What Makes South African Wine So Unique w/ Duncan Savage (Part 1)

Ep 130

You may have heard of Napa and Bordeaux…but the next great wine region might just surprise you. Welcome to South Africa!

In this episode, winemaker Duncan Savage joins from Cape Town to share his journey from head winemaker at Cape Point Vineyards to founder of Savage Wines, one of the most exciting and celebrated names in South Africa’s new wave movement.

Duncan’s story is filled with humility, humor, and hard-won insight from falling in love with wine by accident to building a small but mighty urban winery in Cape Town’s Salt River district. You’ll hear how South Africa’s vineyards are shaped by wind, ocean, and innovation and why the region’s wines are finally getting the global recognition they deserve.

He also breaks down why most South African producers lease rather than own their vineyards, how climate change is shifting harvests, and why collaboration, rather than competition, is fueling the country’s wine renaissance.

If you’ve ever been curious about South African wine or wondered what makes these coastal wines so distinct, you’ll love this episode that dives into the stories, landscapes, and philosophies shaping one of the world’s most exciting wine regions.

Don’t miss part 2 of my conversation with Duncan next week - episode 131!

Thank you to the following brands for sponsoring this podcast:

• Vacu Vin: Go to us.vacuvin.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 20% off your order!

Connect with Duncan:

Website - https://broadbent.com/producers/savage-wines/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/savagewines/

Episode Highlights:

