Pinot Noir was probably first planted in South Africa in the 1920s (the crossing with Cinsaut to produce Pinotage was made in 1925), but serious Pinot wine-making began only in the late 1970s. That was when a rich, wine-loving businessman, Tim Hamilton-Russell, decided to establish, against all sorts of traditional and regulatory odds, a hopeful Burgundian outpost in the Hemel en Aarde (‘Heaven and Earth’, pictured here) Valley just inland from the Atlantic village of Hermanus – unprecedentedly southerly and cool for Cape wine-making.
This was a time when Oregon’s now-great Pinot industry was starting to...
