Notes on the 2023 Releases

Four wines carry the 2023 vintage into the Collectible Vintage collection: Oniv, Surin, Aurelia and Velour. Each is a collaboration with producers we believe count among South Africa’s finest, and each carries their names. These notes are a walk through the four releases, what they are, where they come from and who made them.

The 2023 Oniv Chenin Blanc was created in collaboration with Danie Steytler, Tertius Boshoff and the talented teams at Kaapzicht and Stellenrust. Both estates farm the Bottelary Hills of Stellenbosch, where granite soils and cooling breezes have long favoured Chenin Blanc. Kaapzicht is a fourth-generation family property whose treasures include a Chenin vineyard planted in 1947, the second-oldest surviving in South Africa, while Stellenrust, established in 1928, is especially known for its mature, dry-farmed bush vines. Oniv draws on that shared heritage of old Bottelary Chenin.

The 2023 Surin Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon was created in collaboration with Duncan Savage, Miles Mossop and the talented teams at Savage Wines and Miles Mossop Wines. Neither winemaker is tied to a single estate. Duncan works from his urban winery in Salt River, Cape Town, seeking out older vines, granitic soils and maritime-cooled vineyards across the Western Cape, having first made his name with mineral-driven white wines of remarkable freshness. Miles, a former chairman of the Cape Winemakers Guild, is drawn to mature, low-yielding vines on poorer soils, harvesting at precisely the right moment and guiding the fruit gently. Surin is their meeting point, a white blend built on the freedom to search the Cape for its finest parcels.

Every one of these wines carries more than one name, and that is the point.

The 2023 Aurelia Chardonnay was created in collaboration with Craig and Anne Wessels, Gordon and Bevan Newton Johnson, Peter-Allan Finlayson and the talented teams at Restless River, Newton Johnson and Crystallum. All three producers work the cool, maritime landscapes of the Cape South Coast. Restless River’s Chardonnay vineyards, planted in 1998, are among the oldest surviving in the Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley; Newton Johnson farms elevated granite slopes roughly nine kilometres from the Atlantic; and Crystallum’s Chardonnays, led by The Agnes, have helped define the modern Cape expression of the variety. Aurelia gathers those cool-climate convictions into a single wine.

The 2023 Velour Pinot Noir was created in collaboration with Hannes and Nathalia Storm, Craig and Anne Wessels, Gordon and Bevan Newton Johnson and the talented teams at Storm Wines, Restless River and Newton Johnson. Pinot Noir is the variety that first drew the Newton Johnson family to the Hemel-en-Aarde in 1995, and it is the grape on which Hannes Storm has built one of the region’s most quietly uncompromising projects, as the only producer making individual Pinot Noirs from each of the Hemel-en-Aarde’s three recognised appellations. With Restless River’s cool, granite-derived sites completing the trio, Velour brings these Walker Bay voices together in one wine.

Each of the four releases is offered in limited allocation, and each wine’s page tells the fuller story of the producers behind it. A fifth collaboration, the Consensus Cabernet Sauvignon, waits in the cellar for its release in late 2027.

Walk the collection at your own pace, discover the wines.