Sadie Family Swartland Columella 2022

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

First released in 2000, Columella is Sadie’s most famous wine. While it’s regularly described as an icon of Swartland (and indeed South Africa), Eben Sadie’s goal is simply to produce the finest, most honest expression he can from Swartland as a whole. As such, the blend includes six of the seven official red grapes that grow in the region. The 2022 is a blend of one-quarter Syrah, with the remainder a blend of Mourvèdre, Grenache, Carignan, Tinta Barocca and Cinsault. Eben notes that the incremental growth of Mourvèdre, Carignan, Cinsault and Tinta Barocca in the final blend has contributed to the depth and complexity of tannins and that there is also more fruit purity.

Eben also wants to capture as many Swartland soils and climates as possible. This year, the grapes came from seven soil types (including granite, slate, gravel and sandstone) across 11 separate vineyards in Paardeberg, Kasteelberg, Malmesbury and Piquetberg. Most are low-yielding, old-vine parcels, although some of the estate’s younger material also plays its part. Many of the Syrah vines have been trained to their stake (échalas style, per Northern Rhône).

Most of the fruit is destemmed, although an increasing percentage of bunches are used each year. Sadie has a sorting team of 25 who discard 8 to 15% of the fruit each year. The grapes go into a huge open fermenter for an average of three weeks on skins before being basket-pressed into primarily old French oak barrels (less than 5% new). After a year on lees, the wine is racked into seasoned oval casks (foudres) for further maturation on the fine lees. The wine is then bottled without fining or filtration.

A quick note on the history and evolution of this wine. The wine was a predominantly Syrah blend with Mourvèdre in its first decade. Over the years, specifically since 2009, Sadie has introduced ever-increasing amounts of the other varieties. The fruit is also picked earlier, and the winemaking has progressed. Before 2009, the style was geared towards power and extraction, maximising depth of colour, flavour and tannin. Post-2009, the maceration has become progressively gentler to the point where the cap is simply kept wet, mainly via handheld jugs. The amount of new oak has also decreased radically. It is no coincidence that these changes happened around the same time that Sadie was experimenting with similar techniques at Terroir al Límit in Priorat.

Columella is nonetheless a more powerful, complex wine than those in the District Series, with unforced intensity and a corresponding increase in texture and ripeness. We recommend decanting, and Sadie suggests a minimum of eight years in the cellar before opening. Good luck with that! Bottled with just 13.2% alcohol, it has the finesse, sappiness and vibrancy of great Burgundy (from a powerful year) and the depth and structure to live for decades. According to its maker, the 2022 is textbook Columella (with all this entails). More than ever, here we have one of the world’s greatest blended red wines.

About the Sadie Family

“…That these rare and beautiful bottlings continue to be sold at prices that would not encourage a Bordeaux Classed Growth proprietor out of his bed each morning is still quite unbelievable, especially when you’ve seen the passion and commitment up close.” Neal Martin

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“The wines shine through with a level of magnificence that is simply stunning [although the] wines are tough to find as most of these wines are on allocation.”

Anthony Mueller, The Wine Advocate

In the Vineyard

The Sadie Family team work with roughly 30 hectares of vines, one-third of which are estate, with the other vines farmed entirely under their control. This is quite the undertaking when you consider, at their furthest point, the vineyards lie some 250 miles apart and are spread across 53 separate parcels. Then consider that everything is dry grown and organically farmed and that each parcel, having different geologies, aspects and often grape varieties, will require different management. These vines, (from overwhelmingly old parcels), lie mostly on the high-altitude slopes of Swartland’s Atlantic-influenced mountains, one hour north of Cape Town on the Western Cape. The terroirs include Paardeberg Mountain (on granite), Riebeek Mountain (slate), Piquetberg (sandstone and quartz), Coastal Plain (chalk) and Malmesbury (Glenrosa clay). Further afield, several of the Old Vine Series plots fall outside of the Swartland WO, notably Soldaat in the Piekenierskloof highlands and the Skurfberg vineyards in Citrusdal Mountain.

While the terroirs differ significantly, Sadie notes, in general, that he’s farming with very old, low fertility, decomposed soils which are exceptionally demanding to work. With poor soils, an absence of irrigation and old vines, yields are naturally tiny—25 hl/ha at best—and three consecutive drought years have seen these figures drop far lower. There are no chemical additives to either the vines or the soils—a philosophy which extends to the cellar. Sadie’s key challenge in the vineyard, he notes, is preserving the grape’s acidity, freshness and purity—a challenge that starts in the vineyards with building the (previously neglected) soils’ life through inter-planting and organic composting. Whatever he’s doing, it’s working as the wines lack for nothing when it comes to energy and freshness.

Sadie’s Domaine has increased with new plantings on the West Coast (near the Skerpioen vineyard), and there’s a new project in the Cedarberg Mountains. Then, there are two extensions at Rotvas (Sadie’s home farm in Paardeberg) where the fruit is destined for Columella and Palladius. These vineyards bring Sadie’s holdings to nine hectares—still small, yet spaced over a huge distance of some 400 kilometres. Eben has bought in vineyard manager, Morné Steyn and viticulture consultant Jaco Engelbrecht to manage the increased workload. Despite this increase, Sadie notes that with these new sites, the aim is not necessarily to make more wine. Instead, it’s in planting a plethora of Mediterranean varieties more suited to Swartland’s ever-drier climate—including Vermentino, Picpoul, Marsanne, Grenache Blanc, Cinsault Blanc and Assyrtiko. He hopes these vineyards will help The Sadie Family adapt to the ongoing challenges of global warming and climatic shifts.

In the Winery

Sadie’s winemaking philosophy has evolved considerably over the years and his wines have become far purer, better balanced and now offer wonderful transparency of place. There is almost zero new oak in the cellar and these days extraction for the reds is limited to foot-stomping, the odd, irregular punch down and, what our own Dave Mackintosh calls, jugotage, whereby the team scoop the free juice over the top of the whole bunch ferments. All the wines are spontaneously fermented and there is no stainless steel, only concrete vats, a few eggs and mostly large format oak. Sadie uses no sulphur additions until the very end of the aging — and there are no other additions for that matter — with a final total that he finds is the minimum for aging and travelling. All the wines clarify naturally and are bottled without filtration.

If you knew the wines in the early days, be prepared for a shock, they are totally different today. In short, they are far, far finer than the early releases. As Eben puts it, “…until 2009 we made wine like you make coffee, since then we have made wine like you make tea.”

Like the rest of the wine world, shifting climate has impacted production.

“We used to pick over two months, but we now pick over 4 to 5 weeks. Everything got massively compressed, but the new cellar gives us a logistical advantage. The 2023 and 2024 vintages have been difficult because of that compression. We are struggling with an absence of proper spring. Our summers start late, and picking dates [for each of the vineyards around the Cape] are around the same time. So, there’s three weeks less hang time that affects early ripening more than late-ripening grapes because the acid breaks down much quicker and can end up with 0.75% more alcohol unless you have no acid left. Potassium take-up in grapes is much greater, so since 2015, we have started de-stemming a lot more [since the stems hold potassium that reduces acidity]. Our major consideration is to be able to plant new varieties, and so we are interplanting around 15% of the area with varieties that have higher acid retention, such as Colombard, Petit Manseng and Grillo.”

Eben Sadie

Where in the World is the Sadie Family?

The Sadie Family is based in Paardeberg in the Swartland District of the Coastal Region, in the Western Cape of South Africa. The work with vineyards across Swartland and the adjacent Citrusdal Mountain District of the Olifants River Region.