March 31 2002

The Vine - GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

The United Nations has designated 2002 the Year of the Mountain. And with Blue Twos (thermobaric fuel-air bombs designed to penetrate underground bunkers) falling like rain on the craggy peaks of Shah-I-kot and Daisy Cutters turning Tora Bora into a sea of sand dunes, never before has nature so needed UN intervention.
The mountains of the Cape fold belt may be less vertiginous than those of eastern Afhganistan, but they pay an equally important role for the locals and their traditional pastime: making wine.

for a start, mountains are the geographic features which typically divide a region into different wine appellations. The various slopes, aspects and soils determine different flavour profiles.
Without mountains, the Cape winelands would be just another Aussie-like collection of rice paddies with vines, where regional "differences" are manufactured in cellars and laboratories.

Stellenbosch is the summit for Cape wine quality and its various municipal wards are defined by mountains. When driving north from Somerset West, look to the right, where you'll see the Helderberg. Notice the Simonsberg towering over that town. Paarl gets its name from the granite domes above the town, but it is further north, in Wellington, that mountains maximise - as do new-wave boutique wines, with exciting super-ripe bevvies from Diemersfontain (look out for their 2001 barrel select Merlot later this year), Mont du Toit and Upland, whose organic offerings are worth tracking down. There's the Limietberg, which defined the limit of civilisation for 17th-century Boers, Groenberg (for the obvious visual reason) and the Hawequas, named after the Khoi tribe who lived in the present-day Du Toit's Kloof.

When Steph du Toit decided to go wine farming, Wellingtion was a natural destination. After all, the Du Toits are to the region what the De Villiers are to Paarl, so it's a safe bet to greet a stranger with a "More, Meneer du Toit". When it came to choose a name for the farm and its wines, "Clos du Toit" seemed like a good idea. After all, clos is a walled vineyard in France and the Du Toit family originally came to the Cape as Huguenot refugees. Alas, what you call your farm has now become as politically sensitive as a racist or anti-Semitic joke and so clos was given the flick and replaced by mont. The farm's main event, the 2000 vintage Mont du Toit, has just been released. A blend of ultra-ripe Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz made with extended skin contact, this third vintage is a case of "third time even better" and is available from the farm and selected retailers at R120 a bottle. The best grapes and barrels constitute a vinous quality peak, so the wine is not too surprisingly called Le Sommet.