We have hundreds of very slow growing vines, roots intertwined with rocks, at the crest of the mountain ridges. More than 50% of some of these soils is shale stone. We want all of the vines in a single block to ripen their grapes to the same level at the same time.
We have decided to add some organic stimulus to help these weaker vines catch up (get their roots down deeper). And we’re hoping that free range chicken droppings will help.
The floors in the pens in our neighbour’s chicken farm are elevated by annual accumulation. So we’re helping him as we provide an energy boost to the battling vines.

Dave Duarte, geek marketer from Cape Town, explaining how he found his way to Stormhoek via gapingvoid.com

It can be thrillingly warm in Cape Town in winter. Between the wet and windy spells, sometimes the sun shines down from blue skies for days on end.
Cape Town geeks chose one of these sparkling weekends to hold their first ever Bar Camp.
Unfortunately, they chose to hold this original exchange of voices and views in the frosty environment of a big classroom in the De Kuilen junior school. Rugged up like arctic explorers, they huddled around the warmth of their wave-emitting laptops and focused on new products and sales pitches without a murmur of complaint.
Dave Duarte chose to talk about Stormhoek and how a little brand can reach millions of people and I brought along some bottles to show that amongst all of this virtualness there is a real product.
There were about 75 unconferencees and roughly 20 gave a talk or presentation. That’s pretty interactive.
I look forward to the first Cape geek dinner.

Today, the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere, the sun rose at 9am and is setting at 4.35pm in our mountain-enclosed valley.
Over millions of years, the river bed has cut a narrow channel through the mountains to the west. The setting sun sends its last rays into our valley down this cleft.
As a result we have fewer hours of overhead sun and longer periods of half light than any of our Western Cape neighbours, creating a unique growing and maturing environment for plants.

oxalis purpurea) and its vivid-green, clover-like leaves are strewn through our renosterbush hills like hundreds and thousands, the sugared and brightly coloured mini-marbles that my mother used to adorn the icing of the cakes she made for our birthdays.
The sorrel’s arrival also signals a winter change in the dinner menu.
At least since 1670, sorrel has been an important ingredient in traditional Cape cooking.
Some of most influential immigrants were forcibly delivered to the Cape from what is now Indonesia by their Dutch rulers, mostly between 1670 and 1795.
They brought many talents and skills to their new home. Chief among these were the creation of the Cape-Dutch gabled architecture and Cape Malay cooking.
Most of the European vegetables did not grow in winter. The Cape Malay cooks looked to the indigenous bush for inspiration for warm meals for cold nights.
To the mutton from the fat-tailed sheep they added waterblommetjies (water flower buds) that they found in slow running streams. To add a salty, spicy, acid zest to the stew, they added sliced sorrel leaves and tubers from the sorrel roots.
Waterblommetjie bredie is together with bobotie one of the 2 great dishes of Cape cooking. Famous for over 300 years.

Protea repens comes with or without the pink spots. The white version is preferred by the commercial flower market.

When the first humans moved into the Cape, over 40000 years ago, they found cough medicine being made and stored in the base of every protea repens flower cup.
When this chalk-white and sometimes pink spotted flower bud opens in May each year it has about ½ a teaspoon of clear, amber coloured, sweet liquid in the bowl under the spreading petals.
The Dutch settlers, arriving after 1650, soon discovered the all-purpose Khoisan recipe. For 300 years, a bottle of protea bossiestroop (bush syrup) was an essential item in every home medicine chest.
Bossiestroop did not survive the arrival of the first manufacturing chemists in the 21st Century. And the spread of wheatfields and vineyards removed most of the original vast tracts of proteas.
Today a few hundred thousand repens plants can be found interspersed among the fynbos and renosterfeld on the upper slopes of Stormhoek and form part of a protected nature park.
We plan to make a few bottles of bossiestroop this year.

Recently germinated winter growth, planted between the rows of Cabernet Sauvignon.
This spot is about 360m above sea level.
Every winter we plant between the vines something that thrives on cold nights, rain and the odd period of sunshine. In fact, just what we get for weather in winter.
This could be wheat, oats, lucerne (alfalfa) or a fast growing indigenous herb, or even a mix of any or all of these.
This introduces fast growing root structure into the soil, while the vines are dormant, and stimulates micro-biological activity between the rows of vine roots.
The new roots take in moisture from the winter rains, retaining this in the general environment of the vines. This is particularly important on our steep slopes.
When spring arrives we plough the new growth into the soil, creating a mulch, hampering the development of competitive weeds.
Next year, we plan to use a mixture of seeds chosen from the lush winter growth under the proteas on our upper slopes.

