Proudly Pinotage

It's Beyers Truter’s can-do attitude (and Pinotage) that gives brand Beyerskloof its charm

“If you like Pinotage you probably also like chicory and Brussel sprouts,” a wine expert once told me condescendingly. It’s not only the bitter undertones in Pinotage that had Wine Masters crinkling their noses. The taste of Pinotage has also been likened to ‘rusty nails’ and the aroma to ‘acetone’.

One man took on the challenge to try and bring the best out of this truly South African cultivar, a cross between Pinot Noir and Hermitage (also known as Cinsaut) developed by Professor Abraham Izak Perold at Stellenbosch University in 1925.

“In the early days no one else followed up but I experimented,” said Beyers Truter when we meet him in his office at Beyerskloof wine farm, on the Koelenhof Road close to Stellenbosch. He offers to make us coffee and apologizes politely when his dog Milo jumps on my colleague’s lap. Besides being known as the Pinotage King, there’s no airs and graces about Beyers Truter.

“Pinotage is a great wine in the vineyard and and I felt that if you treat it well you can make it work.”

‘I started drinking at school’

“I started drinking wine in high school and collected wine already from standard eight,” says Beyers Truter, “my parents were not that impressed”.

His interest didn’t wane. For the love of wine, Beyers “can’t remember studying” but soon after started out as a young winemaker at Kanonkop. His first job contract was signed over a glass of red, at 9pm in the evening: “I wanted to make wine and Kanonkop was my favourite wine farm.”

Pinotage was sold in bulk at the time. People were drinking it “by the gallons, but they didn’t talk about it. Pinotage was a black sheep; the popular verdict was that Pinotage can’t take oak and good red wines were always oaked at the time”.

“One day I tasted a 1972 Simonsig Pinotage and it impressed me tremendously. I phoned Frans Malan, the winemaker at Simonsig and asked him how he made it.”

The secret seemed to be new oak, “so I bought three new oak barrels and used the barrels immediately for Pinotage. Every time I ran a taste test the oaked wine tasted better.”

Beyers Truter was like a man possessed. With the advice he coaxed from Frans Malan as well as Delheim winemaker Spatz Sperling and some of the older winemakers in the area, he worked 24 hours a day in an effort to make the perfect Pinotage.

It paid off. At the 1991 International Wine and Spirits competition, Beyers Truter won the award for the International Winemaker of the Year with a Pinotage. In the late eighties and early nineties Pinotage exports were zero. When Beyers started at Kanonkop, Pinotage production was about 3000 cases. When he left 22 years later, it was 25 000 cases.

Praying for Pinotage

“You have to have passion and you have to work hard but wine is God given. Farmers and surfers must have bruised knees from praying.”

Beyers’ prayers were answered when he found a small piece of land overlooking the Simonsberg to call his own. Besides the long history of Beyers living in the area, there’s also a ravine called Beyerskloof close by. Hence the name Beyerskloof.

Having achieved so much with Pinotage, he formed the Pinotage Association in 1995. 120 people attended the first meeting at the KWV Cathedral Hall. However, “if you have a dream but you don’t have money; your dream stays black and white”.

So they went to Absa, got sponsorship and until now the Absa Top Ten rewards those who are committed to making great Pinotage in South Africa. They get proper funding to teach and experiment with Pinotage, which all contributes to creating a positive Pinotage brand internationally. Today South African Pinotage is exported to 112 countries.

“It’s good for you,” says Beyers, “there are more anti-oxidants in Pinotage than in any other red wine”.

Yet Beyers knows that too much of a good thing is also not good, which is why he started the Faith Fund, a charity that supports education and treatment research for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Another small way to give thanks for all the gourmet in his life.

Wine prices at Beyerskloof ranges from R42 for the entry level Pinotage which can also be found at most major wine retailers in South Africa, to R400 for the Beyerskloof Diesel – a special wine named after Beyers’ loyal Boerboel Great Dane: “When he died I selected all my best grapes and made a wine in his honour. A lot of wine people met Diesel. He was a huge dog.”

Beyers Truter actually wanted to become a doctor; then toyed with being a politician for a while and even tried his luck as a poet (South African musician Koos Kombuis recorded his Pinotage poem in 2009). He also makes a good Cabernet. In fact Beyers insists that it’s actually the ’81 Kanonkop Cabernet that got him on the wine map: “In those days we used open vats. One weekend a farm worker, Kerneels, fell into the Cabernet vat and his one shoe stayed behind. On the Monday I read in the newspaper that the ’81 Kanonkop Paul Sauer won an award. It must have been Kerneels’ shoe.”

As wine lovers, we’re just glad Pinotage found Beyers Truter and that he took the time to share his wine and his stories with us. Often referred to as a 48-hour drinking wine, Beyerskloof Pinotage is not meant to gather dust after all.

By Lize de Kock

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