Hello and welcome to wines of the world my name is anthony metzger on this voyage of
discovery we will be going from country to country exploring all of the different wines
history and stories related to the mysterious world of wine so join me on this adventure
to find out what the wine world is truly all about.
South Africa a mysterious country that lies on the bottom of the African continent a country
that is known for its precious metals but diamonds and gold are not the only treasure
that emerge from these soils but also grapes which produce some of the most interesting
wines of the world I bought a plane ticket a video camera packed my bags and flew off
to the opposite side of the worldly my self to see if I can discover and reveal the most
interesting stories about south African wine at three times the size of Texas and with
a population of over fifty three million the republic of south Africa sits high atop the
most culturally diverse countries in the world a contrasting mix of westernization and tribalism
land and sea as well as urban and rural life this southern most part of the world has no
shortage of opportunity for the steadfast and adventures alike to make quick friends
with the locals look no further than a typical brai the south African term for a barbecue
party where music and wine feature as prominently to part goers as the meats they so happily
engorge as i drink in the landscape before me I can't help but wonder what did it take
for south African wine to get here today despite all the difficulties and challenges how did
the winemakers here succeed to answer these questions i know travel to the province of
the western cape in order to visit Hamilton Russell vineyards in the early nineteen seventies
a grape growing wine producing entrepreneur and explorer named Tim Hamilton Russell went
out on a search for the best grape growing soils in all of south Africa after an extensive
adventure he found himself here in the hemel en arcade valley meaning the heaven and earth
valley its located right here on the edge of the wine producing world anthony Hamilton
the son of Tim Hamilton now owns the winery he has invited me in for a traditional south
African lunch as well as to tell me about south African wines but prior to visiting
anthony he recommends that I get an areal view of the African wineries and farms so
I did i buckled in and ventured off into the sky to get a unique perspective of south African
wine country when anthony is not chasing off grape eating baboons on his property or traveling
the world revealing the African treasure that he creates you can find him on his wine farm
creating a wine that resembles rock n roll blended with deep smooth bass and piano his
vineyard grows on ancient African elephant trails in which he now rides his dirt bike
while sporting his Indiana jones hat he is a pioneer a winemaker and a world explorer
and sorry ladies he is not single together with his wife renowned chef olive Hamilton
Russell they have invited me in for a traditional south African lunch so what is a traditional
south African lunch well she explained it to me as food that come from the local fields
orchards vineyards and seas as all of the foods are sourced locally the recipes and
sauces are influenced from cultures that you can find all over the world they have presented
me with such a magnificent spread that i am wondering if the queen of England will be
joining us for lunch but in-fact its just that the hamiltons are some of the most gracious
hosts in all of the country after this amazing lunch I will be going out to the olive grove
with anthony to talk about south African wines i am anthony Hamilton Russell second generation
owner of Hamilton Russell vineyards its a business that my father started as a passion
moved from Johannesburg went wine farming nineteen seventy five he bought the land the
first wine came out in nineteen eighty one i was living over seas at the time as a lot
of young south africans were at the time we were unhappy with the way the country was
going and when things changed Mandela was released I made the decision to return to
the county and called my father up and said that I would like to get involved in the business
it was very small it needed the next generation and growth and invited myself back and eventually
purchased it from him in nineteen ninety four and that is how i got into the wine business
with the end of apartheid came a flood of new business ventures including new world
winemaking what i see happening here and it is happening already is the industry is going
to become increasingly quality focused much less volume and production and cost focused
and we are going to continue unlike many countries to offer not just one or two styles that define
south Africa but a range of different things such as you see in France you can't distill
it down to four different varieties its got something of everything south Africa has a
bit of that European sense-ability to it and that to me is what the sophisticated consumer
of the future wants the complexity wine the fact that wine represents origins and not
just variety and south Africa has the foundations for that so i see a great future fo us to
achieve a great future for his wine anthony looks to the distant past of winemaking history
and incorporates one of its earliest traditions like the ancient remains and egyptians he
makes use of special clay pots to ferment his wines while adding a unique south African
twist so we developed these to have the same oxygen interaction as a wine barrel but obviously
there is going to be no spice or flavor influence but the wine does develop on the lease beautifully
something about the shape as well is beneficial there is a natural string of the lease certainly
during fermentation and than through subtile there is a natural turning of the wine so
we age our chardonnay in here for nine moths from our very best blocks the ones that we
don't want to get overwhelmed by wood and it has worked quite well these have been lined
by clay from the property so we have this psychological feeling that probably doesn't