• Duncan’s path from Cape Point Vineyards to founding Savage Wines
  
  
• How South Africa’s coastal climate shapes flavor and freshness
  
  
• The “new wave” winemakers redefining South African wine
  
  
• Why most vineyards are leased, not owned
  
  
• The evolution of Chenin Blanc and Pinotage styles
  
  
• Collaboration over competition in South Africa’s wine scene
  
  
• Climate change and the country’s surprising advantage

Transcript

0:09

Interested in learning about wine, but not sure where to start. You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. I'm your host, Hayley Bowlman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle based wine tasting business, Cork and Fizzling. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight, and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in foreign. Hello and welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. Today, I'm chatting with Duncan Savage, one of South Africa's most exciting and celebrated winemakers. He's the founder of Savage Wines, based in Cape Town, where he crafts beautiful, elegant wines that really capture the coastal freshness and energy of South Africa. Duncan started out as the head winemaker at Cape Point Vineyards before launching his own label in 2011, and since then, he's become a leader in South Africa's new wave wine movement. I don't know about you, but my extent of knowledge and experience with South African wines really only goes as far as the. The big bold Pinotage and these off dry Chenin Blancs. And that's about it. And I have a feeling there is way more to it than that. So. So I can't wait to hear more about Duncan's winemaking philosophy as someone making wines with this amazing balance of purity and place, and also hearing from him what makes South African wine so special. So, without further ado, let's get into the interview. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so glad we can. We can get this interview in. You're the first South African winemaker I've had on the show. Really? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So really, really excited to have you here. Well, the first question I always like to start with anybody in the wine world is how did you fall in love with wine? I told you, I was technologically challenged. You know, if I got a job in computers, I would have been in deep trouble. So, like, I needed to find something that I could do. But to be honest, it was an interesting journey. I mean, so. So, you know, we don't. I don't have this long, illustrious family history in the wine industry. I'm first generation in the game. I studied Viticulture and enology at a, at a place in Stellenbosch, just outside of Stellenbosch in Cape Town. It's super beautiful place. I just went there, you know, thinking that, you know, this was the practical option to do because I needed to learn and I'd already studied a business degree that I crashed and burned and horribly. And it was just, you know, it's crazy how it worked because like when I was a student, we used to go out, there were these bars that we would go to, these under 18 bars. And obviously they didn't let you. Cause in South Africa we can drink when we are 18. Not like you guys in the States where it's. You are based in the States, eh? Just checking. Yes. Yeah, yes, I'm based in Seattle in the States. Okay, cool. Suddenly thought, shit, we've got to get that right. No, no, you're right. So we used to go to the local rugby field and drink this cheap 2 liter bottle of white wine called Autumn Harbor's Crackling. That's absolutely horrendous. You know, you sort of down these cups and gag. And then I sort of, after doing this a few times when I was 16 years old, I went home the one day when I was, when I was like, I don't know, 18 or just over 18, and my mom always used to drink a glass of red wine. And I said to my mom, I said, mom, do you mind if I try that? So I had a quick sip of her wine and after drinking that cheap, terrible stuff that we had drank for so long in the rugby field, anything that was in her glass was gonna taste better. But she had a really lovely South African Cabernet. And you know, Stellenbosch in particular does very, very well with Cabernet. So I had a sip of this and promptly finished the glass. And it's amazing because it was just. I was hooked after that. And I went from, you know, studying my business degree where I was, you know, getting pissed with my mates in the, in the bar every Friday, Saturday, whatever, to actually saving my student cash and buying bottles of wine. And I just kind of thought I'd end up in like a marketing role or something in the industry just because I just totally fell head over heels in love with it. And then I said to my dad one day, you know, he was getting tired of paying for these dodgy son to, to fail his BCom because I was trying to study the economics of working less and surfing more. And then when I said to him one day that I Wanted to go to farm college. He nearly fell over backwards and said, eventually, somehow, I don't know what happened, he actually said yes. And I went off to farm college and I had three of the greatest years of my life. I got to meet amazing farmers from all over South Africa. Not all involved in grapes or wine. You know, just people who are people of the soil. And. And I think that, you know, we get a lot. