A glassful of Elgin with Paul Clüver

A glassful of Elgin with Paul Clüver

With news of our new Elgin winery partner, Paul Clüver Family Wines, still hot off the press, we were delighted to welcome Paul himself to Fells House this week. (And even more delighted that he turned up armed with bottles for the whole team to share together!)

It would have been silly, in the circumstances, not to have taken the opportunity to sit down with Paul (and a glass of Chardonnay and Pinot) and talk through his fourth-generation family farm and their stunning cool-climate Cape wines in person.

So that’s exactly what we did … and you can read the whole thing here.

From planting Elgin’s first vines, to abandoned flirtations with Bordeaux varieties before returning to the true Elgin way of cool climate grapes, to holistic viticulture and ‘absolutely having a favourite child’, it’s a fascinating conversation with a producer at the forefront of one of South Africa’s – and the world’s – most exciting wine regions.

You know the drill by now: glass at the ready – enjoy the read.

Fells: So to begin at the beginning, please introduce yourself and the winery!

Paul: Hello! So I’m Paul Clüver from Paul Clüver Family Wines – it’s wonderful to be here with Fells. We’re a fourth-generation family business that’s been in the Elgin appellation for 130 years this year. My grandmother was instrumental driving the business in the middle of the Second World War in 1942 when she took over and planted the first apple trees. And then it was my father who in the middle of the 1980s planted the first commercial grape plantings in the Elgin Valley. And as they say the rest is history.

Fells: Elgin’s a new region for Fells – and Paul Clüver was the first to plant vines there. Tell us all about it.

Paul: Yes, it’s appropriate isn’t it? New kid on the block, but also a lot of history! It’s amazing – I’m not sure if it’s the youngest wine region in South Africa but we’re one of the newest appellations. It was demarcated as a wine region in 1990 for the first time as they recognised that Elgin has a unique climate from the surrounding areas.

It’s an inland mountain plateau surrounded by three mountain ranges, with a valley floor 300 metres above sea level. Yet it’s close to the ocean – if you go over one mountain you drop into the Atlantic Ocean, so you get this wonderful Atlantic influence while getting altitude. So you get wonderful day-night diurnal temperature range, which really helps with anthocyanin production in the wines so you get a fantastic freshness and beautiful acidity. And it really lends itself to cool climate grape varieties – so Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc.

Fells: And how would you characterise Elgin Chardonnay and Pinot Noir?

Paul: For me what the Valley lends itself to because of the climate is wines with elegance and wonderful acidity and freshness. Obviously if you don’t embrace that as a producer, you’re going to get what the valley has to offer! But it’s amazing. You get that slower ripening, mainly because of the climate.

The dominant soil types – there’s Bockefeld Shale, which is iron-rich, but it’s not the only region in South Africa with Bockefeld Shale. So it’s the combination of the combination of soil and climate that produces these wonderful wines, the slower ripening, beautiful minerality and freshness.

Fells: Picking up on a comment you made there, it was interesting to learn that when you started out you’d intended to go in a different direction, with more Bordeaux-style varieties.

Paul: Yes, that was a mistake! Sadly my mistake to own – because when the first plantings took place they were Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. But, especially in the early 1990s, Pinot Noir was not a famous grape in South Africa and Pinot Noir from South Africa in the global scene was really not well known. And I think from a white wine perspective, in the late 1990s and early 2000s the New World pretty much destroyed Chardonnay because they over-oaked it, which stylistically made the variety hard to enjoy. And ironically, at the time, Cabernet Sauvignon was flying from South Africa.

So I did the wrong thing by following trends. It’s terrible to follow trends, because you make the wrong decisions. What we should have focussed on instead was: ‘what are we good at? And what can we produce that is world class?’ Going back to the drawing board the original research showed and was re-confirmed that Elgin is really good for varieties like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Fells: So that’s been your focus for the last 20 or so years. Tell us about your approaches to the viticulture?

Paul: I think the real importance is, when you have a healthy plant – kind of like when you have a healthy individual – it’s more resistant to disease, and better prone to produce healthier and better quality grapes. So our focus is really on creating the best environment, and one of the most important things is soil. So soil health becomes vitally important, and I think we’ve learned so much over the last 20 years when it comes to regenerative farming. So not just adding commercial fertiliser – because essentially what you end up doing is breaking down the organic composition of the soil, and that’s not what you want to do. You want a lively soil with lots of animals and bugs, because that helps the plant to flourish.

Fells: And obviously we’re here talking about grapes and wine, but your farm and Elgin’s remit extends well beyond that.

Paul: Yeah. And our approach for both vineyards and orchards is the same. We’re still an apple farm and soil health is as important for the apple orchards. But soil health is also important for the natural vegetations – not disturbing it, allowing it to grow. Prevents erosion, looks after the health of various plant species. I think that natural vegetation corridors, migration of the plants, their ability to adapt to the climate is also critically important. I think the emphasis is on a holistic approach.

The terrible thing is, if you think about us as humans, we tend to understand things by breaking them down into parts and understanding the parts. But we’re not as good at trying to understand systems. Hopefully, as we learn more, we’ll get better at it. But I think one of the most important things is having a soft touch on nature and trying to be in harmony with it. And having an open mind.

Fells: Moving us into the cellar, can you take us through your winemaking – if you can generalise?

Paul: Our most important goal in the winery is to capture what the grapes offer us into the bottle. We often have this debate – people often like to say ‘great wines are made in the vineyard’, which is absolutely true, because without great grapes you can’t make great wine. But it shouldn’t negate the importance of winemaking too, because if you gave 100 winemakers the same grapes they’ll make you 100 different wines.

