Under the Influence of Eben Sadie

Here are some highlights of a long discussion with Eben Sadie during the first production of Under the Influence’s DVD collection. Enjoy!

It is said that all wine has one thing in common. Many may argue that the commonality lies in the fact that all wines are made from grapes. Taking the fact that grapes create wine as an absolute, the commonality lies in the fact that all wines in the world have an address…a place. Wines are liquid images that give us an understanding of a place. This is why wine has an origin, an address, a place.

With European labels, or for that matter the old world, the importance of the wine is not who produced it, but rather where it is from! For instance, in Burgundy, Mussiny would be large and apparent on the label and the producer’s name, small and insignificant in comparison. Mussiny is a place with a certain soil. These producers produce places, not certain percentages of alcohol with certain stylistic flavours.

Soil is where a plant roots itself; a vine puts its whole life, its anchor, in the soil. The whole neurological system of the vine is placed in the soil.

In the late 70’s wine became like fashion. Everyone wanted to be a famous superstar of the wine world. Producers started pushing wine making as a determinant factor for wine styles. Before the 70’s, the soil, the history and the community were the driving factors. In the late 70’s and early 80’s a shift in wine toward prestige and excellence was apparent, moving away from the importance of soil and into the cellar. This saw the birth of great winemakers, the great winemakers portfolios, and consumers opting for varietal wines like Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, which became a function of branding. Hence, more important than the vines grown and the soils grown in, was the need to produce a varietal wine of fashion.

In retrospect, we have lost so much in the last 20 years. Many wines were made by people who put their own importance above that of the region or address. All wineries use the same barrels, the same consultants and the same university textbooks; hence it is only normal to assume that most of the wines are starting to look the same.

Now we drink a Cabernet in Australia, Bordeaux and Napa and the differentiation is minimal in many cases. What is important, in these wines, is precision viticulture, precision wine making, precision barrels, precision yeasts and precision clones while in the end it is no surprise that many of the wines have no character of soil.

In Burgundy there are vineyards the size of a dining room in a large house, a soil with an expression. Within a stone throw of this aforementioned vineyard you have a similar sized vineyard, however one wine is priced at 5 Euros and the other at 300 Euros. Not because the light is better, or the climate is so different, but because the soil is superior and everything is working in harmony.

The New World is developing its wine regions where everything needs to occur instantaneously. The development of viticultural land is determined by the economy, excel spreadsheets, the financial manager, profitability and real estate values. Europe’s wine regions were developed around 500 years ago, and before this they had a thousand years without these modern day pressures, such as marketing and branding. The varieties growing in Europe were planted first and foremost as a function of the development of time. These grapes are best suited to their chosen soils, not because of the economy, nor profitability, nor a fashion created by newspapers 18000 kms away. These producers looked at their climate, their disease pressures, their soil behaviour and cultural values and this information determined that specific plants, varieties and vines on their soils would make the expression of their place.

Eben Sadie’s unique philosophy on wines and their expressions of their place have yielded world acclaim through two of South Africa’s most rare and most highly rated wines, Columella and Palladius.