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in the wine industry, and we get caught up in all the bullshit and that. But, you know, actually, at the end of the day, when you meet people, whether they grow grapes or whatever on their piece of land, they understand their land, and it's interpreting that land that is such a key thing for all of us. So you can learn so much, even from someone who has nothing, no idea how a grapevine grows. They understand how to interpret their soils and their site. And I think that was fantastic. But still, at a time for us in South Africa, you know, this was 2000, so people still, like, had this idea that wine was made in the winery. So we did a lot of winery focused stuff and not a lot of vineyard focused stuff. And I'm glad that the industry's changed for. Especially in the new world. You know, a lot of the old world guys have had a strong vineyard focus for a long time. But if you look at what's happening very culturally in the new world, there's this huge shift, and that's why we're seeing places like South Africa, you know, ramp up on the quality side of things. Yeah, no, I think it's so important to highlight. I love now that, like, a lot of people say, like, the wine starts in the vineyard, like, you can only make a good wine from good grapes. Right. Like, you have to start there. You could make a bad wine from good grapes, I suppose, but you're not going to make a good wine from bad grapes. And in that sense of things, and I think that's really great that that's where. That's where we're looking towards. Just a quick reminder. If you are not on my mailing list yet, what are you waiting for? I would love for you to join. When you do, you'll get a free shopping guide that has 15 of my favorite wines under $15. Head to corkandfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and there'll be a little section where you can join the mailing list. I send out a weekly newsletter filled with wine tips, recommendations, special offers, and so much more. Now let's get back to the show. So can you take us through kind of your journey from, you know, you started, you went to, you went to school for, for viticulture and for farming, going from there and then you worked as a winemaker at Cape Point Vineyards and then starting your own project. How did that journey go for you? Yeah, so, so coming out of Elsenberg, you know, you started kind of trying to figure out what to go and do. And there's the temptation to go and work around the world doing harvests because it's such fun now. You work hard, but you have a great time. But I happened to get a job at Cape Point Vineyard straight off the bat and I was very lucky because a friend of mine who since passed away, the late winemaker of a farm called for you Americans, a farm called Beighton for Wachten. You know, they actually changed their. Which means beyond expectation in Africa. Well, it's, I think it's Dutch, actually. But what they did was they realized that Americans wouldn't be able to pronounce it, so they just call their wine in the States they call it beyond. That Tracks. That makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, I had, I had no experience and the owner of Cape Point was looking for someone with experience and I'd sort of become friendly with a guy who was the winemaker at Paiko. And he told this, the owner that I, he should employ this young guy that was passionate and keen on the industry. And I only found this out 10 years after I'd been working at Cape Point. And he undertook with the owner that he would go and fix any problems or mistakes or anything that I made free of charge. He just, he took a liking to me and wanted to promote me. And I was very lucky because I ended up, as a result of that, as head winemaker of a very new property, you know, right up against the ocean. So if you, if you ever listens to this or watches or whatever, if you look at a map of South Africa, there's this little peninsula that runs this narrow little finger. We were sort of right at the bottom of that, you know, surrounded by the ocean and it's this, you know, quite cutting edge sight. So it was very cool for me. And also obviously, which was the coolest part of it was I love surfing. So I was paranoid I was going to get a job 100 km from the beach. So here I get this job with the front gate's 3km to the beach. I was like, this is like this little golden pathway just opened for me. Anyway, needless to say it was actually more of a curse than a blessing because, you know, I was doing the vineyards and the wine and everything, but there were so many days we were so busy in the vineyards that I could see the waves. I could see it cooking. I could see the little foam ball where the guys were paddling in, and I just couldn't go. It was a temptation. It was like, perfect to be there, except for you couldn't be out there. Yeah, at least I was outside doing something cool, you know, I wasn't sitting in an office somewhere or whatever. You know, I was at least in nature in a beautiful setting. So it made it. It made it an easier one. And yeah, so I was there for 14 years and it was fantastic because we had. It was like a blank canvas, you know, new property. We had this opportunity and the owner, you know, he basically just said to me in the beginning, sink or swim. So kind of like gave me the opportunity and it was fantastic. And we ran with it and we made some lovely wines. But I think that, you know, the wine industry and it's not just unique to us here in South Africa, it's for everybody who makes wine or works with vineyards around the world. There's the emotional side of it. You know, it's. You become emotionally attached to the industry, the wines you make, it becomes very personal. And as a result, I knew from day one I wanted to have my own business. I'm also ambitious. I wanted to do my thing, but, you know, the barrier to entry in the game is obviously you. You need a bit of cash. And I didn't at the time. So, you know, I did my 14 years at Cape Point. It opened many doors for me, introduced me to many people. You build up fantastic relationships. And then I left there in 2016 to start Savage Wines. I'd already been making small volumes of the Savage wines while I was at Cape Point, but we properly got going after 2016 when I bought my own little winery. You know, we. Our journey, like, our journey start like, you know, like a lot of these fancy pens wineries in Stellenbosch here in Cape Town, the guys measure their success by the length of their driveway. I