Sipping organic wine at Waverley Hills

Waverley Hills

Lying at the foot of the Witzenberg Mountains on the R46 between Tulbagh and Ceres, Waverley Hills pro­duces organic wines that are def­in­itely worth sampling. The Du Toit fam­ily entered the rather tough organic mar­ket in 2000 when they planted 21 hec­tares of vine­yard, and we popped in to visit the estate recently.

Waverley Hills Estate lies on a nat­ural water­shed area — both the Breede and Berg River ori­gin­ated here before con­tinu­ing on to enter two com­pletely dif­fer­ent oceans — which more than accounts for the myriad wild flowers and the effort­less expanse of grasses at Waverley Hills. It was offi­cially spring (delighted school chil­dren had handed out flowers and cards the day before on the streets of Tulbagh) when we rode through the gates, the sun was shin­ing and the dirt road that made its way to the prom­in­ent wine cel­lar build­ing and res­taur­ant was dot­ted with fynbos.

Waverley Hills Estate

Waverley Hills is an estate about which I had heard. We had already sampled their olives, for they have olive groves too, at one of Cape Town's myriad food exhib­i­tions, but hadn't yet savoured their wines, and, even thought it was still early morn­ing and we had a jour­ney ahead of us, a 'taste' was not out of the question.

It seemed fit­ting, given our won­der­ful, lazy stay in Tulbagh, to end the week on a high note and pop into the estate on the way home (alright, we did go a little out of our way, but the views were worth it!).

Visiting a place never fails to bring it alive, where a web­site or flyer doesn't quite do a place justice, and Waverley vine­yards and olive groves were no excep­tion. The set­ting was simply gor­geous, and the views from here worth the drive. The only down side is that the estate doesn't yet offer accom­mod­a­tion, but then not all estates do, and they do have an altern­at­ive place to stay at a farm just up the road.

Waverley Vineyards

Gayle was incred­ibly inform­at­ive and it was hard to believe that she was only in the pro­cess of writ­ing her wine tast­ing exam. The res­taur­ant and tast­ing area are merged into a com­fort­able, spa­cious room from which the views neces­sit­ate at least one coffee.

But we were in as much of a hurry as one can be, after four days of down time and we lingered over our wines whilst swop­ping tit­bits of inform­a­tion with Gayle, one of which was that Waverley Hills exports their wine under the label of Dixon's Peak, as there is already a European label that calls itself Waverley.

To the side of the tast­ing area is a photo album in which dozens of pic­tures of wild flowers and fyn­bos found on the estate are dis­played. Johan van Biljon is respons­ible for these pho­tos and largely for the gar­dens and biod­iversity areas on the estate – Waverley Hills is part of the BWI (Biodiversity and Wine Initiative) and 16 hec­tares of the rel­at­ively small farm (20% of the total hec­tar­age) are given over to biodiversity.

The Restaurant

There are also a couple of hikes designed to take vis­it­ors through these beau­ti­ful parts of the estate. The owner, Kobus du Toit, who inter­est­ingly is also the only sup­plier in the coun­try of tar­taric acid used in white wines to raise the ph level of the wine (colder cli­mates use sugar), is a firm believer in farm­ing in har­mony with nature and only farms his grapes organ­ic­ally, even though they're a par­tic­u­larly fussy crop and it takes a fair amount of com­mit­ment and care to do so.

What was inter­est­ing for me was my mis­con­cep­tion that all organic wines con­tain no sul­phur. Whilst these organic wines con­tain less than half the sul­phur of con­ven­tional wines, they do still con­tain sul­phur (the more sul­phur, the longer the shelf life). Waverley Hills pro­duces one sulphur-free Cabernet Sauvignon that we sampled that was rather lovely – a real spring wine, from this year's harvest.

Waverley Estate

It might be a good moment to men­tion that des­pite liv­ing in the Cape, I know very little about wine, and con­tin­ing to wax lyr­ical at this stage could land me in hot water since I barely know my mer­lots from my caber­nets, so I prom­ise not to try and describe bou­quets and fla­vours, but what I can tell you is that the wine tasted good, and that the Shiraz 2007 was par­tic­u­larly more(ish).

The pretty res­taur­ant, com­plete with wait­ress who bares more than a passing resemb­lance to Heidi (includ­ing the plaits), on the estate uses organic pro­duce 80% of the time, as many farm fresh products as they can, and serves organic cof­fees and teas (although no decaf!). The estate is in the pro­cess of build­ing a con­fer­ence and wed­ding venue area onto the cel­lar (there was quite a bit of banging and drilling as we arrived) although the res­taur­ant more than caters for birth­days and office func­tions, seat­ing up to 50 people.

Waverley Estate Contact Details:
Telephone: +27 (0)23 231‑0002 / 3
Web Site: http://www.waverleyhills.co.za/

Useful Links:
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Things to Do in Tulbagh
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