Sadie Family Wines
Eben Sadie founded Sadie Family Wines in 1999 and, more than any other single winemaker, put the Swartland on the world wine map. Before Sadie, this dry, wheat farming region north of Cape Town was overlooked by the fine wine trade. Today it's regarded as one of South Africa's most important terroirs, and that shift traces directly back to the vineyards Sadie sought out on the slopes of the Paardeberg.
A Way of Farming
"Place above Progress."
In the Swartland, an hour north of Cape Town, Eben Sadie has spent more than two decades proving that great wine is made long before a single grape reaches the cellar. Founder of Sadie Family Wines, he is widely regarded as one of South Africa's most influential winemakers. The figure most responsible for turning the Swartland from an overlooked bulk-wine region into one of the most talked-about fine wine addresses in the world.
What sets Sadie apart is how little control he exercises once the vintage begins. Each vineyard is picked on a single date, chosen with enormous care, and everything harvested that day goes into the final blend, there is no second sorting, no selecting away weaker parcels once the grapes reach the cellar. As wine writer Tim James has observed of Sadie's practice, the entire outcome rests on the quality of the viticulture and the selection of vineyards themselves, not on cellar technique.
Sadie treats his flagship wines, Columella and Palladius, as works in progress that evolve primarily through changes in farming, season to season, rather than through winemaking adjustments. It is, in effect, winemaking decided in the vineyard long before harvest.
Two Ranges, One Guiding Idea:
Sadie Family Wines is built around two collections. The Signature Series comprises the flagship blends: Columella, a Syrah-led red drawn from old-vine parcels across the Swartland's granite, slate and sandstone soils, fermented spontaneously in open-top concrete and aged in neutral wood; and Palladius, a Chenin Blanc-driven white blended from more than a dozen sites, fermented in clay amphora and concrete eggs.
The Old Vine Series is a set of single-vineyard wines, each named for the story behind its site, among them Mev. Kirsten, from what may be the oldest Chenin Blanc vines in South Africa; Skerpioen, a saline Chenin and Palomino field blend from limestone soils near St Helena Bay; Pofadder, an iron-rich Cinsaut planted where puff adders roam; and Skurfberg, a mineral, sandstone-grown Chenin from the Citrusdal Mountain. Each label is less a brand than a portrait of a specific patch of ground.
The results have drawn some of the highest scores in South African wine: Columella and Palladius have each scored 98–99 points from critics including Wine Advocate, Tim Atkin and Decanter, while individual Old Vine Series wines regularly land in the mid-to-high 90s from Wine Advocate, Vinous, James Suckling and Tim Atkin alike.