do very much that the wine is interacting with its own soil while it developed what
I love about wine is its ability to represent its personality of place if that place has
a particular meaning for you as this farm does for me the ability to experience it through
wine to me is something extraordinary what makes south African wine so much more different
then the rest of the wines of the world whats the true identity of a south African wine
to me the special thing about south African wine is Africa has always been here when there
was one continent in the world and everything separated out into the world Africa stayed
where it was we have the oldest soils in the world and basically the you are drinking south
African wine you are tasting the essence of some of the most ancient soils that have existed
on planet earth which to me is magic there is no other country that does it the other
thing is that all of us share a common ancestor form most probably form within a couple hundred
miles of here definitely from the content of Africa so there is something of almost
ancient relevance in drinking south african wine this father and son winery in the heaven
and earth valley is the best example of how special south African wine truly is from growing
in soils that is millions of years old to being one of the most southernly located wineries
on the incredible continent of Africa anthony hamilton is the leading pioneer as his father
once was in the African wine world and it shows as Hamilton Russell vineyards creates
one of the highest quality wines in the world after visiting the hamiltons my adventure
through south Africa takes me to a small local fishing port in house bay from a distance
the brightly colored boats resemble children's toys plastered onto a painted landscape seals
seals seals everywhere this huge chunk of volcanic rock certainly lives up to its reputation
as its entire surface is literally covered with these barking sun bathers from where
I am standing it definitely looks like seal paradise or perhaps on big dinner plate for
south Africa famed great white sharks after waking up at two am and driving for two hours
through the pitch black African night i finally arrived at games bay so that i could dive
with Africa great white sharks you are never guaranteed to see any when you go diving but
i got very lucky as there where fourteen great white sharks surrounding our boat at one time
one of these sharks i saw swim by was as big as a suburban so what roll do great white
sharks play in the winemaking process you may ask well for one south African man they
are the perfect security for his unique barrel of sea born wine in an environment where life
threatening storms are normal great white sharks breed two of the worlds greatest oceans
meet and very little oxygen exists you would think that wine which is a living product
would have a hard time surviving but wine innovator dave hidden took a leap of faith
embarking on a risky venture that has never been pursued before in the unpredictable world
of wine sinking one of his precious barrels of wine in a reef over a mile off the most
southern coast of the African continent this ferry tale like wine embarked on almost an
unbelievable quest and can be known as the mysterious African wine for me hidden valley
sounds very much like destination of a long lost treasure buried deep in the mist of a
classical adventure novel and it defiantly look enough like the part too at least for
a winery estate with perfected areas of some of the most impressive varieties of ferns
and trees this exotic landscape could fit right in with the latest jurassic film needless
to say i am now simply stoked to hear what dave have to share with me from his years
of winemaking so David what is the most exciting part about working in the wine industry i
think that a lot of it is quite exciting to me is the unexpectedness every day is different
we have for instance beautiful grapes beautiful crop and all of a sudden we will get a black
south easter and the wind will rip through the vineyard and it can be quite vicious and
it can deplete your crop now you know i don't know if that is so interesting its just that
like a hell of a challenge to deal with these things and it makes you almost make you think
on your feet the whole time and its a very very competitive industry there is a lot of
wine out there so the challenge is how do you do this ages old tradition of making wine
what do you do that is different to make you wine different to the next persons wine so
that it attracts people to want to drink it and that is the question even with a unique
location climate and soil properties what else can you do to make your vintage flavors
truly stand out dave tried the unthinkable and submerged his brand of winemaking into
unconventional waters in doing so he not only stood out from the competition but also revealed
a truly creative side to his delicious portfolio of wines right now i am on the most southern
tip of the African continent this is exactly where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet
this is the location in which mr hidden decided to sink his barrel of wine in a reef where
it could be protected by great white sharks from marine poachers they let it mature out
there for fifteen moths and after fifteen months him and his crew came back retrieved
the barrel from the ocean put it into their truck and brought it back up into the mountain
where their winery is and after an anxious ride home as you can imagine the first thing
they did was crack that barrel and dipped their glasses inside and had a taste and what
they said was that blew away their imaginations it really became an extraordinary wine created
by the ocean and well i have the honor to try this wine with the winery owner mr hidden
so together lets find out what exactly this wine truly is so dave we are here infant of
you barrel that spent about fifteen months underneath the sea and this is the original
barrel in which your shipwreck shiraz comes from that quite correct you can see and it
looks like it as well it does look like its been part of a shipwreck you have barnacles
