The term “garagiste” came into the English language more than 30 years ago. At first it referred to micro-cuvées made from tiny plots of land in the Right Bank appellations of Bordeaux. However, the usage quickly spread to any wine produced in such tiny quantities that, providing it received a high score from an influential critic, it was guaranteed to sell out at an inflated price.
The first so-called garagiste wines enjoyed something of a pedigree (and continue to attract stratospheric prices). Le Pin, from a 2ha site of old vines in Pomerol, was the forerunner. Current releases sell for about R50,000 a bottle.
Despite the suggestion that these are wines produced in someone’s garage, few emerged from such unpropitious beginnings. Le Pin’s first vintage was made in a basement and several so-called garagiste wines are produced in converted sheds. But the chief appeal of the name is the idea of handcrafted wines made in minuscule quantities.
Enter Callan Williams, The Garajeest, who has been producing a few barrels of Elgin-origin wine since 2015. Much of what she does is experimental in the sense that she is adventurous enough to try different strategies, different fermentation vessels and sometimes different cultivars in an endeavour to make a unique expression from her fruit sources.
By definition, not every wine will appeal to the same audience. Her 2020 Sémillon was nominated for a five-star Platter award, which says something about its quality and its place in the hierarchy. I was very impressed with her 2019 Bruce Cabernet Franc. The wines, incidentally, are all linked to the vinyl era of music, so there are no prizes for guessing which “Bruce” this wine celebrates. It’s fine, not too austere, perfumed, savoury and dangerously easy to drink.
Like Williams, Alexandra McFarlane is not a conventional garagiste winemaker. She works in a real wine cellar, and was a cellarmaster for real wine estates before setting out to launch her own label. As with many of her contemporaries, her ambition was to produce wines that expressed her own aesthetic vision, rather than a style dictated by a marketing department or (even worse) forced on her by poor grape quality.
She launched McFarlane wines in 2018. Her entry-level range sits under the Capitoline Wolf label (a reference to the legend of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome). The 2023 White is a blend of Sémillon and chenin blanc. It’s fresh, textural with an almost creamy mouthfeel, unshowy, food friendly and very satisfying — and comfortably worth its R160 price point.
Her premium range plays on the old nursery rhyme that begins “Monday’s child is fair of face”. Her Monday’s Child is a chenin blanc made from fruit harvested from two Stellenbosch vineyards. The 2022 was nominated for a Platter five star. Tuesday’s Child is a cinsaut (fruit from Darling and Stellenbosch) with a splash of Grenache noir to give it lift and breadth.
McFarlane manages grape tannins very well. There’s a plushness to her reds that comes entirely without alcoholic opulence (they are mostly under 13%). This skill has enabled her to produce a surprisingly Burgundian Saturday’s Child pinotage — a wine of real intensity loaded with luminous fruit notes.
Of course, not all small-volume wines are made in basements and garages: sometimes the winemakers at mid-size operations get a garagiste opportunity to hand-craft something exceptional from the best fruit on the estate. This is certainly the challenge that Vondeling’s Matthew Copeland rose to at his Voor-Paardeberg cellar.
The result is a Bordeaux blend called Philosophie. I recently tasted a line-up of all the vintages since its inception in 2014 and was mightily impressed with the latest release, the 2019. The wine has come together beautifully: Copeland understands exactly how to marry the component varieties, coaxing the best from the fruit.
At more that R1,000 it’s not an everyday drink (except perhaps for oligarchs and tenderpreneurs). But it’s as perfect as any deluxe red for those special red wine occasions.
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