Where the Mountains Meet…

“I’ve got one foot on one mountain and one foot on the other - proper Soutie*” - Alex Starey, winemaker at Keermont Vineyards.

Alex’s father used to farm in the Blaauwklippen Valley, on a farm that has since been divided up into Dornier, Waterford, Kleinood, and a few other smallholdings. Alex grew up here, driving a Massey-Ferguson tractor at the age of eight, and deciding to become a farmer in high school. His father farmed with livestock, plums, citrus fruit, and wine grapes and I suppose the IDEA of wine, was planted (as he is) right here. In a sense, Alex was uniquely pedigreed to farm the Upper Blaauwklippen Valley, where the Stellenbosch Mountain and Helderberg meet, on a farm that was originally part of Mont Fleur (David Trafford’s farm) and earmarked as a water bottling plant (though quickly abandoned due to incorrect zoning). Keermont is situated halfway up the valley, the name a contraction of the original farm names ‘Keerweerder’ and ‘Mont Fleur’. The Roux family who farmed this valley for several generations from the 1600s speculate that there are two possible interpretations of the historic farm name ‘Keerweerder’, either meaning “Weer Gekeer”/ “Stopped Again” in reference to the valley not offering access inland, or Dutch meaning “Come Again”. The former possibly more viable given the inaccessibility of the Upper Blaauwklippen Valley - with the Blou Klip River running right through it, the steep slopes to either side, and the forbidding wind that yearly causes havoc as it forms an almost perfect wind tunnel between the two mountains - this is a forbidding place. And yet, when I ask Alex what it’s like to live here he says: “Can I say Paradise?” 

Blaauwklippen Valley Heritage

Keermont Vineyards was originally established in 2005, with the intention of merely farming grapes to sell. Alex, having interned at De Trafford the year before and having met Mark Wraith, owner of Keermont, dropped his CV with Mark before leaving to travel through Thailand with his then-girlfriend (now wife) for a few months. He remembers sitting in an internet cafe after receiving Mark’s invitation to come and work at Keermont and getting ready to come HOME. It bears mentioning that for someone who seems to have lived and worked in the same place all his life, Alex Starey is a well-traveled guy. Quite fearless in fact, as he tells me about going to work in Chile right after varsity, hitchhiking across Spain, spending one night under the stars with 50 Euros to his name, the Catalan people who took him in, making Cava in the heart of Cava country, and working with Daphne Glorian of Clos Erasmus in the Priorat, where he also met up with Eben Sadie and Chris Mullineux. Not a great stretch given that Chris Mullineux and Trizanne Barnard were Alex’s class and flat mates at Stellenbosch. In fact, Alex’s network of South African winemakers runs deep, like his Blaauwklippen Valley heritage. 

Ubuntu

Apart from the usual camaraderie you experience among South African winemakers at trade shows and festivals, there’s a deeper sense of ubuntu. To clarify, “Ubuntu” is a Zulu word used in the Zulu phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” literally meaning “I am because you are.” (there is some semantic debate as to how Bill Clinton used it once at a Labour party conference in Manchester and how Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained it in his book No Future Without Forgiveness - but the premise remains the same). I think it’s the UBUNTU of our winemakers that have garnered them the international acclaim they enjoy. Their ubuntu is derived from each other, from their shared passions: obviously wine, farming, Africa, South Africa, family, legacy, and SURFING. Yes, surfing is a thing. It’s the culture around surfing, that distant look in a seasoned surfer’s eye, knowing you’re not in charge of anything, in the water, or in the vineyard. Nature makes fools of us all, but it’s the thrill they get from riding the wave that unites them. So much so that more than 20 years ago a small group of winemakers started ‘The Vintners Surf Classic’, a surfing competition started by Eben Sadie, Bevan Newton-Johnson, Miles Mossop, and a few other guys I didn’t catch the names of. Adi Badenhorst was the judge that first year, he said he was allergic to saltwater - fitting for a Swartland man. And so it became an establishment - now more than 20 years later the event is sponsored by the likes of Reef and Ripcurl and the guys all contribute 5L ‘KANNE’ of their wine to be used in making ‘The Big Red’ - a magnum of red wine. Alex is in charge of bottling it and Pieter Walser of BLANKbottle labels it, each participant gets a magnum and the rest is given to charity. Alex says he was at a tasting in London once, where he was wearing a proper chino and button-down shirt when Duncan Savage pulled him aside and said he didn’t have to DRESS-UP. No, our South African winemakers can be found around the world at fancy tastings, in even fancier venues in their Ripcurl T-shirts, living the dream. Alex is a part of this group of people who ENJOY taking on the trials and tribulations of nature every year, and in THEIR fearlessness we find comfort - even now. ESPECIALLY now. 