growing off of it oysters very cool sand so its got a lot of tactile sea related issues
to it when an oak barrel full of wine is sunk to the bottom of the ocean it ages and developed
differently that a barrel of wine that matures on the surface of the earth it essentially
freezes in time as the water hugging the barrel denies entry to oxygen though it may not be
keeping the benefits of resting in the winery something special is happening it slowly but
surely becoming one with its surrounding as well as developing into one of the most unique
wines on earth what inspired you to wake up one morning and say hey i am going to take
a barrel of wine and put it on the bottom of the ocean for fifteen months where does
that come from well at the bottom end of the African continent is the agalis light house
now the agalis light house protects the shipping that goes on around there at the bottom of
the African continent there is a lot of shipping that goes on there right now however from
1848 that little light house protected the shipping that went around there i was standing
outside of that light house and watching the power of the waves bashing against the rocks
down below it is hugely impressive i mean its really stormy country and where the oceans
meet you can imagine there is quite a lot of turbulence and its called the cape of storms
and i thought well you know here back in stellenboch as you can see because you are standing here
its quite more placid and more relaxed and so on the grapes here are certainly remind
me of guys on holiday sitting back enjoying big fat cuban cigars where as the little guys
down in lands end are hanging on to dear life hoping that they don't get blown out of the
soil and actually just battling to survive the inspiration of putting it into the sea
it seems crazy to take these little guys that have fought their entire lives to actually
produce themselves to make themselves into grapes to bring them all the way back to stellenboch
to make the wine here in stellenboch at the cellar that we are visiting today and then
go and put them in a barrel in the barrel cellar so why don't we just put them in a
barrel and put it under the sea and we finish the process under the sea so how did dave
accomplish the task of creating the most interesting wine in south Africa well he has got the answer
all laid out for us on his story board on the story board here is obviously pictures
of the barge that we had to take the barrel to the sea the barrel was put inside this
concrete block two and a half concrete block there is the barge at high the floated over
the concrete block lifted it up with this a frame here you can see the a frame and then
towed it two kilometers out to sea to a place that martin my professional diving friend
said you have to put it down right here because that is where the great white sharks breed
number one nobody is going to dive there nobody is going to go and try to dig the cask out
of here because the great white sharks breed here they don't dive here so that was the
first thing good security we had twenty four security there wow thats good so here is martin
showing us exactly where it has to go here is a picture of the barrel with a barnical
on it bit of the old rust and so on and here is a picture of ema who we spoke to earlier
and the farm manager and he is the man who had to grow the grapes in your opinion what
kind of influence did the ocean have on this wine the impact that the ocean sea had on
this wine is there is a very very slight salty tang to this wine and when we taste it against
the normal lands end wine you will be able to pick that up quite easily and its very
subtile cheers all the best and tell me what you think of it alright nice color very nice
color a vibrant purple so this wine could age for a while and because of the wax there
is a lot less oxygen that is getting in the bottle absolutely ok so thats probably why
so you are probably looking at another two to three years out of this bottle is that
right ok so this is the two thousand nine syrah from the same vineyard same winery as
the shipwreck shiraz except this one just went through the normal winemaking process
and was not put into the barrel absolutely this is the land matured non sea wine the
moment of truth all right away on the nice i am getting a difference the um lands end
the wine that was matured here i am getting more of the oak influence there is more of
it than i am getting in the shipwreck shiraz i am almost getting more fruit in this one
what is your opinion i can see you know what you are talking about absolutely thats the
difference i am getting out of it you hit it spot on more fruit on the barrel under
the sea fruitiness comes through because there is less oak influence ok the more oak influence
on the one that was land matured ok in a normal barrel cellar so thats the difference and
which one do you prefer i prefer the shipwreck shiraz ok because i will go with that i know
the story now and its one of the most incredible stories in wine i have ever heard so that
does add to the flavor for me well there is a reason you came to southern part of Africa
thanks for sharing this with me thank you along my travels in south Africa i learned
that my favorite thing about wine is that it brings people together it was the moments
conversing and drinking wine people along my jury that i realized this if it weren't
for my curiosity in south African wine i probably wouldn't have been on the most southern part
of the African continent diving with great white sharks in search for wine or on the
edge of the wine producing world in the hemel en arrive valley drinking wine as the Egyptians
once did or even enjoying wine out of a mason jar at a pub with a man from zimbobway wine
truly brings people together from God king rulers during the mideveil ages to twenty
one year olds drinking at the bar wine can be enjoyed by a variety of people from all
over the world now i can say for sure that i leave with a deeper respect for south Africa
and its rightful place here in the world of wine
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