don't even have a driveway. I'm just got a shitty little industrial building in the middle of Cape Town. But, you know, something that was. Was very important to me because of that emotional, personal element as a first generation, you know, it's easy. Like, I'm sorry, I'm tend to digress from time to time. But we had a wine tasting with the Antonore Pierre Antonori was in South Africa a few years ago and he stood up and he said, you know, the old adage, many of you have heard it before, you know, he was telling us how his daughters were the 21st generation in their family and wine. And then I don't know if it was Pira that said it or someone from Bordeaux, but, you know, they always said winemaking is easy. It's Only the first 300 years that are difficult. And I think that's. That's kind of like for us in South Africa, you know, when you starting this new little business, you. You look at these illustrious estates that are not being built up with corporate money and been built up over time. It takes generations to do. And I didn't want to, you know, I'm going to probably be dead in 30 years, so I want to do as much as I can as quickly as possible. So we didn't want to get any investors in the business. And I know people say that's. I'm kind of sort of contradicting myself here because if you want to do things quickly, you need money. But because it's so personal and so emotional, what we do that I didn't want anyone telling me what to do. I didn't want to work for anyone. So we, you know, scraped together whatever cash we could, bought this little industrial building in Salt river in Cape Town. They say to me when people come from the uk, they say it was like, what shortage in London was like 50 years ago, you know, when people used to like stab one another and stuff like that. I don't know what areas are dodgy where you come from, but I always paint this picture and people like get a bit nervous, but it's actually pretty cool. It's a really interesting part of the city. And you know, if anyone listens to this who's been to Cape Town, they'll know it's a small city, it's incredibly beautiful city. I look out my window and there's Table Mountain there. It's a colorful, interesting place. You know, very diverse cultures and. And it's super cool. So we in the hub of that and Covid in a way was. Was good to us because, you know, wasn't good to all our restaurant mates, unfortunately. But where it was good for us was that nobody was sitting at home and staring at the wall. Everyone was getting drunk. And you know, in the first, it's part of COVID they were like, you know, drinking from in the afternoon was fine in the evenings, but you Know, like later on, people were like, pre lunch, like, thinking, oh, shit, what, what, what are we going to pull now? And pull a cork of something, you know. So we sold a lot of wine in Covid and commercial property in Cape Town became cheap because everyone was working from home. So we've expanded our footprint now in, in the city. And one of the questions that, that I know you're going to ask it as well, but I'm sort of going to preempt it. You know, everyone asks us, why don't you own your own vineyards? Because that's the thing which happens a lot around the world. And I think a lot of people don't understand, like, every country has its own interesting dynamic. So if you look at, I've got friends who live in London, they work in the restaurant trade. They own a small vineyard, for example, in say, Spain or something like that, you know, half a hectare of old vines or whatever. You can go to Burgundy if you've got enough cash, and you can buy one row in a vineyard if you want to, but the law allows for that. You know, it's interesting because in Austria, there's parts of Austria now where people have. It's become so, so broken up because of inheritance and that, you know, leaving to multiple children one row, half a row, whatever, that the government's trying to consolidate some of those vineyards now because it's become so fragmented. And for us, in South Africa, we have the opposite. So we have an act called Act 70 of 1970, which, I know this sounds very technical and in depth, and I'll give you like a one minute rendition because otherwise everyone's going to fall asleep. So Act 70 of 1970 set out to protect what was deemed to be sustainable agricultural entities at the time. And back in 1970, in South Africa, we had a really dodgy past. We had apartheid, we had all kinds of things. Our wines were being controlled by a cooperative system. People needed big size farms to crop a lot of grapes that they were selling for low prices, and they needed that scale to survive. And that shift in the industry has now been from that commercial producer supplying a cooperative to. To small private producers like myself. So Stellenbosch used to have seven cooperatives. It now has technically only. Well, it's got technically two, but one's on its way out, so it's technically only one. So you can see how the shift in the industry's taken place. But nothing's changed. You know, the act is still the same. So I cannot, if I want to, own one of my Wines is called Follow the Line. I was there working that vineyard today. If I want to own Follow the line, which was 2 hectares, I have to buy 450 hectares of land if I want to own my leasehold in Stellenbosch, where I've got a two and a half hectare leasehold on an extremely steep parcel south facing the most beautiful sides. If I want to buy that two and a half hectares, I have to buy 90 hectares of land to own that two and a half hectares. So the way we do it is we lease all these parcels all over the show. We farm them like we own them and we operate. Some of my leases are handshakes, some are 10 years. The ones we develop are 30 year leaseholds and they're pretty solid. And the way I see it is, you know, the option to renew is there, but in 30 years, like I said, I'm more than likely going to be dead. So, you