AA Badenhorst, Secateurs Red Blend 2023

All fruit, red and white, is whole bunch-handled so no crushing or destemming takes place. The whites are tranferred directly to old casks or into concrete tanks for fermentation and ageing. The red grapes are fermented in concrete tanks and open wooden kuipe. The post fermentation maceration is lengthy up to 4 months -whereafter the wines are put to cask or 4000L foudres. No additions are done to the grapes other than sulfur before and after fermentation.

AA Badenhorst Family Wines are grown, made and matured on Kalmoesfontein farm in the Swartland appellation of South Africa. The 28ha of old bushvines grow in the Siebritskloof part of the Paardeberg mountain. The property is owned by the baie dynamic and good looking cousins Hein and Adi Badenhorst. They are originally from Constantia. Their grandfather was the farm manager of Groot Constantia for 46 years. Their fathers were born there and farmed together in Constantia, during the days when people still ate fresh vegetables and Hanepoot grapes, drank Cinsault and there were a lot less traffic lights and hippies still had a presence. Together these two have restored a neglected cellar on the farm that was last used in the 1930s to make natural wines in the traditional manner. Andre Adriaan Badenhorst grew up between the vineyards of Constantia and spent his time picking (stealing) grapes. 'It all started when Jean Daneel, then winemaker at Buitenverwachting, let me make my first wine when I was thirteen',Adi recalls. After completing his studies at Elsenburg, Adi worked a few harvests at Chateau Angelus,Alain Graillot in the north Rhone,Wither Hills in New Zealand and did stints at local cellars at Simonsig, Steenberg, Groote Post and nine years as winemaker at the esteemed Stellenbosch estate, Rustenberg. In 2008 he packed it all in and bought a 60-hectare piece of land in the Paardeberg with his cousin Hein. They now proudly farm together, practice biological farming and make natural wines in the traditional manner.