So part of our strategy is to ensure we learn and capture knowledge during the winemaking process and then keep the tradition going forward. Our approach is again a soft touch. We don’t want to make big bold wines – it’s about wines of elegance and balance with beautiful acidity and freshness. That’s the focus of the winemaking team.

Fells: And so how do you emphasise that?

Paul: For both the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir we don’t inoculate [with yeast], we try to work softly with the grapes when they come into the cellar. The Estate and Seven Flags Chardonnay we do whole-bunch press. Then it’s pretty much going into tank or barrel and trying to guide the process with a soft hand.

The same for the Pinot – when it comes in and the grapes go to sorting tables. It’s about how you treat it – so we do punch-downs instead of pump-overs, then we try to find the right match with the barrels. I think the most important decisions the winemaker makes are when to pick, what barrels or tanks they end up in, managing the temperature of fermentation – and then the real strength lies in the blending of those various components at the end.

Fells: You’re specialists in Sauvignon Blanc but particularly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. What are the various joys and also challenges of constructing a range from such a focussed brief, if you like?

Paul: I think for both Chardonnay and Pinot one of the joys is identifying sites, and then from those sites vineyards – and seeing how the vineyards respond to those sites. It’s really exciting. And what you end up getting from them. Do they become building blocks, or are they celebrations on their own? In the case of Seven Flags Chardonnay it’s a single vineyard – where we’re really excited about what we get in the expression of the grape variety. Not too different from what you get in Burgundy, where the majority of vineyards end up as single vineyard expressions of those grape varieties.

Beyond that the winemaking process is finding the right combination of barrels and then building the wines up. We’re lucky in the sense that, because we have three tiers of both wines, if we try a barrel that we don’t think is right for Seven Flags, it might end up in the Estate or Village, which is a larger blend. So there’s experimentation but on a limited basis.

Fells: Tell us about your tiers?

Paul: Starting at the top, we’ve got Seven Flags Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – Seven Flags Chardonnay is a single vineyard, and Seven Flags Pinot is from two distinct vineyards right next to each other. And that for us is an incredible expression of what we’re able to get from the property – they’re also the oldest vineyards of those varieties. Whether they’ll always be like that remains to be seen as we continue to develop new sites.

Then the Estate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are blends of different vineyards, made in very much the same method. And all of the vineyards for the Estates tend to be older – none of them are younger than ten years. As we’re planting younger, newer vineyards, that’s where the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for the Village blends comes in. It gives us opportunity to make wines that are more accessible while allowing us to experiment at the same time.

Fells: Without making you pick a ‘favourite child’, which wines would you reach for on different occasions?

Paul: I was telling the story that a friend of mine said she absolutely has a favourite child – it just changes all the time! The same probably applies – I absolutely have a favourite wine, it just changes depending on time of day and what I’m eating and who I’m with. I’m fortunate – and I wasn’t always able to say this! – that I actually like every single wine we make. Which I’m very proud to say, because it wasn’t always the case!

And as I say, it all depends on the moment. So taking the Chardonnay, the Village Chardonnay for me, if it’s sunset and I’m just enjoying a nice, crisp, fresh wine, it’s absolutely perfect. Whereas if I’m having more of a meal the Estate Chardonnay is absolutely wonderful – with roast chicken, various fresh fish dishes. Then Seven Flags I would probably drink on its own as well – I tend to not drink it a lot, mainly because of the limited volume.

Fells: Special occasions!

Paul: Yes, nothing’s better than when a friend comes along and I can open a bottle of wine like that and they go ‘well, that’s fantastic!’ Then with Pinot Noir, one great thing is that I think it’s wonderful to start with a white wine and end up with a red wine. And, for me at least, Pinots are so easy to drink. And it works well with even a gamey fish as well as lamb and all sorts of things. If you think about it they serve Pinot Noir with sirloin steak in France, so it’s a versatile wine. People tend to think that, because it’s a lighter style, that it can’t go with richer meat, but it absolutely can.

Fells: Because it’s got so much depth and complexity.

Paul: Exactly. And that acidity, which we tend to forget lifts the food. It’s absolutely incredible. So whether you have it with duck or lamb or fish or even a heavier meat dish. Look at Boeuf Bourguignon – a rich, creamy red wine sauce – and yet the combination just works incredibly well.

Fells: Finally, what does the future hold?

Paul: Our biggest focuses at the moment – one is that we have a rootstock trial. We’re really focussing on which rootstocks work well in our area. For Chardonnay we’ve planted a trial that’s big enough to do a press of every single wine, which is really exciting. We’re planting lots of new sites – our focus remaining on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – and what’s coming out of those sites is really exciting. Maybe we’ll see more single vineyards coming about – that’s the most exciting journey.

Fells: I guess the great thing about Elgin as a region is that it’s proven its quality, but being so young there’s still so much potential for drilling down further into the best microclimates and terroirs.

Paul: Yeah! When you think about it, in Burgundy, most of the Grand Cru vineyards are at least 50 years old. Which means that 50 years ago they knew where the best sites were. We only started focussing, as a valley, on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the last 30 years. We haven’t even discovered the best sites yet. We’re so young. And the very exciting thing is, despite that youth, if you look at what we’re getting out of the valley, it’s absolutely incredible. So I’m very excited about the future.

Fells: It’s an amazing statistic that Elgin produces 1% of the Chardonnay – but over 50% of the Gold Medals and 95+ Point Scores – in South Africa. So when you think you’ve barely scratched the surface, there’s so much potential still to come.