know, whatever happens after that, happens after that. If my kids want to get stuck in, they can get stuck in. But yeah, that's our dynamic. And in a way it's quite cool because it's limiting that we can't own, but it gives us more scope to get involved in so many different parcels all over the show. So it's in a way quite exciting. And my plan is to buy land, but obviously I don't want to buy land for the sake of buying land. You have to buy the right land. And also my wines, I've got a Sunso from Darling, a Grenache from the Pinkinesh Clof Chenin from on the border of Paarle and Stelis. You know, we make lots of Syrah from Stellenbosch from the Paul Kedrai, which is that sort of south facing maritime part of Stellenbosch. And I wouldn't be able to afford land in all these different places anyway. So by default, our range is already kind of, you know, we've painted ourselves into a corner, so to speak. Yeah, well, I think that's such a great point of like, because I think in the US there's this, like, it, it almost like adds something to the bottle. If you can say like, oh, it's from estate grapes. Like you're saying, like, oh, we own the land that the, you know, the grapes came from. And I think a lot of people look at this and see it as like, oh, that means like, the wine's going to be better. But like, what you're saying as well is it's like, you know, it's not like those grapes are bad, but it is limiting in that you only, it's only on the land that you have versus for you. You can kind of explore out beyond that and you can grab from these different parcels. And honestly, it's a little more exciting for me as somebody who loves trying, you know, these different types of wine, having grapes from, from all over. And that is, that's wild that. So I'm curious, who owns the land then? So, like, for example, when you said, like, if you wanted to get those two and a half actors for your follow the line wine, you'd have to buy 450. Is it still like large corporations that are owning that? Is that farmers? How does that work? 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Yeah, so it's farmers, I mean, but the farmers that own that land, the vast majority of that land is sheep and wheat. And, you know, the vineyards are a very small portion of it. And I, I love to farm it. I like to farm grapes. You know, the only sheep I want to look at is the lamb chop that's on my plate. I don't want to have a, you know, eyeball a sheep, you know, every day and look at this guy, because it's not, as they say, stick to your knitting. And for me to now buy this farm and then farm with wheat and sheep, it's going to take all my time and focus away from the vineyards. So a lot of the land's not that expensive. So it's not that the cost is the barrier to entry. What costs you money is owning that land because that land needs to be maintained, it needs to be developed. You know, you have a flash flood. Roads, look at the climate now, it's so unpredictable. You know, you have a flash, a hundred mils of rain, your roads wash away. You know, it costs you million million rand to. I know a million rand's only like $50, but not quite, but it's like it's not quite the same, but it still costs you a lot of money to fix the stuff, you know. And I think that for us we've been in a position now because for South Africa's history, like for people who, who might have been here and been to a wine farm, they might have noticed that it was like that in Stellenbosch. People, it was an all about an estate. And you went up this long driveway with vineyards and fancy trees and all this stuff into this fancy Cape Dutch building and went into the tasting room and on the tasting list was everything from a Sauvignon to a Sauvignon Blanc to a flipping fortified port style wine right at the bottom. You know, the one stop wine shop model was kind of the norm here. And what's happening is we starting to like the rest of the world, the old world obviously has a head start in this regard. But you know, a lot of the world's obviously realizing that there's a reason stuff grows in certain places and does well. You know, if you're going to plant Grenache, there's certain places Grenache thrives, other places not Cabernet, loves high solar radiation, loves warmer slopes, doesn't like the wind so much. Not necessarily from a growth point of view, but just, you know, you've got a lot of wind, you're going to have more green flavors, things like that. So we've cherry picked sites. Our Grenache comes from the Picanese cliff, which is the best place. It's two hours northwest of Cape Town. It's the best place for Grenache. So we're seeing that concept of regionality starting to take hold in South Africa, which is great. The land we've leased on this farm in the Polkadaray, this very steep Saravani. It's amazing. I mean people think I'm nuts because look, everyone in South Africa thinks I'm nuts because it's so steep. But when I go to the Mosul, I don't show anybody the photos because it looks flat compared to A lot of that stuff in the mosaic. And then I was just in Co tea recently. I was in the Northern Rhone with some mates. And I was in Codra Tea. And also didn't show us too many of those guys my photo because there were one or two vineyards that were quite steep there as well. But we've gone and developed land which is three generations of farm and never wanted to develop because it was too steep. So there's a lot of that kind of thing happening in South Africa now where there's a lot of these interesting old vineyards that disappeared into these coal. I mean, our Chenin Blanc, the wine's name, has never been asked to dance, because this wine had never been asked to dance. And the vineyard was planted in 1956 and it disappeared into a co op for its whole life until we started bottling the wine. And I mean, it's this. It's the fourth oldest Chenin Blanc vineyard in South Africa. It's amazing. It's this majestic block with these beautiful