Pieter says “predominantly Syrah (Riebeek and Paardeberg grapes) with bits of Grenache, Mourvèdre and Carignan from the Paardeberg”. Delightful scent: pure strawberries and raspberries. Deep colour, but not that dense - this wine isn’t about power and extraction but finesse and pleasure. Delicious strawberry fruit, almost luscious. Drink now or put away - a terrific wine to spring on friends. Now-2015

Product Code: BBO808

Pieter Walser is a phenomenom: never before have we met anyone who does everything - from picking grapes to selling his own wine - by himself. For the last seven years he has been making tiny batches, usually only 2-5,000 bottles, of high quality wines. He sources the grapes from friends and contacts, usually in the Swartland; he supervises the picking (sometimes just passing through a vineyard and picking the bunches he wants, before the owner picks); he makes the wines in the cellars of two or three friends; he designs the labels himself; and sells the wine direct to consumers in South Africa from his own website. There he has built up a cult following. Needless to say we are the first to ship his wines to these shores.

What Pieter loves is the opportunity to work with a wide range of grape varieties: as he says, it’s “not about stylistic winemaking philosophies, but all about different varieties”. More from Pieter: “we pick certain varietals as “treble” components and other as “base” components. We then focus not on the varietal as such, but on the specific contributing factors of that wine to the final blend”. He is also very careful not to over-employ new barrels: he likes the oak just “polishing the fruit”. From a terrific tasting (at any moment Pieter has a number of different blends on the go) we chose four wines. Two have the word “Black” in their title, a translation of “Swart”, as in Swartland.