Greatness Finds a Foothold: Swartland Points the Way for South African Wine

South Africa’s fine wine revolution has found its compass in the Swartland. The dry, windy hills north of Cape Town now yield more great wines than any other region, redefining what South African wine can be. Chenin blanc may have opened the door, but the story today is broader and deeper, with innovative growers leading the way.

In our 2025 annual tasting – the largest we’ve ever conducted, with more than 900 wines – the Swartland dominated the results, accounting for over half of the 30 highest-scoring bottles and proving that South Africa’s modern greatness is now rooted in its oldest viticultural soils. That’s an extraordinary performance for a region that comprises just 13 percent of South Africa’s vineyards and less than 10 percent of the bottles in our annual tasting.

“The Swartland is the biggest appellation in the country; it’s not a one-wine place.” renowned winemaker Eben Sadie of Sadie Family Wines said in a Zoom interview with us, referring to the medley of wine varieties found in the region today.

EBEN SADIE OF SADIE FAMILY WINES ON THE SWARTLAND’S 2024 VINTAGE

Sadie’s wines lead this report, with his flagship red – the intense yet elegant Sadie Family Swartland Columella 2023 – our top-rated South African bottle. It’s a seven-variety blend of grapes from his 11 best vineyards across the Swartland. It also comes from what Sadie termed a “great vintage” in the Swartland – dry and low-yielding where most of the rest of the country saw challenging rains during harvest.

After 25 years of making the Columella, Sadie has dialed back on syrah in favor of varieties like carignan, tinta barocca and grenache as he aims for greater ageability in his offerings amid a warming climate.

He also made significant structural changes in 2023 to his signature region-wide white blend, the Palladius, adding varieties with higher acidity and lower alcohol, such as vermentino and verdelho, which are planted on limestone soils near the Atlantic coast.

“For us, a single vineyard will never be more important than the region,” he insisted, although his portfolio now includes laser-sharp, single-vineyard wines like the steely Rotsbank 2024, our highest-rated chenin blanc this year.

His two new 12-variety field blends, the red Sonvang 2024 and the white Twiswind 2024, are also produced from single vineyards co-planted with "futuristic” drought-adapted grape varieties that conserve water.

A distinct Swartland wine style has emerged among top producers. Mullineux, David & Nadia, A.A. Badenhorst, Donovan Rall and Chris Alheit all show a similar philosophy of oxygen exposure early in the winemaking process to avoid excessive fruit expression and instead produce minerally, savory and textural wines that are aimed at longevity. The two incredibly aromatic syrahs at the top of our tasting notes are fantastic examples – the Rall Syrah Swartland Cape Winemakers Guild Noa 2023 is intensely savory and salty, while the Porseleinberg Swartland 2023 skips primary fruit for iron, salty and stemmy aromas.

“I believe juice needs to oxidize,” Mullineux winemaker Andrea Mullineux said as we tasted her range of Swartland 2024 whites and 2023 reds.

“I’d rather a wine be salty, mineral and umami in the long run.”

Our conversation drifted almost instantly to the vineyards and their soils and winds. Mullineux’s soil-specific trio of 2024 chenin blancs – Granite, Iron and Schist – are all farmed and made in the same way, as are their syrah counterparts.

As Mullineux explained, “the idea is that the soil is the strongest fingerprint of terroir.”

Most of the wines we tasted this year are from the 2024 and 2023 vintages. The warm, relatively dry 2024 resulted in concentrated grapes and lower yields nationwide.

YIELDS DROP, FLAVORS SOAR: DAVID SADIE ON SWARTLAND'S TEXTURAL 2024 WINES

“I think the texture of the [2024] vintage speaks for itself,” said David Sadie, the winemaker at Swartland winery David & Nadia (and no relation to Eben Sadie). David & Nadia’s single-vineyard chenin blancs are again some of the best – the 2024 Hoë-Steen, Skaliekap, Platbos and new Langland are largely differentiated by the amount of clay in the soils, alongside the clone type of chenin blanc and vineyard aspect. As you’ll see in the notes below, while surprisingly diverse, the dry-farmed old vines all deliver an extreme minerality that defies the region’s sun exposure.

Further north in the higher-altitude Citrusdal and Piekenierskloof mountain area, grenache shines. The Sadie Family Piekenierskloof Soldaat 2024, Lourens Family Wines Piekenierskloof Lua 2024 and Savage Piekenierskloof Thief in the Night 2024 are all deliciously red-fruited, fragrant and elegant, while the white Rall Grenache Blanc Piekenierskloof 2024 is cool, chalky and delicate.

Franco Lourens of Lourens Family Wines “fell in love with grenache” and believes that the drought- and heat-resistant variety can adapt to hotter and drier conditions – a perfect fit for South Africa. “I think it’s something that’s going to be around for a long time.”

