For someone who claims to travel so rarely from his Swartland base in the arid hinterland of Cape Town, Eben Sadie (pronounced Aybun Sardy) is remarkably well connected globally.
I caught up with him and his older son Markus a few weeks ago in the rather unlikely setting of the 17th-century offices of Sadie Family Wines’ UK importer Berry Bros & Rudd, shown above. He had just made his first visit to the English countryside for 25 years. ‘I’ve had a chlorophyll overdose’, was his reaction to immersion in English vineyards in springtime. ‘They’re beautiful and, because my career has been filled with a pioneering spirit, I understand English wine producers well.’
‘Pioneer’ is probably the word most often applied to Sadie. In 1998, at the age of only 26, he was put in charge of Charles Back of Fairview’s groundbreaking Spice Route wine operation in Swartland, then much better known for cereals than wine. He saw the potential of the region and decided to strike out on his own there. At that point, Swartland’s ancient bush vines on mixed farms were providing bulk wine for co-ops rather than characterful raw material for the new wave of young South African vintners who followed in Sadie’s wake (see ‘Back to basics’ below).
He was sharply criticised by South African wine-drinkers for the price at which he launched the first 2000 vintage of his flagship red Columella. And that might have been the end of Sadie Family Wines, had it not been for English wine importer Roy Richards of Richards Walford. ‘There was no Plan B’, Sadie admitted, ‘but thanks to Roy, who financed the bottling of our first two vintages, there’s a little bit of England in all our wines.
‘I’d tasted briefly with him at the London Wine Fair. So when he came to South Africa in 2001, I made sure he tasted all the components of my 2000 and 2001. He said the wines were excellent and agreed to buy half of them. He sent the money the next week. He’s cut from another piece of wood that man and has had an immense influence on my life.’
The UK remains Sadie Family’s number-one export market ‘by a country mile’, followed by various other northern European countries. Americans took a while to be converted – perhaps partly because of general ignorance of the wine’s provenance. ‘They thought Robert Mugabe was our president’, observed Sadie. But thanks to US importers Eric Solomon and then Broadbent Selections, once American wine-drinkers tasted Sadie Family wines (now joined by a series of great whites), they were hooked. Today, Sadie Family wines are by far the most expensive and most sought-after South African wines in the US.
According to Bartholomew Broadbent, who points out that in 2017 the Masters of Wine voted Sadie the Winemakers’ Winemaker, ‘He is really one of the greatest winemakers in the world. Also, a dream to interview because he is opinionated and a great philosopher. Probably the best in the wine world today since [the late] Serge Hochar [of Lebanon’s Chateau Musar] is no longer able to claim that mantle’.
Sadie reminds me more of the late Gianfranco Soldera of Montalcino for his confident self-belief combined with a restless research programme. ‘I have a very analytical, mathematical, square-box brain’, he told me, before describing having interned in Germany and Austria – countries chosen on linguistic grounds – after graduating from wine school in 1994. ‘But in Europe I realised that winemaking was more than formulae; it was savoir faire, too. Gerhard Aldinger [of Württemberg in southern Germany] taught me love of plants, to see them not as an item or an avenue, but to love the vine and realise it’s communicating things to you. Culture not science makes wine.’
Early in his career he also worked in Oregon and California, and was involved in a joint venture in Priorat in Catalunya in the first decade of this century, ‘because of the old mountains and the climate – I discovered Etna too late’. Such is his reputation that he has attracted high-profile international interns. One of these was the popular Tegan Passalacqua of Turley Wine Cellars and Sandilands in northern California. As a result, Eben’s older son Markus interned with Passalacqua at the same time as his younger brother Xander worked for Morgan Twain-Peterson of Bedrock, another California old-vine specialist. (During this period Eben came to see his sons, and with them visited some leading local winemakers. Ted Lemon of Littorai in Sonoma remembers being amazed that, after they’d tasted about 40 of his wines, the spittoons were still empty.)
Markus has also worked in Austria, at Noemia in Argentine Patagonia, Roagna in Piemonte, Le Pin and Vieux Château Certan in Pomerol, and regards Guillaume Pouthier of Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion as a mentor. But it was in California that he achieved his greatest coup: wooing and marrying Jessica Neal from the current generation of Jack Neal & Son, one of the most prominent of Napa Valley’s vital vineyard management companies.
Eben effectively recalled Markus to work in the family winery when he lost his long-standing winemaker. Jessica came, too, and is now in charge of several of Eben’s many research endeavours, having mapped all his vineyards vine by vine. He says of his new daughter-in-law, ‘We definitely married up. Her brain is next level. I only have to explain the science to her once. She’s unbelievably intelligent.’
She is also unbelievably well connected. Her brother is married to the daughter of Gaylon Lawrence, the agro-billionaire owner of leading wine estates in Napa Valley and Bordeaux. She is currently studying wine at Adelaide University. (Georges Thienpont of Le Pin has, coincidentally, been a fellow student.)
Did I mention the surfing? Surf fights with wine as Eben’s great love. Correction: surf probably wins. Chris Howard’s article about going surfing with him and some fellow surfing winemakers begins: ‘“Remember, we’re surfers first!” proclaims Eben Sadie as we load surfboards and wetsuits in his bakkie’.
