A couple of weeks back, a compelling winemaker from South Africa came to visit Denver and I was granted a unique, one-on-one tasting with her. An hour and fifteen minutes after we sat down, I knew a lot more about Berene Sauls and her négociant upstart winery called Tesselaarsdal, as well as the complex and fraught lives of her ancestors.
But I also tasted one of the best Chardonnay wines I’ve ever encountered outside of Burgundy. This, from someone pouring only her seventh vintage.
“I keep my work at Hamilton Russell Vineyards at 110%,” Sauls told me, referring to her “day job” at the esteemed Pinot Noir house, and where she oversees exports. “And I work that hard so I can enjoy this [Tesselaarsdal] as well.”
“My business persona is very soldier-like. To get the job done.”
Berene Sauls
Winemaker, Tesselaarsdal
I put “day job” in quotes because it doesn’t fully describe the heroic levels of effort Sauls puts into both assignments. Hamilton Russell Vineyards is one of Walker Bay’s most notable wineries and its Hemel-en-Aarde Valley wines are distributed to 32 different countries around the globe. Sauls manages that complex process.
Meanwhile, Tesselaarsdal is her own brand, where she employs a very different discipline in making top-notch Pinot Noir — and that Chardonnay I love so much — from contract vineyards in the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge.
How someone could manage both of those jobs at 110% (wait, 220%?) is a minor miracle. But if anyone can, it’s Berene Sauls.
The Soldier
“My business persona is very soldier-like,” she said with a laugh, when I asked her about her reaction to a turning point in her career. “To get the job done.”
That pivotal moment was in 2014, when Anthony Hamilton Russell called her in for a not-so-ordinary “three-minute meeting” one afternoon.
“He said, ‘look, Berene, you’ve got no more place to go [within the company]. Why don’t you produce a barrel of wine in our cellar with winemaker Emul Ross. You will have to get your own grapes, get your own company registered, but you can use a building on the farm, we’ll help with the licensing, the legalities of it. Come talk to me about the money.'” She exhaled as though the shock of the offer still amazes her. “So it was no-strings-attached money.”
Her reaction was matter-of-fact; “soldier-like,” as she said (“I just thanked him and immediately started thinking about how I was going to do this.”) But her gratitude for the opportunity has not only been expressed in words, but in how she has poured every ounce of her energy into making Tesselaarsdal a success.
Hemel-en-Aarde
Tasting through her wines was simultaneously familiar and novel. I do not have a lot of access to South African wines, and my focus for years has been intensely Italian and French, as long-time readers know. Yet that’s the beauty of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir: they are so firmly established in our memory, they become perfectly clear vessels for new terroir. Such is the case with South Africa’s Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge.
Pin-sharp and evocative, the 2020 Tesselaarsdal Chardonnay conveyed a verve that you cannot manufacture in the winery. The 2022 took things a step further, striking me as the kind of white wine that can only come from climatic tension. You have to have opposing elements for such a thing, and usually one of them is a large body of water, the other is often a mountain range. In fact, opposing elements is what the name Hemel-en-Aarde eludes to.
“We’ve got Babylon Mountain there. And when the clouds come down, it looks like the mountain is touching the clouds and it’s like hemel-en-aarde, heaven on earth,” Sauls told me. This marine layer phenomenon is caused by cold air from the nearby Atlantic Ocean colliding with the warm ridges, and it is the kind of place that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir love. (I can picture you Sonoma Coast Fans nodding your heads right now).
The 2022 Pinot Noir was exquisite as well, decked in very ripe strawberry-like tones that were nicely countered by threads of tertiary, earthy character. Nicely spiced and delicate, it conjured personally nostalgic memories of picking berries on a farm in Oregon several summers ago, the light rain heightening the smell of soil and mashed sweetness on my fingertips.
Teleportation: it is what Pinot Noir does best.
The Significance in a Name
We got to talking about Sauls’ local heritage and the story of her childhood. Like the hidden images on a dollar bill, Sauls has included many of her memories in the scene depicted on her wine’s label (see featured image above). That includes her mother and grandmother, who used to walk over the mountains from the village of Tesselaarsdal to Stanford to trade goods.
Sauls is a descendant of the slaves who once worked for — and were later freed by — the family of 18th century Dutch Army captain Johannes Tesselaars. In fact, there is reason to believe she, like many in the community, is a direct descendent of Tesselaars as well.
“We are all like fair-skinned and straight haired coming from Tesselaarsdal. My mom has got the blue eyes, but also she has got the height of the Khoikhoi [people].”
“I named it Tesselaarsdal, because I was honoring my history and the legacy of where I come from.”
Berene Sauls
Winemaker, Tesselaarsdal
She is, by most accounts, the first South African winery owner with slave heritage. She also noted that there are very few wine producers of color nationwide.
This complicated, painful and, in a way, redemptive history is not something she wants to be the headline of her journey. In fact, that belongs to her delicious wines. But she is also not eager to shy away from it. For her, the village embodies all aspects of her heritage. “When I came about the business, I named it Tesselaarsdal, because I was honoring my history and the legacy of where I come from,” she told me.
Her story and the resulting wines are riddled with dichotomies — heaven and earth, mountain and sea, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, “day job” and “project.” But the duality of her past and her future seems to hold the most significance. Both of her sons are interested in the wine business, and her oldest, Darren, is currently a WSET Level 3 and studying enology at the Elsenburg Agricultural Training Institute in Stellenbosch. When she recently acquired her own land — where she has begun to plant new vines for future vintages — the risk-versus-reward calculus was done strictly with her sons in mind.
“I know that it’s not easy for the other black-owned brands to get property where they are. But what I wanted to do [in acquiring the land] was something else … I’m building this for my two sons, and I hope it will be for future generations for another 150,000 years.”
To get where she is today, she had to have grit, moxy, vision and ceaseless energy. But she is also deeply grateful for her benefactor. “What Anthony did was also a first in South Africa: no-strings-attached money, there you go, build a business. But he never ran to the papers and said ‘I gave this person of color money to start a wine business.’ It was straight from the heart that day.”
Straight from the heart and in between heaven and earth. The wines of Tesselaarsdal are just getting going, but their future is as bright as any winery’s. And that’s because of Sauls’ passion and priorities.
2022 Tesselaarsdal Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge Chardonnay
Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge WO (Western Cape )
Grapes: Chardonnay 100%
Alcohol: 12.9%
Opinion: ★★★★★
Food-friendliness: Versatile
Value: As Expected
Imported by: Vineyard Brands
A beginner might like … wrapping your head around what the purity of Chardonnay smells, tastes, and — most importantly — feels like. This is one of the best wines I have tasted all year.
A wine obsessive might like … tasting an unvarnished Chardonnay from clay vessels. Roughly 75% of this wine was aged in amphorae, the remainder in neutral oak, which strikes me as not only a terroir-centric approach to this grape, but also a daring move. Sauls threads the needle perfectly with this wine.
2022 Tesselaarsdal Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge Pinot Noir
Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge WO (Western Cape )
Grapes: Pinot Noir 100%
Alcohol: 13%
Opinion: ★★★★ 3/4
Food-friendliness: Selective
Value: As Expected
Imported by: Vineyard Brands
A beginner might like … flagging this wine (and ensuing vintages) for a traditional Thanksgiving meal. It has the tart cranberry-meets-strawberry tones, the herbaceousness and the spice to match the mood, but more importantly, none of its elements are too assertive to be awkward with such a smorgasbord meal.
A wine obsessive might like … the balanced alcohol within this wine. Given its heady aromas, one might assume it ripened under conditions more favorable to higher alcohol development, but it is well in-check and beautifully integrated here.