Some of the top chenin blanc we tasted after the Swartland also comes from the Citrusdal, including Alheit’s cool, textured Huilkrans 2024 and his pithy, spicy Magnetic North 2024, plus Sadie Family’s Skurfberg 2024 and Lourens’ Skuinskap Steen 2024.

Further south along the Cape South Coast (which includes regions like Elgin, Overberg and the Hemel-en-Aarde), Crystallum and Storm dominated 2024 with the fragrant and elegant Crystallum Chardonnay Clay Shales 2024, Crystallum Pinot Noir Cuvée Cinéma 2024 and Storm Chardonnay Ridge 2024, all from the cool Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge.

But we were more impressed by later-released 2023 wines, despite challenging summer rainfall that affected harvest. Storm’s trio of single-vineyard pinot noirs from the separate Hemel-en-Aarde sub-areas – the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge (Ridge 2023), Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley (Ignis 2023) and Hemel-en-Aarde Valley (Vrede 2023) – show precision and nervous energy. Many producers like Storm picked before the mid-February rains; few waited.

"We lost a bit of yield, but ultimately the quality of what came in was really good,” Craig Wessels of Restless River said. He was one of few producers that waited to pick his early-ripening varietals, pinot noir and chardonnay, a gamble that “to a certain degree paid off” – his 2023 Le Luc pinot noir and 2023 Ava Marie chardonnay are of high quality, but he lost about 15 percent yield due to sorting out rot.

Stellenbosch faced heavy rainfalls in early March 2023. But in earlier-ripening areas, some producers were able to harvest before the rains and made fantastic wines. Winemaker Bruwer Raats started picking his cabernet franc in the early-ripening Polkadraai Hills area at the end of January in 2023. His tight-knit, long and spicy Raats Cabernet Franc Eden High Density Single Vineyard 2023 is among the top 10 red wines in this report.

As for the warm, neighboring region of Paarl, Vilafonté made outstanding quality 2023 red blends. They finished harvest on March 1, just before heavy rains on March 4 – there was “no impact of negative weather,” according to owner Mike Ratcliffe, due to both luck and their high-density, earlier-ripening planting system. Their cabernet-led Series C and their merlot- and malbec-dominant Series M are both beautifully polished – the Series C with caressing, almost fluffy tannins and the Series C with a silky, plummy purity.

“2023 was fortunately a great vintage for us, but we're very cognisant of the vintage at large,” Vilafonté winemaker Chris de Vries said over Zoom. “I think that shows regional variation plays a critical role in the acclaim of the vintage in a large region such as South Africa.”

We also tasted a slew of 2022s, led by the Klein Constantia Constantia Vin de Constance Natural Sweet Wine 2022. This dessert wine is luscious, concentrated and incredibly complex. Winemaker Matthew Day described the 2022 vintage as “a year of exceptional quality, characterized by a warm, dry growing season and a late, condensed harvest.”

Still whites and reds also excelled, notably Kershaw’s limited-production Deconstructed series, such as the Kogelberg Ironstone CY548 2022 and Lake District Bokkeveld Shale CY96 2022 chardonnays. You’ll also want to check out a new wine from Beeslaar, The Sacrament 2022 – a firm, deep and polished Bordeaux-style red blend.

While we rated 63 wines 95 points or higher, there is room for growth. Fully 115 wines, or 13 percent of our tastings, were rated below 90 points. Along with the vast volume of bulk wine, these underperformers still cloud South Africa’s rising reputation.

It also doesn’t help that top-tier winemakers perceive challenges of selling their wine in globally significant quantities.

“It took us 20 years after apartheid to get our infrastructure, cellars and communication right,” Eben Sadie said when I asked him why so few great South African wines exceed a few thousand bottles. Even as the country’s most recognized winemaker, he caps production of his Columella offering at 14,000 bottles, believing that market perception would falter with increased output.

“When Sassicaia was produced, Italy had 200 years of excellent winemaking behind it,” Sadie said, referring to the famous Tuscan wine which is produced in quantities of close to 200,000 bottles annually. In contrast, he said, “we've effectively been in the fine wine business the last 10 years.”

“And the market is slower now than 10 years ago," he added. "We have a lot of wine buyers and collectors, but not a lot of drinkers.”

Yet the Swartland Revolution is barely two decades old. Its vineyard-obsessed generation continues to pull the country forward, from historic Stellenbosch to the still-young Hemel-en-Aarde.

A standout 2025 vintage offers fresh promise.

“2025 was the best vintage in my last 25 years,” Eben Sadie said. “The last time I saw a vintage this good was 1994, but in 2025 anybody could make good wine.”

– Claire Nesbitt, Staff Writer & Critic

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated by the JamesSuckling.com tasting team. They include many latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon. 

Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.