Recorded 21st March 2019
Craig Hawkins, owner with wife Carla and winemaker TESTALONGA – leading proponent of natural wine in SA.
Craig as he and his wife Carla are to my knowledge the first people to build a very successful independent business making exclusively natural wine in South Africa. Many other winemakers have used them (and continue to use them) as inspiration to start their own journey. From making 2 barrels of skin contact Chenin Blanc to owning a farm and planting vineyards in 10 years.
We recorded this on their farm, Bandits Kloof near Eendekuil in the northern Swartland in the evening after tasting through the very young 2019 wines in cask. We were forced to sit outside as it was during loadshedding, which is a series of planned power outages lasting 2-3 hours to ease pressure on the grid and is needed due to reduced capacity caused by mismanagement (read: corruption) of the state power utility here in South Africa, Eskom. So please excuse the wind noise … you will also hear their dogs Bruce, Daisy and Ruby in the background - and sometimes in the foreground – as they were playing nearby.
I first met Craig and Carla in 2012 at Cape Wine the triennial South African wine fair in Cape Town before I moved to SA – and fell immediately in love with the Lammershoek wines he was making at the time, they had a most wonderful natural acid line which gave the wines tension and excitement – weren’t ambitiously luxurious wines based on richness, or looking for “stuffing” which so many others were going for at the time.
My company Ex Animo Wine Co has distributed TESTALONGA in South Africa since 2014.
As always – covered a range of topics – how he got started in wine, his years working for Eben Sadie, how his wine philosophy was formed, helping grape growers work organically on their land, his trials and tribulations with the wine and spirit board which certifies South African wine for sale and for export (we incorrectly called it SAWIS in the podcast which is the South African Wine Industry Information and Systems – which is a separate but related entity focused on the collection, processing and dissemination of industry information), and how playing competitive sport help shape his wine career among other things.
The first few times I met Craig, I got the sense that he was trying to “work me out” when he was talking to me. But as I got to know him better, I realised he is just introverted, and it was just his way of interacting with people – he lets the other person open up before deciding whether he will do the same. He is a very passionate, caring person with a sharp intellect competitive spirit, and makes some of my favourite wine on the planet.
Enjoy.
