A Viticulturist

“It will read ‘Chris Keet, Viticulturist’ on my gravestone.” - Chris Keet jokingly says.

Chris meets Kleinjan and I on a freezing, beautifully crisp morning at his cellar in Stellenbosch. The cellar is located on the Van Biljon’s farm on the Polkadraai road, across the way from De Toren, with a sign that reads ‘Tarentaal’(Guinea Fowl) - and as if on cue, a Tarentaal runs across the road. Chris’s affiliation with the Van Biljon’s is a whole other story, which I’ll tell you on another day, suffice to say that he is also the winemaker of their award-winning Cinq (pronounced the French way - or in my layman’s terms ‘Sank’) and that his relationship with them is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to Chris and the South African wine industry.

Koffietjie vir jou? 

The outside bench is drenched when we get there, but Chris quickly cuts up a bit of cardboard for me to sit on, spreads out a serendipitous, red chequered table cloth and promptly pulls out his trusty Stanley flask. “Koffietjie vir jou?” (A Coffee for you?) Turns out Chris came PREPARED, he had made the GOOD coffee in the big Stanley flask, with a smaller milk flask, Le Creuset cups and homemade rusks for Kleinjan and I, he drinks straight out of the lid. For an Englishman he was throwing me off course. The Stanley flask is old school FARMER material- I can imagine him sitting in a bakkie waiting to start harvest somewhere in the middle of nowhere, pouring himself a cup in his Stanley lid. Chris is a mountaineer (mostly Helderberg by the sound of it), camper, cyclist, viticulturist and winemaker - I think he’s what you’d call - an outdoorsman. I see them from time to time when I take myself for a walk in the mountain. His passion for the outdoors is contagious as he talks about his favourite camping spot, he says its like staying at the One & Only at R500 per night … I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the One & Only would double and triple that sum significantly - though I don’t think he’d enjoy it there any way. We start talking and abandon my carefully considered list of questions completely.

Flight of the Condor 

Now, you’d be forgiven for not knowing Chris Keet, he’s an illusive figure in the wine industry, though part of the foundation of some of the biggest, most successful brands in South Africa today. With the incredible trajectory of his First Verse, the only wine in his own Keet Wines portfolio, a Stellenbosch Bordeaux Blend, he has quickly been catapulted into the limelight. Tim Atkin rated his 2015 vintage 97 points, billing it: “classic, refined, nuanced and refreshing with silky tannins and near-perfect balance. Who's your daddy!” (Erm, whose daddy now?) Wine Cellar says it’s one of our very best Bordeaux-style wines and the newly released 2017 is staggeringly good. Chris started Keet Wines in 2008, in conjunction with his flourishing consultation business. Having just finished a 15 year stint at Cordoba wines, up against the slopes of the Helderberg, having made and perfected the beautiful, Cabernet Franc dominant Cordoba Crescendo - he had taken his family and travelled to South America on a three-month, find-your-purpose adventure. With his wife and two children in tow, they did South America on a shoestring. The goal being to spend money on big experiences, rather than accommodation and food. They travelled through Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and a little of Brazil. They swam with the pink dolphins in the Amazon, didn’t leave until they saw an Anaconda and Tarantula, watched the Condors take off in the Colca Canyon, hiked to a lake 4600m above sea-level and visited Machu Picchu. All during the economic downturn of 2008, with no job to return to. The thought of which, was in fact one of the struggles that ensured his success. Chris says, that with nothing to fall back on, be it an inheritance or assets, the only way forward was to succeed. And he was quietly confident that he would do so. 

A Work Coma

“I worked myself into a coma.” With 12 full-time projects, 3 to 4 part-time projects and Keet Wines, 2009 seems to have been a blur. Chris’s superpower is that he is both viticulturist AND winemaker. Back in the day, people used to be only one or the other. He says winemakers were Gods in these valleys while the viticulturists were working quietly in the background. What he brought was a fundamental understanding of both, learning that the things winemakers had been ‘tweaking’ in the cellar, could easily be tweaked in the vineyard. Galileo Galilei is famously quoted for saying: “Wine is sunlight held together by water.” A beautiful statement to be sure, the meaning of which is far more practical than you’d think. Chris says it refers to so many things: the level of sun exposure, vigour, irrigation, fertilisation, leaf plucking, green harvesting, suckering… grape growing is all about sunlight and water, and by all accounts Chris seems to have grasped the nuances fantastically. As he started these businesses side-by-side, the consultancy and Keet wines, it soon became apparent that they weren’t mutually exclusive. Keet wines benefitted from Chris’s constant contact with the various winemakers, the mentorship and knowledge transfer of it, and more importantly, the stellar vineyards he was introduced to. While his consultancy clients benefitted from the fact that he was happy to remain in the wings and from his appetite to mentor and share the knowledge he gained in the field. Chris is truly a representation of the grapevine as I continue to experience it, winemaker to winemaker. What is remarkable is the fact that more than 10 years on, Keet Wines and Consultancy today is on even footing, positive, excited for the future and successful. Unlikely Chris says, given the fact that it was a business started in an economic downturn, with no capital, no shareholders, with ONE wine, and not just any wine -a RED wine, only to be sold more than 4 years on. Or maybe NOT that unlikely, given that today we are once again unable to sell wine in a country that seems to have turned its back on the wine industry. I confess to being an eternal optimist, which can be quite annoying to some, but meeting people like Chris just FUELS it. WORK yourself into a coma doing something you LOVE, maybe the ONLY thing you love doing, KNOW that it will never be easy, but be willing to FIGHT for it. I wish I could say it with more conviction right now, but maybe its just about getting up each morning and doing something to the best of your ability?

A Symphony

That’s what the First Verse is. It is Chris as a wine. It’s not a classic Bordeaux blend dominated by any one varietal. Rather, it is an equal blend, the harmony of it more important than any one varietal. I said to Chris that he doesn’t strike me as a one wine kind of man - but then, he’s not. He has the joy of making MANY different wines and discovering every possible, beautiful little piece of terroir this country has to offer. The First Verse is his symphony, a sum of all his parts. And while South Africa right now is more like a cacophony of sound, let’s hold on to the harmonies wherever we may find them. With Chris’s latest release of the 2017 vintage First Verse we invite you to shop now and drink later- the obvious advantage being that red wine can always do with a bit more time in the cellar.