMILY VINEYARDS AND LELIE VAN SARON

Alcohol was forbidden when Natasha Williams was growing up in Saron in Swartland. Her parents didn’t drink, partly for religious reasons, but also because they’d witnessed what alcoholism had done to their community. ‘Our neighbourhood had numerous shebeens [illicit bars],’ she says, ‘and children born with foetal alcohol syndrome were common.’ So when a careers advisor suggested she study winemaking, she was ‘confused and upset’.

Instead, she went to Stellenbosch University to read molecular biology. But six months into her course, Williams changed her mind. She’d spoken to friends on the viticulture and oenology course and realised that wine ‘combined my interest in science and my love of nature’. A subsequent six-month internship at Jordan confirmed her choice. ‘I loved working in the vineyards, processing the grapes, smelling these amazing aromas in the cellar and making a product that people could enjoy.’

She joined Bosman in 2014, working under the brilliant Corlea Fourie, and is one of a number of young female winemakers who also cite the example of Andrea Mullineux of Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines as a role model. Williams became the main winemaker at Bosman in 2019 and started her own brand, Lelie van Saron, in 2017 as ‘a platform to express myself’. She currently produces four wines: a Chardonnay, a Syrah, a méthode ancestrale fizz and a red blend of Syrah and Petite Sirah, all from Bosman’s Hemel-enAarde farm. The name and the beautiful labels are a tribute to the place of her birth.

Lelie van Saron, Chardonnay, Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, Walker Bay 2020 91

£31 Love Wine, The Sourcing Table

This Chardonnay comes from a single dryland block on the Bosman estate in the Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. It is fresher and more focused than many 2020 Cape whites, partly because it didn’t go through malolactic. Taut and saline, with cream, fresh lemon, vanilla and clementine flavours, and just a whisper of oak. Drink 2022-2026 Alc 13.2%