The Culture of Wine | Radford Dale | Rooted

I discovered what had come with wine and the whole culture and the passion behind it. I was inspired by that and so it became something for me to hold on to and a direction that pointed a way for me. I think Radford Dale was maybe in the early years one of the first, what in those days was called a virtual winery, you know, rented cellar space and sourced grapes and this kind of thing. In those days there wasn't much space for this kind of thing to begin with. It was quite an oddity to take this, what is a very prevalent business model in Burgundy and apply it in a South African context. In Burgundy the idea of having a small cellar somewhere and then going out and looking and finding parcels of exceptional fruit and then vinifying and bottling those separately, you know, that is quite commonplace. But that didn't exist in the late 90s and early 2000s in South Africa. Fast forward 20 years and there's more than a dozen examples. So, you know, Radford Dale's vision in terms of our wines has always been to highlight the terroir and to go and find exceptional parcels in great terroirs and then to produce wine in which we would highlight this and then bottle each one of these parcels separately. And now, you know, we're working with 37 different vineyards, which is quite a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. It's sometimes feels like you have 37 balls in the air and you're juggling. But it gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of where we want to go in terms of our style. You know, the vineyards that we started with, you know, are in many cases still vineyards that we're working with today. And we've built wonderful relationships with the growers that we work with. And that has added a lot of strength to our business. It's something that I think we talk about and discuss a lot amongst ourselves. And it's always evolving. But underlying concept of individuality is a very strong value at Radford Dale. We like to do things differently, not for the sake of doing things differently, but because we believe that there is a better way than the conventional one. We also believe in representing our South African roots. And we want that to show in our wines as well. We are also keen to acknowledge the influences that have shaped our journey over the last 25 years. We strive to reflect that in the way that we do business and the way that our wine tastes. Light reds is something that we all love to drink. We're fortunate in the sense that Radford Dale also has an import division. We're importing, I think it's up to 600 wines now. And that, I think, gives one a lot of perspective on the global wine scene, if you've got access to those things. And I suppose, given our climate here, light reds make sense in a lot of applications. I prioritize refreshment. And that's something that is just a personal thing. But I think there are also a lot of other consumers that have gotten around to this refreshment quality of wine. I think in the later part of the Parker era, we started to lose that a little bit. Wines were being made to be statement. It was all about power and opulence and that kind of thing. And they were made to impress. And the more they impressed, the better the scores would be. But they weren't all that fun to drink, really. And so I think we lost this refreshment value. And Radford Dale has always been about that. We believe that wine is a beverage that you should be able to enjoy a bottle on your own. You shouldn't feel like you want to have a glass of water after you've had a glass of wine. And so that has really informed our philosophy in terms of how we make our wines. This kind of Wild West situation that inspired the name of Radford Dale Freedom Pinot Noir. Because my partner Alex came from Burgundy, where they have a very regimented understanding of their vines and their grapes and their appellation as a very strict system. And to a place that was literally the Wild West. Do anything you want. And in fact, the first few vintages of Freedom were bottled in a Bordeaux-style bottle because there was no one to tell us not to. He's a bit of a renegade in that sense, yeah. The international imports, as you say, are not only limited to the wine that we import. We have also people imported. Alex Dale, we have another partner called Edouard Labey, a Frenchman, who brings his own je ne sais quoi to the mix. And it helps us to maintain a global perspective when we're producing our own wines. We've also got some Pommies, Tom Pryor and Abbey Mitten. They've been part of our team now for some years and, you know, as well as a lot of local influences. We're a diverse team from various backgrounds and I think that helps. If you put all of these things together, it gives you a much richer understanding of who you are and your own internal culture. It all just helps to give us a better perspective on things. The current situation that we are facing in the South African wine industry is not the first difficulty that we've faced. What is it up to now? Almost 60 something years we've been making wine in South Africa. There have been many, many challenges, many opportunities as well. The wine business is a resilient business and the people involved in the business, they're also resilient people. And it requires you to have passion for it. If you're only about the money, you could probably do a few other things and put in the same amount of effort, same amount of passion and you could probably make a lot more money. But a lot of people, I believe, do wine because it's a fascination. And this is what makes our industry resilient. It's what gives us that grit to overcome the difficulties. We can bring it back to farming. Let's call it what it is. Good farming is good farming. Whether it's certified organic or biodynamic or sustainable or what it is, there are various levels along this continuum of what good farming is. I've always believed in developing the resilience and the balance in the vineyard, the natural immune system of a vineyard. If you get used to spraying a bunch of fungicides and herbicides as a matter of course, you lose a lot of the beneficial organisms that exist in a vineyard and you create a vacuum. And within this vacuum, it's always the bad stuff that's going to try and dominate first, you know, in this vacuum because they multiply quicker and they're more resilient. And so then you're forced to maintain this vacuum. And this then gives you a conventional type of farming where you have to have a monoculture and you have to have all this kind of thing. So that's where it started for us is just to see how we could use the balance in the vineyard to keep away the bad things in terms of bacteria, funguses and animals and birds and plants and that kind of thing. And so cover crops became quite important to us. We started working more with the soil. And as an evolution to that, we brought minimal intervention into our winemaking philosophy as well. You know, if you're going to do all of this effort in the vineyards, it doesn't make sense to come in inoculated with a selected yeast strain and then you lose all this kind of nuance and diversity that you've now created in the vineyard. The goal for us is to never stop evolving. And the next level of this is to gain organic certification. If you were able to take a snapshot of the last 15 to 20 years in South Africa in the wine scene, you know, I mean, there was a time where we would look outside of our borders for inspiration. You know, I mean, there was a time where we tried to make Barossa style Shiraz and we tried to make New Zealand style Sauvignon Blancs. And you know, whatever was doing well internationally, we would try and make a version of. And I think that over the last few years, we've come to look much more to our own land and our own vineyards and our own people for inspiration with our wines. And the world is responding to this because all of a sudden, South Africa has a voice and we have an authenticity and we have a few stories to tell. And this is making the world, the world is definitely waking up to South African wine. I love this place for all of its faults and challenges and there are as many opportunities. I have mentioned already that the barrier for entry is quite low and so it's a hotbed for experimentation, you know. I think, I do, I do enjoy that and I enjoy that other people are doing it as well. I think it adds texture and nuance to the... Otherwise, if we didn't have that, it would be quite a simple business, you know. Then the wines would end up tasting all the same. So, I like the fact that there's space for innovation and experimentation. I feel like we've only just started to understand our land and our vineyards and our people and how to express that in our wines. So, it's a very exciting place to be at the moment. I talk with my peers from overseas and they are all so excited about South Africa. And so, I'd be crazy to go anywhere else at the moment. Personally, I think I still have a lot to give and there's a lot to explore still. You know, Rosa Krier said it a while ago and she says, she believes that the best vineyards of South Africa haven't even been planted yet. That's very exciting and encouraging. I'm excited to see how we can bring out this excitement that we feel into the larger international arena and connect with consumers and with the wine world on an international level and for them to feel what we feel.