The Single Vine
For a man who picked 165 tons in the 2021 harvest from around 76 vineyards and 30 different varieties, it’s funny to think that he only owns ONE non-bearing vine in the Strand.
Pieter Walser is a surfer, kaalvoet {shoeless} when I arrive early at their house in the Strand on the last Friday of October 2021. Set on a quiet street a few hundred meters from False Bay, the house emanates ENERGY. A family home, built by Pieter’s father and systematically upgraded to now house his wife and three children; Blikkies (the metal surf shack at the bottom of their garden); his label studio, and the intriguing paraphernalia of a life in wine (think a line-up of fallen soldiers, and the original art of some of his favourite labels adorning the walls, some even spray-painted on). He laughingly admits: “This is as close as you’ll get to the spiritual home of BLANKbottle.” I meet his wife Aneen and their three children before they set off for school. The children hoflik {courteous}, and confidently coming in to shake my hand - “Goeie môre Tannie, I am…” (Ai, how that still stings, and yet such a TRADEMARK of Afrikaans culture - respect your elders).
Aneen and Pieter built their customer base from scratch, and she manages the business with him, specifically the database. She treats their customers for what they are, longtime friends. The kind of experience that retains customers and manifests relationships rather than a following, something more binding than a mere monetary transaction. Like Pieter says: “It’s not even a sales model or anything. It's just a natural evolution of who you are. It’s relationships, it's trust, I can't let them down.” Of BLANKbottle, I think that’s the one thing I got immediately. Everything here has significance and meaning. Even the smallest patch of a vineyard is afforded its story and place in the sun. Every customer and person involved from grape to bottle, to label, to the shelf, to your table - they’re all important. Hence the sheer EFFORT of producing over 50 wines annually, irrespective of whether there are 60 or 600 bottles available.
Die Kortpad
Like Kortpad Kaap Toe (Shortcut to Cape Town), named for a vineyard of Fernao Pires in the Swartland. The story goes that Pieter asked the farmer what shortcut he could take to reach the Cape that day (he had to pick up his passport), and the farmer explained he had to drive until he hit the Fernao Pires vineyard to reach the turn that would eventually get him to the city. Kortpad Kaap Toe. As the titles and stories of Pieter’s wines have evolved, his labels today are also a far cry from his original Microsoft Word BLANK blocks. “The struggle will determine the outcome, and that’s going to become part of the way your wine tastes.”
Problem-Solving
Fifteen years ago Pieter developed Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy which limited his time spent playing around on a computer screen. He says though he can’t medically prove it, he started seeing in pictures, and somehow epilepsy allowed him to express himself and his wines by creating labels in different mediums. The Strand’s own Banksy with some of his pieces, cut out in stencils and spray-painted onto their dining room wall. Since then, BLANKbottle’s labels have become art pieces in themselves, from linocut prints to stencils, and collages, each one telling the story inherent to the wine. And representative of their problem-solving business plan. “Everything that happened to us was a practical problem that needed to be solved, and it led to something that is now part of the business.”
A Storyteller
Like the way he makes wine. Back in the day, Pieter was making 35 tons in a tiny room. He didn’t have money for new barrels, so bought old ones. He bought an old basket press at auction and fixed it up, and when it didn’t drain properly, he started destemming and packing the stems in there, and that became part of the style of the wine. “Everything happened like that for us. We absolutely never had any forethought.” Though I don't agree, as much as Pieter ascribes his style to chance, there’s a lot to be said for thinking on your feet. Trying, and trying again. I don't think everyone would have that fortitude. Today, Pieter makes incredibly opulent wines (his Luuks {Afrikaans for Luxury} Stellenbosch Chardonnay was so-named because it came from his first-ever NEW barrel), next to incredibly natural wines. The point? Like me, Pieter is a bit of a storyteller. The subject dictates the story.
Ibiza
The intriguing thing about Pieter and BLANKbottle, is that while other winemakers are in tasting groups and operate within a network of winemakers - Pieter looks inward. He focuses on the various people in his team, the growers, his cellar managers, the ladies who hand label his bottles, the guys who pack the boxes. I think of him as an island within the South African wine industry, and as no man is an island, Pieter is not alone. All I can hear right now is Hugh Grant in the movie About a Boy: “I am an island. I’m bloody Ibiza.”
Of South Africa, you ask? It’s very simple, Pieter embodies the freedom of the place, balanced on a knife-edge to make things WORK, and yet operating winningly within that volatile, uncertain space. Thriving on it. When I ask him why here, he doesn’t even think about it. “I was born here. That’s it.”
