South Africa, The Wineries - Mont Du Toit MONT DU TOIT Mont du Toit is situated just out of Wellington, around 35 minutes North of Stellenbosch. We had previously been lucky enough to meet Christina du Toit in Zürich where we tasted the Hawequas and Mont du Toit wines. Despite 1998 being their first vintage they produce uncommonly concentrated wines compared to most others from the region, on approximately 40 hectares. Planted mainly to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz, but smaller amounts of others including Cabernet Franc, Alicante Bouschet and some Mourvedre are also coming on stream. I first tasted these wines in Switzerland, but directly following some very high powered Australian shiraz, and in that company I described the mines as medium bodied but able to follow the shiraz’s quite successfully. In real life then, that means of course that these wines are not at all ‘medium-bodied’. I was able to chat a little with Stephan du Toit who earns his money in Johannesburg and then spends it trying to make good wine in Wellington ! He has high aims for his wines – and why not. Stephan is not interested in the volume trade so currently works only with old established merchants such as Corney & Barrow in the UK and Martel in Switzerland to establish the Mont du Toit name. The wines are pretty much hand made, from the grape sorting table right through to bottling. The predominant market is export as these wines are simply too expensive for the average South African wine-drinker. Today there are three wines produced: moving up the scale from Hawequas to Mont du Toit to Mont du Toit Le Sommet. The Le Sommet is not produced every year. The du Toits originally brought in expertise from the German flying winemakers Bernd Philippi and Bernhard Breuer with Pieter-Niels Roussow being the man on the ground. Pieter is relatively young for a winemaker but talks with passion about his wines, vines and production methods. He spends three months of each year in other countries with aim of extending his experience, and hopefully helping others improve their wines too. Recently he has been in Portugal and France, unfortunately last year in Costières du Nîmes during an appalling wet harvest – he’s going back again this year with the hope of getting better raw materials! Some cellars are so clean that they are almost antiseptic, the resulting wines are often similarly characterless, Mont du Toit is not like that; you are greeted by the lovely smell of oak and wine in the tidy underground cellars, which due to the damp on the brick walls look more like 40 than 4 years old. The winery is built on a hill to make the best use of gravity, the only time the wine is pumped is when it is put in the stainless steel tanks after pressing. After long cool fermentations the varietals are placed separately in barrels by gravity where they will stay for up to 2 years in a mixture of French (3 types), American and Russian oak. The American is limited at 5%, above this Pieter finds too much banana and strawberry aromas creeping into the wines. The wines matured in the Russian oak seem particularly interesting. I was able to taste from barrel some of the varietals which will be assembled to make the 2002 Mont du Toit. The cabernet was purple and very rich, the merlot much more subdued with fine tannins, the cabernet franc was very fruity and the shiraz had superb aromatics but was a little short on the palate - I look forward to the blend. First Class Wines.        MONT DU TOIT        PO Box 704        Wellington        tel. +27 21 873 7745 © nanson.ch 2000-2002