vines. And you look at this and you think to yourself that, you know, so we discovering all these parcels, we planting these new interesting sites. And genuinely, I believe because of this, we obviously in the know, and I'm obviously slightly biased, but it's like, I think South Africa is one of the most exciting wine destinations in the world at the moment because of this. You know, Burgundy's Burgundy, we already know where everything is that's good. In fact, they are in a spot of bother at the moment with climate change because, you know, they've spent a lot of their lives chasing the sun. You know, all those Grand Cru slopes are how to catch as much sun as possible. A lot of them, you know, we've spent our lives avoiding the sun. So climate change for us is. Is actually, we kind of like it, already sort of adapted to all of this. And what's super interesting is. Sorry, I know I'm rambling on here, but what's super interesting is we very close to, you know, what makes us viable is our proximity to the ocean. So the wind coming off the sea. And we've seen with climate change in the last couple of years, our summer wind, which is the southeast, has been a little bit more intense later in the season. And that's coming off the ocean. So what happens is it depends where you are as to whether it's coming off the ocean, obviously, because the Cape has different areas. But when it blows at the base of the peninsula, you get this upwelling of cold water when it blows really hard And a lot. And the temperatures on the sea drop down to, like, 9 to 14 degrees, which is what makes it viable for us to go grapes. We've recorded as low as 7 degrees in the ocean in the last year. And you can imagine it has this cooling effect on the vineyards. So we actually been experiencing a lot of cooler vintages where a lot of Europe is getting absolutely nailed by the heat. It's quite weird, but long may it last, hopefully. And, yeah, so it's super cool. And just to give you an idea, I mean, if you're in Stellenbosch, and that's what people don't understand about Cape Town, is if you're in Stellenbosch and it can be 36 degrees on a day, and you get in your car and you drive from Stellenbosch to Cape Point, where I used to work, it'll take you one hour to drive there. In that one hour, you can drop from 36 degrees to 21 degrees, sometimes 19 degrees, just because of proximity to the ocean and a very cold Atlantic. It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like it talks a lot about the different styles of wine that can be made in South Africa, which I feel like is a good, you know, good leeway into the next question, which was just about. I think, for a lot of people listening to this, if they're not. They might not be very familiar with South African wines. I'm thinking about, like, at least even here in Seattle, which is, you know, big city in the US Most of what we see is, you know, big, bold Pinotage and then, like, off dry Chenin Blanc. And those are pretty much the only ones that I've really seen much around here. And that's all I think about. And for a lot of folks, they may have actually never tried South African wine. So you've talked a lot about it, and I'm just going to ask you to start with. Can you give us just, like, a little intro to winemaking in South Africa or to the region? I know it's a big ask, but just kind of, like, give folks an idea of what they could expect from South African wine. Yeah, so you can. It's maritime, it's mountainous, it's hilly. There's loads of different aspects. It's, you know, there's so many facets to what we have here, you know, which is fantastic, as I said earlier. But what's interesting about South Africa, like I said, is the dynamic with the ocean is what gives us this opportunity to grow, obviously, a number of different Varieties. It's not limited to just one variety. We have in the past been limited by varieties because we didn't have a lot of all the different grapes that exist around the world. You know, if you look at Italy, Italy has up to. I think someone said to me, they've got a thousand two hundred grape variety. I don't even think the Italians know what the hell's going on. In terms of grape varieties. We were limited to the. To what was commercially popular and interesting. And Cabernet, Chardonnay. Chardonnay, even in South Africa, only came in the 80s, so it's not got a long history here. Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot. We've seen as the. South Africa is now changing from this commercially driven varietal focus to things that genuinely work. We've seen Pickpool, Petty, Mansen, Coonoir. There's a huge amount of work with Grenache, Sunso, things like that that are doing so well in South Africa. Chenin is incredible. People have started planting Asaptico. So I think what happened back in the past was people were working with those sort of more commercial varieties and then varieties like Pinotage, which is unique to South Africa. And I think that what a lot of guys were swayed with in the past was wine was made in the winery, number one, so the vineyard focus wasn't always there. Number two, they were trying to copy a lot of the Bordeaux model. Some of the guys, in the early days, so there were a lot of new oak, big, bold sort of wines, lots of extract. And what you can see now is people starting to take a foot off the pedal a little bit, starting to understand their terroir more, starting to realize that, you know, on this little slope, whether if you. Even if you try and extract, it's not going to be there. So just take your foot off the gas and relax. Let the wine do its thing. And we're starting to see this interesting sort of dynamic in terms of styles. That concept, as I said earlier, of regionality is fantastic. So I know it confuses the living daylight side of everyone because, you know, now I'm talking about the Polkadara and the Picanese Cliff and all these places that you guys don't understand