At 53, with two sons and daughter Lisa-Maria, ‘the only one with a degree’, Eben is starting to think about succession. Xander is currently working at another winery, Brookdale, and is likely to stay there a while. According to Eben, ‘I didn’t think Markus and Xander should work together, but I like the idea that they can develop their individual selves. It’s most important they are not clones of me’.
I asked Markus, now 28, whether his father had pushed him towards wine. ‘He didn’t push’, said Markus, ‘but he definitely nudged. When I was 18, I worked for Adi [Badenhorst, a neighbour, friend and fellow winemaking surfer] for two months. That taught me the work ethic.’
Eben admitted that in Markus’s first year back at Sadie Family Wines there was ‘lots of conflict; we had two different operating systems. It was incredibly difficult. But, now, three vintages later, things are stabilising. Markus just needs to learn more about our DNA.’ ‘I was trying to prove myself’, explained Markus, ‘but I should have apologised rather defending myself.’
His father claims that 2027 will be his last vintage in the spanking-new cellar above, whose construction kept him at home for three solid years. ‘I think it’s about time. I have too much work that’s unfinished. I work with a lot of people – 44 permanent employees and another 12 consultants such as geologists, biologists and soil scientists. If you knew the magnitude of what I have to chisel through … I won’t manage to finish it. But maybe Jessica will.’
New-wave South Africans
All wines scored at least 17/20.
White
Keermont, Terrasse 2023 Stellenbosch 14%
£24.95 Berry Bros & Rudd
Restless River, Vineyard Selection Chardonnay 2023 Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley 13.3%
£26.40 VINVM, £27.50 92 Or More, £31 Elementary Wine Co
Lismore, Age of Grace Viognier 2022 Cape South Coast 14%
£27.25 One More Wine Shop, £27.60 Latimer Vintners, £28.95 Fintry Wines
Alheit, Hereafter Here Chenin Blanc 2022 Western Cape 13%
£27.48 Justerini & Brooks, £27.58 Lay & Wheeler, £29.50 Vin Cognito
Thorne & Daughters, Paper Kite Old Vine Semillon 2021 Swartland 12.5%
£27.52 Lay & Wheeler
Momento, Chenin Blanc/Verdelho 2022 Western Cape 13%
£28 92 Or More, £29 Hic! Wine Merchants, £29.99 DBM Wines
Crystallum, The Agnes Chardonnay 2025 Western Cape 13.9%
£30 Abingdon Fine Wine, £32.99 The Wine Reserve
A A Badenhorst, Kalmoesfontein White Blend 2023 Swartland 14%
£30.25 VINVM, £33.86 Lay & Wheeler, £34 Vin Cognito
Savage, White [Sauvignon/Semillon] 2022 Western Cape 13.5%
£34.80 Four Walls Wine Company, £38.99 Waud Handford Wines
Storm, Vrede Chardonnay 2022 Hemel-en-Aarde Valley 13.2%
£37.50 Atlas Fine Wines
David & Nadia, Hoë-Steen Chenin Blanc 2023 Swartland 14%
£74.66 Lay & Wheeler, £76.96 Justerini & Brooks
Sadie Family, Skerpioen 2021 Swartland 13.5%
£472.32 for six bottles Mann Fine Wine
Red
Boekenhoutskloof, The Chocolate Block 2023 Swartland 14%
£21.50 The Wine Society, £24 Four Walls Wine Company, £27 Tesco and Majestic
Rall Syrah 2023 Swartland 12%
£23.71 Lay & Wheeler
Sijnn Red 2016 Malgas 14%
£44.95 Cellar Door Wines
Porseleinberg 2021 Swartland 13.9%
£56 London End Wines, £62.40 Four Walls Wine Company, £63.95 James Nicholson
Mullineux, Granite Syrah 2018 Swartland 13.5%
£69 London End Wines and many offers of six bottles in bond
Tasting notes, exact scores and suggested drinking dates in our tasting notes database. International stockists on Wine-Searcher.com.
Back to basics
Other top South African new-wave winemakers |
| With the Mullineuxs, Badenhorst and Marc Kent, Eben Sadie played a key role in establishing South Africa’s new wave of winemakers, inspiring a generation of producers to take advantage of the Cape’s legacy of old bush vines and aim for winemaking perfection, even if they couldn’t afford their own winery and had to rent space in one (see my 2015 article Young guns of the Cape need ammunition). Today, South Africa is one of the world’s most exciting fine-wine regions, particularly for Chenin Blanc, dramatically improved reds and Mediterranean-inspired blends of both colours, offering increasing finesse, distinctive terroirs and comparatively modest prices, even at the top end. In 2015, a group of UK importers led by Swig put on a groundbreaking tasting of new-wave South African wines in London. These winemakers were part of that noisy, energetic group and are still making great wine all over the Cape winelands: A A Badenhorst, Alheit, Beaumont, BLANKBottle, Boekenhoutskloof, Botanica, Crystallum, David & Nadia, The Foundry, Keermont, The Liberator, Lismore, Momento, Mullineux, Porseleinberg, Rall, Restless River, Sadie Family, Savage, Sijnn, Storm, Thorne & Daughters and Tierhoek. They have since been joined by others. A tasting of some of their 2015s a year ago showed that, when the corks were good enough, at 10 years old they were still in great shape. Look out for my account of a similar tasting of the 2016s next month. |
The image at the top of this article is courtesy of Berry Bros & Rudd.
