The Little Town With A BIG PUNCH

Wellington is a place of rolling hills and sunshine, good for fruit and wine. Especially wine, as Lorraine Kearney tells it

- Lorraine Kearney

Recipe for abundant vineyards: a warm and favourable Mediterranean climate, lots of sunshine, just the right amount of water, and cool breezes from the mountains. Which makes Wellington a favoured spot for winemaking.

The Wellington Wine Route stretches from the Berg River to the foothills of the Hawequa Mountains, threading family-owned wine farms, large wine estates, boutique wineries and one large producer cellar. There is also whisky, courtesy of the James Sedgwick Distillery on the banks of the Berg River. Wellington is also the cradle of the contemporary South African wine industry as its vine-cutting nurseries supply about 85% of the country's vine root stock, or stokkies, a measure of the quality of vines in this area.

'Wellington offers ideal growth conditions and we are able to harvest perfectly balanced and healthy grapes, which results in a clean and true expression of the different cultivars in the bottle,' says René Reiser, the owner-winemaker of Jacaranda Wine Estate, the smallest registered wine farm in South Africa - it has 3.2 hectares under vine with an annual production of 20 000-25 000 bottles.

AS NATURE INTENDED

René is part of the region's strong move towards organic, regenerative, sustainable winemaking that was started by Upland and Lazanou: 'The philosophy of our farm is to go as natural and sustainable as possible,' he says.

René and his wife, Birgit SchmiedererReiser, make low sulphite wine in the 'alternative style. He explains it as low sulphite, natural fermentation and extended skin contact/maceration. 'This method lends a distinctive character to the wines. Wines made in the alternative style have more concentration and are very expressive, and the main player in the wine is really the grapes in their purest form.'