Best-known for making cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Anthony Hamilton Russell is also an evangelist for Pinotage – or rather Pinotage of a certain kind. But transforming the reputation of South Africa’s emblematic grape variety is no easy task, as Richard Woodard discovers. “It’s unusually open-minded people who make a conscious decision to come to an event that’s centred on Pinotage…” There’s a wry smile on Anthony Hamilton Russell’s face, but he’s only half-joking. More than 25 years after embarking on a mission to elevate perceptions of South Africa’s emblematic grape variety, he knows there’s plenty of work still to do. You may wonder why Hamilton Russell decided to bother with Pinotage in the first place. With a main property – Hamilton Russell Vineyards – lauded for its cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, there was no apparent need to start working with a grape variety that, to put it mildly, divides opinion among trade and consumers. We’ll come back to those perceptions later. What persuaded Hamilton Russell to establish Ashbourne in 1996, alongside sister property, Southern Right, a maker of both Pinotage and Sauvignon Blanc? “I was thinking to myself that Pinotage is something that has to be worked with almost out of duty,” he explains. “It’s what South Africa has given to the world. It’s also the path of most resistance.” Hamilton Russell’s vision was of a different sort of Pinotage versus the soft, spicy – sometimes flabby – examples produced in the heat of Stellenbosch and beyond. Focusing
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
