Stellenbosch · Since 1692
Are you of legal drinking age?
You must be 18 or older to enter. By entering you accept our Terms & Privacy notice. Please enjoy our wines responsibly.
We're sorry, you must be of legal drinking age to enter.
Our Environment · Nature bewaring
We give back more
than we take.
A farm that feeds itself, and the land that carries it.
A system, not a slogan
On our farm, sustainability comes full circle.
We have moved from inorganic fertilisers to organic compost made using manure from our own herd. What the vineyards cannot use, the cattle do; what the cattle return, the vineyards take back. It is a natural cycle that nourishes the soil, season after season.
The Herefords
A herd that eats what the vineyard leaves behind.
Our Hereford cattle feed on grape by-products from the cellar and cover crops grown between our vines. During pressing season, a purpose-built baler helps us prepare feed for the herd. In return, their manure becomes organic compost that nourishes the vineyards, completing a natural cycle between the cattle, the vines and the soil.
The smallest allies
We reintroduce ladybirds into our flowering cover crops, our natural answer to mealybug, the biggest spreader of vine virus. The oldest kind of farming: let nature keep nature in balance.
Cover crops & ladybirds
Letting nature keep nature in balance.
Flower-rich cover crops attract ladybirds and other beneficial insects that help keep mealybugs in check, reducing our need for spraying. It takes patience, careful timing and an understanding of nature's rhythms, but it is the kind of farming that leaves the land better than we found it.
The wider circle
The same thinking, across the whole farm.
Our cellar on the Bottelary farm now runs on solar power, taking it off the grid. Waste water is captured and reused to irrigate grazing for the cattle. In some vineyards we plant a barley cover crop, baled between the rows and fed to the herd at pressing time, alongside the grape skins and stems, as roughage. And among the vines, our own beehives give us honey: a small, sweet dividend of a farm kept in balance.
Continue through the estate