The Left & Right Bank

Alex confesses that he plans his life around high tide but that he only has to hike to the top of his little piece of Helderberg to keep an eye on the coast, while the business of Keermont demands his attention. When I ask what the mission statement of Keermont is, he says: “Keermont is about a place.” It’s not too calculated, driven by nature and the two mountains it straddles. It really is a classic left bank, right bank situation, Alex says every year it becomes more apparent that each side has to be farmed differently - from the Riverside Chenin to the Steepside Syrah. When I ask him why he’s not part of the Cabernet Collective, he says: “Because…I like my Syrah.” The granitic soils, with no schist or slate, the steep slopes, and the diurnal shift promote colour and tannin development, with a herbaceous quality that can be controlled by picking times. Alex argues that he really cannot champion one varietal over the other given the diversity of his vines - and makes a case for the Blaauwklippen Valley as its own ward, given its inability to choose an identity between Helderberg and Stellenbosch. He says he often feels like a Swartland winemaker in Stellenbosch, not feeling the need to force his wines to be anything but what they are. Throughout his 15 year tenure at Keermont, from first just making wine for themselves (their first official vintage was in 2007), to designing his own cellar (Alex converted the old bottling plant into what he calls a simple cellar). Alex says not much has changed in his winemaking style other than his focus on freshness over ripeness, with lower alcohol and more focussed taste profiles. Of challenges, Alex cites the wind - like Oom Jan Boland before him, it has culled whole vintages and severely limited others in recent years. When he consulted his father the last time this wind blew, it actually BENT the steel purlins in the roof of the cellar and decimated a fair percentage of his crop, his father’s words were: “Well, start picking up the pieces, it’s not the last time.” SAGE advice. 

The Mentors

Of mentors, Alex has many, given his surfing, his two tasting groups (the Celts and The Nameless Wine Club… or The Wine Circle), and his long history in the valley. He says he met Oom Jan Boland when he was just a kid with his dad, Oom Jan turned him onto the difference between single-vineyard wines… (I am literally going to start drawing a spider diagram of Oom Jan’s footprints in this industry). There are two who seem to have had a fundamental impact, David Trafford and Mark Wraith. From David Trafford, he learned the following: his appreciation of great wine, not status. His uncompromising drive to achieve it. “He’s chilled but he knows what he wants.” His humility and his down to earth quiet nature. The fact that he makes cracking wines, SIMPLY, and thinks outside the box. From owner Mark Wraith he learned the meaning of perfection. Winemaking from a business point of view. And never burning bridges. There are many more people to admire, but these are the fundamentals of Keermont- uncompromising yet chilled, perfect but thoughtful, natural but precise. It’s like Eben said to me - “I want to make wine where I live.” It’s almost as if Alex’s history in the Valley adds something to its mission statement - about a place and a man that belonged there. 

The Kanniedood 

When I ask him about our South African kanniedood spirit he says he’s never heard of it as an official term and I assure him that I intend to make it one. But he definitely KNEW what it was. A strangely South African thing. He said: “I knew people in London, and it was always the South Africans who didn’t mind packing shelves at Boots or collecting dead pigeons at a fumigation plant - THAT’S SOUTH AFRICAN. When we play sport, we play our best when we’re the underdogs. We’re special like that.” In this very uncertain time for all of us, not just in the wine industry, but in South Africa and the world, I think it’s time to go find that kanniedood spirit, dust it off, and put it to WORK. While we are in the midst of our third alcohol ban (maybe fourth, I haven’t been counting), there is something to protect here. We have to protect EACH other because…Ubuntu. We are nothing without that quality, and the wines that people like Alex produce contain a spark of it, if the critics are to be believed. So if you've forgotten what it is we're fighting for, maybe you just need another taste.

*’Soutie’ - meaning ‘Englishman’ in Afrikaans.