April 2001

French and German

Wellington's Mont du Toit

A fan club can be a nuisance. Especially when you're trying to make wine, according to Bernd Philippi.
Philippi is a chaotic winemaking genius, who made his name with a highly rated riesling and pinot noir at Weingut Koehler-Rupprecht in the Rheinpfalz. A winemaking natural, he threw away the recipe book years ago and makes all his decisions by taste: when to harvest the grapes; if it's a blended wine, the composition of the blend; and how long to leave it maturing in wood.

For the past couple of years, Philippi has come out to the Cape three times a year for three weeks to make wine in Wellington. This time, his fan club came along as well, slumming it at La Grande Roche Hotel in Paarl while Philippi finished off the 2001 harvest at Mont du Toit.

At the sharp end of the wine quality pyramid, winemakers achieve the same cult status as their wines. Which explains why a party of German gastronomes follows Philippi around the world - to his quinta in the Douro Valley, Portugal, and now down to SA. Not that you'd ever pick him as one of the wine world's brightest stars as he is a heavy smoker who gets through three packets of Marlboro a day.
Mont du Toit is owned by Johannesburg advocate Stephan du Toit, who loves all things German, starting, with his German-born wife, Carolina. So after buying a 40 ha farm in Wellington in 1996, when the issue of appointing a winemaker came up, one of the hottest winemakers in the Rheinpfalz had obvious appeal.

And it paid off, with Mont du Toit wines achieving cult status in "Germany overnight. Pieter-Niel Roussow handles the day-to-day winemaking tasks and du Toit comes down a couple of times a month to keep a proprietor's eye on things.

But the German connection does not completely dominate. After all, Wellington is, according to du Toit, "Du Toit world - that's why it's called the du Toitskloof Pass." And it was a French Huguenot du Toit who opened up the area under the Hawequas Mountains and the Worcester Valley on the other side of the Limietberg. This French patrimony also explains the preferred pronunciation of the farm's name and its wine:"Dew Twa".

Its most visually striking wine is called Hawequas, with a bright label designed by Iaan Bekker who also desigend the new SA coat of arms. The main event is the Mont du Toit '99, a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and shiraz which, at 1500 cases, is the farm's biggest-volume product. In full-on French mode comes Le Sommet ( "the summit"). A tiny-volume, special-selection unfiltered wine. With a grandfather who farmed with Jan Smuts at Riebeeck West, and a father who was Clerk of the Senate in the Forties and a diplomat in the Smuts government, you'd expect Stephan du Toit to make old-style Cape wine. And you'd be wrong. The Mont du Toit'99 is a stunning example of a new-wave Cape wine that is world-class.

The poet Antjie Krog was right on the Money with her stanza on the bottle's back label:
"Ek word daarvan litterig, lieflik, ligter As wyn direk die slagaar giet"
(When wine hits the artery - It makes me lyrical, loveable, lighter.)