Diemersdal proprietor Thys Louw took his winemakers on a trip to Sancerre in France to immerse them in Sancerre and Sauvignon Blanc. Emile Joubert tagged along.
We crossed the Loire River as the rain came. A surprisingly cool rain for summer, but very welcome after the past few weeks of blistering heat Europe had had to endure. Ahead, the village of Sancerre perched on a butte, just as it had been for centuries, looking over the undulating hills, slopes and valleys where 2 000ha of vines, including the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world, pushed their verdant leaves forward to take-in the fresh wetness of the drizzle bucketing down from above.
This was Operation Sancerre, launched by Thys Louw, proprietor and winemaker of Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville, and arguably South Africa's leading exponent of Sauvignon Blanc. The aim was to immerse his winemaking team in Sancerre and Sauvignon Blanc, let this get into their heads and their soul, inspire them to further share Thys's fervour and devotion for the wines of this part of the world.
"You can't make good wine if you don't know what good wine tastes like," says Louw, who has visited Sancerre a good number of times. "Seeing that I have been for so long enthusing on all things Sancerre to my colleagues, I decided to bring my team to the place which, for me, is the heart-beat of Sauvignon Blanc. Let them experience it and buy into the Diemersdal vision of making the best Sauvignon Blanc possible."
The team for this visit comprised Diemersdal winemakers Mari Branders, Juandré Bruwer and Janeke Beck, with marketing supremo Steffi Layer and Natasha de Villiers from the Durbanville Wine Vally hauling along to allow the atmosphere of the local wine culture to broaden minds and feed the spirits. Diemersdal's consultant on all aspects vinous, Dr Carien Coetzee, came along to handle technical details that required explaining.
The Sancerre region is known as the "central vineyards" of the Loire Valley, not because it lies in the centre of this long river, but because Sancerre is pretty much in the very middle of France. In fact, if the country was a dart-board and you wanted a bull's eye, one would be aiming for Sancerre. The region is located north of the city of Nevers and 35 kilometers northeast of Bourges. To the northeast, the Burgundian wine region of Chablis is only 97 kilometers away and Sancerre shares the same line of chalk soil that extends all the way to the White Cliffs of Dover in England.
With the Pouilly-Fumé wine area on the eastern side of the river and Sancerre on the west, the region makes up the eastern extension of the Loire Valley. Sancerre is more than 480km from the Atlantic Coast and this distance from the sea gives it more of a continental climate than typical of the rest of the Loire with short, hot summers and long, cold winters.
Entering the region of Sancerre, it is obvious that despite the magnificent presence of the vineyards, the village after which the region is named stands out for attracting the attention and capturing the imagination. It is situated at 310m above sea-level and looks out across most of its kingdom of vines, which lie at between 200m to 400m above sea-level. The history of Sancerre town goes back to the 11th century when it was in the feudal possession of the Counts of Champagne who built a chateau with six towers on the hill. And through the ages it has been at the heart of the traditional mixture of wars and sieges to make it a place of historical authenticity.