Water streaming down to the Kromme River from the White River channel. The photo was taken from the bridge over Gawie se Water
Nearly 200 years ago, a channel was cut through a small rocky ridge in the foothills of Wellington’s Limietberg mountains to allow a constantly flowing diversion of some of the water in the White River westward into the Kromme (windy) River, both of which flow through our Doolhof Valley.
The White River flows east into the Breede River and finally the Indian Ocean and the Kromme River flows west into the Berg River, and onward into the Atlantic Ocean.
The diversion allows an adventurous spirit to row, swim or walk in water all of the way from the Indian to the Atlantic, or vice versa. To my knowledge, no one has ever done it.
This flowing water isolates a large part of the Western Cape from the rest of Africa.
It puts Cape Town, Paarl, Stellenbosch and Wellington on an island, with water all around. To get to the African mainland, we have to cross bridges over the Berg, the Breede, the White or Kromme Rivers or over the Gawies se Water diversion (the Bain’s Kloof pass).

Missiles were flying through the dark
We were tucked up in bed in the middle of the darkest night, with the wind howling outside and rain spitting on the windows. You know the feeling, warm, safe and cozy.
The house has walls as wide as your forearm including your hand, but it began to feel as if the house was being pulled this way and that by angry forces.
Then the tearing began. It started as a wrenching and flapping sound. Then quiet. Followed by more grinding and tearing. We could hear metal creasing and ripping. Vicious and violent, like two tractors in combat.
We knew that the roof was made from sheets of corrugated iron. They’re so rigid that you can’t bend them with your hand. Or even both hands. But it sounded like they were being torn into strips.
Finally one was wrenched away from its connection with the house, followed by silence. Well, not quite silence. There was still the buffeting of the gale.
Because I have never been in a tornado, I have never thought to prepare myself for one. When I reached for the light switch, I found that we there was no electricity. I stumbled through the blacked-out house, feeling for a match and a candle.
I heard another sheet of iron part from the house with a drawn-out groan. Then another.
I had an idea that I should go outside to survey the damage. But I had visions of sheets of iron with razor-sharp edges aimed at my neck, hurtling through the air, and I retreated to bed.
In the morning we found hundred of logs, branches and even trees, strewn across vineyard roads and even blocking the main access road.
Though I had heard hundreds of sheets of iron ripped from the roof, we only found four missing and these were spread across the garden.
Fortunately, the next day was Monday and we got a new tight roof into place before the downpour started.

Thor and his best mate Koopie (on top)
We have two dogs, who have three eyes between them.
They work as a team.
Thor is a 70kg Great Dane who likes to rest a lot and spends the majority of his life in a horizontal position.
This suits Koopie, the 5kg Jack Russell, as she prefers the warmth and comfort of his body to the concrete floor, even if he twitches and jerks about as he dreams.
It also gives her a vantage point to listen for noises in the night.
With only one eye, she depends on her ears to do her dog job.
Like most dogs, she was born with 2 eyes, but she cannot resist stimulating Poppie the Percheron into galloping flight and the 1/2 ton horse packs a wallop with both fore and off hind feet.
Koopie retired from one of these encounters with a bloody face and just one functioning eye.

Each carton holds six bottles, packed by hand and sealed by sticky tape.
When one of the UK’s mass wine retailers, a big grocery chain, orders Stormhoek Sauvignon Blanc, the delivery process machinery creaks into action. Pallets, stacked high with cartons, are loaded into a container. The container is trucked to the harbour and loaded on a ship, destined for a UK port and the retailer’s warehouse.
But Stormhoek Sauvignon Blanc is also sold by the restaurant by the park and your favourite deli.
These orders are small and sometimes very urgent. The lumbering machine doesn’t have the time. Cases are ordered from the small carton company. Hands lift bottles and place them in the cartons, tape closes the boxes and Andrew in his light utility vehicle heads off on the 50 minute trip to the harbourside.