“Sauvignon Gris is a fantastic cultivar that I first came across almost 20 years ago at a tasting in Chile, South America. I literally fell in love with it!” says David Nieuwoudt. “A mutation of Sauvignon Blanc, it looked exactly the same to me at first until I got to know it more intimately and work with it myself. Now we are thrilled to announce the first official release of this variety in South Africa with the launch of the Cederberg Sandpoort Sauvignon Gris 2023.”
The limited-quantity Cederberg Sandpoort Old Ways Sauvignon Gris 2022 was South Africa’s first certified wine bottled from this variety, grown in these rugged mountains by David and his friend-in-wine Julio Bouchon, whose great-grandfather first planted Sauvignon Gris in Chile in 1912. The first material came into South Africa from the ENTAV repository in France in 2010 and it was in quarantine for seven years, so exercising a lot of patience was required!
“That’s how Vititec, which has the most extensive range of cultivars, clones and rootstocks in the country, produces a virus-free plant, the ‘mother’ block,” explains Cederberg Wines’ viticulturist Dirk de Bruyn. “They take a plant and cut out a tiny bud under a microscope. It’s actually amazing to witness as you can’t see it with the naked eye, only under a microscope. Out of that a plant grows and they cut another bud under the microscope and then repeat the process for seven consecutive years. Then the plant grows small roots and gets planted in a soil or nutrient-source base in the nursery. And, when that plant starts to grow, they harvest the eyes and that’s what we actually planted here in the Cederberg!”