Where it all began

Louis, the wine, is the brainchild of Louis Nel. Louis has been making wine since 1993, and has made wine all over South Africa, finally settling to make some wine to satisfy his own hedonism.

The first year – vintage 2007

The idea of making his own wine started in Louis’s head a long time ago, but only became a reality when a friend, Martin, approached him to make some wine for him. The piece of land turned out to be mostly koffieklip, a strange conglomerate of sand and gravel cemented together with red iron oxide. This extremely rich mineral soil is something truly unique and provided the first inkling of good things to come.

Louis is extremely aware of how much the winemaking process adds to the grape, and is even more aware of how much the grapes add to the wine. Without good grapes half the battle is lost, so it was extremely fortunate that Louis was led to these wonderful grapes.

The grapes are on a piece of land in the Helderberg region, and the cabernet sauvignon comes from a twenty year old vineyard. This vineyard has a particular strip of koffieklip running about ten metres wide, along the side of the vineyard. This area was harvested separately and wherever possible areas were kept separate. That was until Martin’s neighbour started looking closer at the farm maps and realised that some of the grapes were actually planted on his land. Martin never realised this, and offered to swop some of his land, but his unpleasant neighbour refused. The process was dragged out until one day the neighbour took matters into his own hands and erected a fence right through the vineyard, cutting off a big piece of the vineyard, and cutting many of the trellis wires in the process. Martin was of course very distressed by this, feeling slightly violated, but meekly went ahead to fix the wires. Since the neighbour was not going to farm the vineyard, Martin prevented the vines from infecting others by cutting down the vines across the fence with a chainsaw. When his neighbour saw this, his full wrath descended on the well-meaning Martin, and in the brief physical encounter that followed, Martin was dealt a few blows by his neighbour.

In our sheltered society one does not often meet people who physically attack one another so this was quite a traumatic event for my friend Martin. Martin reported the incident to the police, but nothing came of this.

And so it happened that this first vintage of cabernet sauvignon was actually the swansong of that particular part of the vineyard, due to his neighbour’s wrath.

The Merlot actually comes from a vineyard very close by with a few eucalyptus trees at the bottom. It is no scientific fact, but the notes of eucalyptus on the wine could be due to those trees.

The wine was made at Post House winery, and Louis had to drive through to the winery very early in the morning for punch downs, and straight after his normal work hours for more of the same. He spent many a weekend throwing off bunches.

Only 22 barrels were made the first year.

The Second vintage 2008

The second vintage was made at Hidden Valley where Louis is the winemaker. Again only 7 tons were harvested and about twenty barrels were vinified.

The third harvest 2009

The grapes were vinified at Hidden Valley, and this year there were again only seven tons produced. The biggest limitation to the total amount of grapes harvested was Louis’s money which never went into the shoe box under the bed, but ended up being spent on barrels, grapes and other things that sounded quite boring to his wife.

Contact us at:

info@louiswines.com or

3 Chestnut Lane
Stellenbosch
7600
South Africa

Cell: 082 775 8726