Winery of the Week: Sadie Family Wines

Awards - both local and international - multiply for this remarkable winery, and we’re pleased to add, for the fourth time, our award for Top Performing Winery of the Year. It’s perhaps worth noting that no wine in the whole current range, including the seven that attained our five-star rating, has an alcohol level higher than 13.6%. Eben Sadie has a big footprint in the Swartland and Cape wine as a whole, as one of the earliest and most influential advocates for the region and for the fresh, hands-off yet precisely managed winemaking that has won him a reputation wherever fine wine is drunk. Home-base of his brand, Rotsvas farm on the Paardeberg, continues to be developed, following the planting of vines and the acquisition of neighbouring land in recent years. The first addition to the iconic Old Vines Series in over a decade, Rotsbank, off one of those acquired vineyards, finally brings a Swartland chenin to this collection, and the first Sadie wine from own vines. 2024 sees the maiden crop off the Sonvang experimental block (the farm’s viticulture is all organic), including near-extinct pontac and cinsaut blanc. And a splendid new building, including cellar, maturation space and offices (and more), is taking impressive shape as we go to press, the whole complex solar-powered. A tranche of older bottles from the vinothèque was made available in 2023 for wine club members, a release intended to be an annual event.