Much has been said of the first commercial Pinotage bottled in the world, namely Lanzerac 1959, a brand back then having nothing to do with grapes grown and wine made at what is today Lanzerac in Stellenbosch. Rather, this bottling was under a brand owned by erstwhile Stellenbosch Farmers Winery.

So, which independent wine estate would have been the first to make and bottle a Pinotage? Turns out that, according to records to our disposal, this honour goes to Delheim on the Simonsberg, Stellenbosch who released a Pinotage from the 1960 vintage, one year after the Lanzerac label.

“My father, Spatz, arrived on Delheim from Germany in 1951, and in his memoir written in 2005 he talks about the farm already experimenting with Pinotage in the 1950s,” says Victor Sperling, Delheim Director. “As a youngster, ever since I heard there being spoken of wine by my father and his friends, and once I began getting to know the Delheim vineyards, Pinotage was one of the primary grape varieties in the Delheim narrative.”

Pinotage features prominently in Spatz Sperling’s memoir. There was the irreverent side when in 1966 he was “inspecting the filling tank, balanced as usual somewhat precariously on top of a building trestle, when a flaw in the support structure (and the additional weight?) caused the sudden collapse of the pyramid.

“The tank fell down, the vintner (Spatz!) nearly broke his neck, and the wine came tumbling after! Hundreds of gallons of Pinotage streamed out of the cellar, into the sluice and down the mountain.”

And in 1965 when Spatz decided to propose to Vera Reinarz in the Delheim garden barely two weeks after meeting her, the wine of choice accompanying Spatz’s proposal was a crystal glass filled with his Delheim Pinotage.

The initial Delheim wines bearing the Pinotage label included a reference to the bottle contents as “Burgundy type”, and according to Roelof Lotriet, Delheim cellarmaster, this refers to the farm’s goal to, from the outset, express the refined elegance in the Pinotage variety.

“Tasting the Delheim Pinotages from the 1970s and 1980s it is apparent that the mindset in the Delheim cellar has always been a gentler, less-is-more approach to Pinotage,” says Lotriet.

“One must remember that when Delheim was making Pinotage in the 1960s and 1970s the variety was very much a work-in-progress, having only been planted for winemaking purposes since the 1940s and 1950s. The cultivar’s distinct features differing from other red varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, include early ripening and a propensity to ferment quickly.

“These traits must have been new to winemakers back then. Each producer would have had to define an own approach or use the advice of your neighbours. It would, however, appear that from early on Sperling understood that Pinotage required a gentle approach when fermenting to avoid harsh tannins and flavours from the skins, as well as the judicious use of wood.”

Delheim’s flagship Pinotage today is the Vera Cruz Pinotage made from a vineyard planted in 1996 on oakleaf soils comprising decomposed granite with a pronounced clay component.

“Vera Cruz is the flagship, simply because it is made from our best Pinotage vineyard,” says Lotriet. “It is set on a south-west facing slope, 240m above sea-level and is exposed to ideal sunlight radiation as well as cooler breezes from the south-east in summer.”

Sorting the ripe grapes already begins in the vineyard before harvest where substandard fruit is removed. And upon arrival at the cellar, the berries are once again inspected to ensure only the healthiest unblemished grapes are allowed to enter the vinification process.

Bunches are de-stemmed and the grapes placed in open-top fermenters. Natural fermentation kicks in, and after a day the fruit is inoculated with a selected yeast strain.

“Pinotage ferments like the clappers and the wine can pick-up heat during the process,” says Lotriet. “We keep the temperature at a mild 26°C, while doing gentle punch-downs and pump-overs during fermentation for a softer, more discreet extraction of tannins and flavours from the skins.”

Once fermented dry, the wine is drawn from the skins and placed in a combination of 300l and 500l French oak barrels, 35% of which are new and allowed to age for 18 months.

“By using larger barrels with a greater ratio of wine to wood we avoid intense oak influences, such as aggressive tannins, while giving the aging wine the correct amount of exposure to the magical nuances of oak maturation.”

The other Delheim Pinotage, in the Family Premium range, is made from three vineyards planted on a site slightly lower than the Vera Cruz vineyard. The grapes from the various vineyards are vinified separately and aged for 18mths in older French oak before being blended to the final wine.

“I have noticed an upswing in the popularity and appreciation of Pinotage over the past decade,” says Lotriet, “and I think this is primarily due to the fact that winemakers have realised that treating Pinotage like a Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz in the cellar makes overdone wines, suppressing the elegant complexity the variety is capable of expressing. At Delheim, the combination of sites that were truly made for growing Pinotage, as well as the legacy of treating the grape with respect through a deft hand in the cellar, allows us to offer a distinct and very refined expression of South Africa’s home-made red grape variety. A variety not only a part of our country’s heritage, but of Delheim’s, too.”