the names or pronounce. But it all takes time. You know, the message slowly but surely has to be put across. So the state of Shannon in South Africa. Now, I can tell you right now there's very few off dry styles. Dry, clean, pure. It's the most beautiful variety. It's extremely versatile from dry styles to ennobilate. It's amazing. It's an old workhorse. In South Africa, we've got this multitude of old Chenillon vineyards that people started discovering years ago and realizing that these old parcels were. Are just incredible. You know, Pinotage, the style that's been made for many years. People are starting to make these lighter, fresher, more vibrant styles. I promise you, Penetage wasn't done any favors by a lot of producers in the past. But I can pour you Pinotages now. If you have that preconceived idea of Penetage in your mind, you'll probably be a bit nervous. But if you taste the wine blind, it'll blow your mind. It'll freak you out when you see that it's actually been a torch. And I think it's just, as I said, sort of farming, winemaking dynamic. And, I mean, it's. Yeah, I suppose I'm not really. Like, I should have given you a very concise, like, this is why South Africa is what it is, but I can't, because it's like, you know, it's this whole thing that's constantly evolving. So you will see, I think, going forward, a lot more interest in South African wine. I think in the States, you know, I think that, you know, back in the day, people used to just associate us with apartheid and poverty and all of that, and none of that kind of links to, you know, wine, which is essentially a luxury product. But more and more people are visiting South Africa and especially for the game parks, and a lot of Americans in particular. I mean, there's a lot of direct flights. Now. If you come up to the game parks in the north, either the northwest or the northeast, people are blown away. You drive your car around, and there's lions strolling around, you know, smoking a little buck down there, or, you know, elephants everywhere. There's a few Les Rhinos compliments that of our friends in China. But, you know, other than that, it's the most incredible thing. And you know what it's like. Even if you love Burgundy, until you've actually been to Burgundy, you don't really understand it. You know, once you've been there, you understand it. And South Africa is the same. People must come. And it's a beautiful place. The climate is great. The people are warm and friendly. You will be blown away by the hospitality. I think all of that together is what's giving us our success today is, you know, like discovering these old vines, new plantings, new slopes, the chias of the people. I Have to give you this example. Sorry, I'm not rambling on again, but we did a tasting in Quebec. Four of us producers here in South Africa flew across. We got a great importer there, the guys from Symbiosa. They're such lack of guys. And we were on a rooftop bar, and they'd set us up with four stations. So I don't know if you know of the wines from Badenhorst. He's a friend of mine, Artie Bodnos. He makes the Secateurs Chenin Blanc. Very good wine. Maybe you've seen it before. Artie's quite a character. Loves to smoke, big beard. And we know what Artie's like. He just sort of disappears. So the four of us get onto the rooftop and we look at all these separate tables, and we, like, bugger this. We push all the tables together, chuck everyone's wines in the same ice bucket, pour each other's wines, tell each other's stories. And a whole bunch of people came to us afterwards. And one guy said to me, said, you know, he's been in the trade in Quebec for. In Montreal for 30 years. And he said he's never seen a producer pouring other producers wines. And I think that kind of summed up for me the spirit of South Africa and the sort of, like, help each other dynamic. Because, you know, we first need to promote South Africa to get people to buy into the concept that is South Africa. And when they do that, they will buy the wines and they'll drink the wines and then enjoy the wines. Yes. Which, honestly, is so interesting that you were in Quebec too, because I feel like I. I spoke to a Canadian winemaker recently, and they kind of said a similar thing of, like, it's that same idea of, like, we need to have, you know, people who are outside of the country be able to try our wines and realize that we are a wine region that makes incredible wines. And whatever idea they have, or if they have no idea, we need to, you know, we need to show them. And that needs to be done not just with your own wines. It's like you need to, you know, be the spokesperson for everyone's wines is so important. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. I highly encourage you to look out for Duncan's wines. You can find Savage wines, most likely at a smaller wine store. So reach out to your small wine shops and ask them if they come. You can get in any Savage wines. I know I will be doing that so I can give them a try. And even if you can't find Savage wines, even just like he said, shouting out other winemakers and looking for other South African wines just so we can get these wines in the market, especially in the us, Canada and areas outside of South Africa. If you love this episode as much as I did, I'd love it if you could take a quick second rate it and leave a review you and if you know a wine lover in your life that would enjoy it, please share it with them. In next week's episode you'll hear part two of my interview with Duncan. You are not going to want to miss this. He shares more about his winemaking style. He also shares some more stories behind the names of his wines which I think are just so so fun. And he shares a very unique and special to South Africa food and wine pairing that I think you'll want to hear. Thanks again for listening. And if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at corkandfizz on Instagram. Cheers.