The first rule of the Sadie Family: tasting is believing. On tasting through our first, mini allocation from this Swartland visionary, the Bibendum team were left in a kind of collective shock. The fact is, you can be a total believer when you order the wines, but the moment your first allocation arrives in Australia, it’s kind of a moment of truth. Will this first shipment live up to expectations? Will these wines stack up to everything we’ve told our clients? As we tasted, the faces in the room collectively lit up. This is why we get up in the morning—to bring to our market wines that move wine people.

Of course, the Sadie name will be familiar to many of our clients, either through Eben Sadie’s international profile or via the link to Terroir al Límit (where Sadie was a founding partner but is no longer involved). Regardless of whether or not you know these wines, you MUST do your best to make their acquaintance (or reacquaintance). If you knew the wines in the early days, be prepared for a shock, they are totally different today. In short, they are far, far finer than the early releases. As Eben puts it, “…until 2009 we made wine like you make coffee, since then we have made wine like you make tea.” But forget about style, the Sadie Family bottlings, crafted from old vine, high-grown vineyards in South Africa’s Swartland, are simply some of the greatest non-European wines we have ever tasted. 

The Sadie Family team work with roughly 30 hectares of vines, one-third of which are estate, with the other vines farmed entirely under their control. This is quite the undertaking when you consider, at their furthest point, the vineyards lie some 250 miles apart and are spread across 53 separate parcels. Then consider that everything is dry grown and organically farmed and that each parcel, having different geologies, aspects and often grape varieties, will require different management. These vines, (from overwhelmingly old parcels), lie mostly on the high-altitude slopes of Swartland’s Atlantic-influenced mountains, one hour north of Cape Town on the Western Cape. The terroirs include Paardeberg Mountain (on granite), Riebeek Mountain (slate), Piquetberg (sandstone and quartz), Coastal Plain (chalk) and Malmesbury (Glenrosa clay). Further afield, several of the Old Vine Series plots fall outside of the Swartland WO, notably Soldaat in the Piekenierskloof highlands and the Skurfberg vineyards in Citrusdal Mountain. 

“Eben Sadie has become the great curator of the old treasures out in the field of South Africa's Swartland, with his Old Vines series the reliquary.” Jon Bonné

While the terroirs differ significantly, Sadie notes, in general, that he’s farming with very old, low fertility, decomposed soils which are exceptionally demanding to work. With poor soils, an absence of irrigation and old vines, yields are naturally tiny—25 hl/ha at best—and three consecutive drought years have seen these figures drop far lower. There are no chemical additives to either the vines or the soils—a philosophy which extends to the cellar. Sadie’s key challenge in the vineyard, he notes, is preserving the grape’s acidity, freshness and purity—a challenge that starts in the vineyards with building the (previously neglected) soils’ life through inter-planting and organic composting. Whatever he’s doing, it’s working as the wines lack for nothing when it comes to energy and freshness.

As mentioned above, Sadie’s winemaking philosophy has evolved considerably over the years and his wines have become far purer, better balanced and now offer wonderful transparency of place. There is almost zero new oak in the cellar and these days extraction for the reds is limited to foot-stomping, the odd, irregular punch down and, what our own Dave Mackintosh calls, jugotage, whereby the team scoop the free juice over the top of the whole bunch ferments. All the wines are spontaneously fermented and there is no stainless steel, only concrete vats, a few eggs and mostly large format oak. Sadie uses no sulphur additions until the very end of the aging — and there are no other additions for that matter — with a final total of 60 milligrams that he finds is the minimum for aging and travelling. All the wines clarify naturally and are bottled without filtration.

Since we have been shipping the wines, Sadie’s Domaine has increased with new plantings on the West Coast (near the Skerpioen vineyard), and there’s a new project in the Cedarberg Mountains. Then, there are two extensions at Rotvas (Sadie’s home farm in Paardeberg) where the fruit is destined for Columella and Palladius. These vineyards bring Sadie’s holdings to nine hectares—still small, yet spaced over a huge distance of some 400 kilometres. Eben has bought in vineyard manager, Morné Steyn and viticulture consultant Jaco Engelbrecht to manage the increased workload. Despite this increase, Sadie notes that with these new sites, the aim is not necessarily to make more wine. Instead, it’s in planting a plethora of Mediterranean varieties more suited to Swartland’s ever-drier climate—including Vermentino, Picpoul, Marsanne, Grenache Blanc, Cinsault Blanc and Assyrtiko. He hopes these vineyards will help The Sadie Family adapt to the ongoing challenges of global warming and climatic shifts.