Wine Label Stories

It’s a tough job making sure our travelling friend gets the full experience of (some of) the more unusual wine estates and their winemakers in the Western Cape, South Africa. Our next two visits each had a lovely story going in terms of their wines and, more importantly, the logo on their labels. First up, was John Loubser of Silverthorne, a property sitting on the banks of the Breede River in the small (but thriving) wine town of Bonnievale. John, ex-winemaker at Steenberg Estate in Cape Town, has now been focusing purely on Méthode Cap Classique wines. His sparkling wines are among our favourites in terms of local producers.

John Loubser of Silverthorn at right (he’s a tall guy!), standing alongside the Breede River, which runs past the foot of their property.

The maturation cellar is strikingly modern, and an unusual dark charcoal in colour, which doesn’t affect the cool interior in any way.

A wire rhino held down by MCC corks welcomes visitors to the tasting room

A colombar (extremely unusual for a sparkling wine!), a rosé, a chardonnay/pinot noir … carrying the most lyrical of names

John and his wife, Karen, have an obsession with rocks, the complex geology of their area, as well as palaeontology, particularly since they have found countless artefacts in the ancient rocks and soils of their property (they are close to the Karoo). The wine tasting room is filled with a fascinating collection of skulls, iron objects, stone tools, and beautiful stones and rocks, all of which tell a story of a different landscape eons hence. This passion extends to the names on their wine labels. Who wouldn’t be enchanted by an MCC called The Genie, or River Dragon, or Jewel Box??

The River Dragon references vestiges of the presence of dinosaurs left behind in our Karoo rocks, but the story then morphs to Africa’s mythical Draco africanus, a dragon that would use smoke from its nostrils to sky-write across the sky. So, Silverthorne having a river in front of its property and a dragon’s back silhouette in the distant Riviersonderend mountains, this is how River Dragon came into being.

Genies, ‘free-willed spirits of Arabia formed from smokeless fire’, inspired John’s decision to make a rosé MCC from Shiraz, a grape variety aptly originating in ancient Persia. Good move, as The Genie was a double-gold winner a few years back. Finally, Jewel Box is inspired by our own Southern Cross star constellation. Embedded deep within it is Kappa crucis, aka Jewel Box, which English astronomer Sir John Herschel described as ‘a casket of variously coloured precious stones’. And, of course, as John the winemaker reminds us, there is the monk, Dom Pérignon, who is famous for saying, ‘Come quickly, I am tasting the stars’ when he chanced upon an old wine, naturally fermented, deep in an old underground chalk cellar.

MCC winemaker John Loubser’s passions: great sparkling wine, rocks and stones and the story they tell, and the spirit of Nature. (There is a story to the leafy face. That comes next.)

In much earlier times people lived closer to the earth. They embraced a paganistic existence, and believed in the ‘spirit of the forest’. This spirit behind cyclical Nature, which could constantly regenerate itself, and which was based on the interdependence of things, was often represented by a leaf-inspired face, a fusion of man and nature, as John says. Silverthorne’s chardonnay MCC has a gentle green tinge to it, and so we have The Green Man (a favourite of ours!).

Two guises of The Green Man: bottled and wood-carved.

Finally, off to Warwick Wine Estate in Stellenbosch, where, when Norma Ratcliffe first established the winery (in the process becoming rather famous as a woman winemaker), the estate label became synonymous with the logo of a woman holding a chalice above her head.

There (of course) is a story to it. Norma once discovered a 14th-century German wedding cup in an antique store. There was a legend attached to it, that a smitten goldsmith crafted the chalice, hoping to impress a beautiful woman named Kunigunde. (The story doesn’t go on to say whether he was successful or not in wooing her.) But over time, Norma went on to collect 16 of these antique cups.

The Warwick Lady (who manifests on various different wine labels as a Blue, a White and a First Lady) is joined at the estate by a famous person, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, masterly crafted, entirely out of beads. It even looks like him!!!

Interior & Exterior at Warwick Wine Estate

And just to end in a most elegant way, a beautiful painting of a dancer hanging in our unit at Mo & Rose with its unbelievable cactus gardens, where we stayed a night while in Robertson.