JamesSuckling Interviews: David & Nadia Sadie

JamesSuckling Interviews features innovative and influential winery owners, winemakers and industry notables representing the new generation that is shaping tastes, trends and techniques in the greater wine world. 

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Husband and wife team David and Nadia Sadie are at the forefront of the next generation of producers in Swartland, South Africa, aiming to showcase elegance, minerality and freshness in a region historically known for big and bold wines. In addition to their expert care, restoration and deep research of low-yielding, largely 35-year-old-plus chenin blanc bush vines, they continue to experiment with and establish new vineyards, including those planted to grenache, their flagship variety alongside chenin.

Committed to expertly expressing the diversity of the region’s decomposed granite – as well as schist, iron, and clay-based – terroir, the Sadies honor the unique character of South Africa and the Swartland while maintaining a global perspective. JamesSuckling.com’s Susan Kostrzewa talked with them about how they maintain freshness and balance amid temperature increases and extreme weather, how their grenache is redefining the perception of Swartland red wines, the importance of alcohol levels for future generations of wine drinkers and more.

Your 2022 chenin blancs were among JamesSuckling.com’s top-rated South African wines for that year, but you described the vintage as “humbling,” with up to a 15 percent loss in some of your vineyards. Can you talk more about how you tackled the challenges of the vintage and maintained the quality and freshness for which you’re known, also upholding your minimal intervention philosophy in the cellar?

[David Sadie] From the end of 2019 going into 2020, we adopted a more minimalistic soil approach in our region. A lot of the growers stopped plowing soils to put back and not build up or break up the soil constantly. That really helped us in those intense vintages. The 2021 winter was beautiful, wet and there was a good amount of rain. And then came the first heatwave and three consecutive heat waves followed. We can't assume anything these days in terms of a typical vintage, like a classical vintage or a non-classical, and for us, freshness is really important. So we do multiple pickings. For our main chenin blanc bottling, it’s a blend of eight vineyards, and that’s up to 17-18 different pickings.

Our wine styles go from almost base-wine-style-with-high-acid-focus chenins to more textural options. Sometimes people do see it as a bit of a shotgun approach in terms of having multiple options, but that allows us to really select what we want from the vintage. I think no tilling, just a lot of mulch. We do a lot of aggressive sorting. So we make sure whatever we receive in our cellar is 100 percent sorted. And that makes the life of anyone in the cellar much easier. We work with full lees in comparison to taking and receiving fruit that might have a bit of wet raisins or a bit of this or a bit of that. With regard to wet raisin, that’s due to hydric stress and intense heat that builds up in the vine during these heat waves. We don’t want to make wine of it. If you try to make wine of that, then that becomes winemaking, which actually alters our philosophy. So to make sure we receive pure fruit in the cellar and that goes to barrel, that's really the focus.

Tell us more about the age of the vineyards you’re working with and how the character of your wines is connected to the bush vines you’re producing fruit from.

[Nadia Sadie] In terms of the vineyard age, five of the eight wines that we produce are part of the Old Vine Project. The requirement for that is that the vineyards should be at least 35 years in age. So actually, if you look at the 29 different vineyards that we work with, 70 percent of that is more than 25 years in age. And regarding the freshness and the wines, I think David already mentioned the multiple pickings and just to learn from each vintage and at the end of the day, being able to really make an informed decision on how to pick for the specific wines/bottling.

[David] With the older vines, naturally it's on the lower side in terms of yields. So we get good concentration. All bush vines, all dry-farmed. That really gives us the option to start well but we still do multiple pickings, even for any single-vineyard bottle. Because we do make mistakes. We have to offset risk, offset the challenges of the vintage. And especially for the ones that we farm, it's important for us to get to know these vines. Last year, we did up to 60 profile pits within four hectares. And this year, in January, we had a drone that flew over them to give us a lot of information and to learn from these extreme vintages, be it wet seasons, be it extremely dry seasons. Information is power for us, and we need to make sure that we understand better than before. We can't just sit back and expect greatness or expect something great to come to us. We have to really work hard and that's life.

How do you keep the freshness of your chenin without losing the significant structure, fruit and complexity?

[David] With our chenins and the Aristargos [a white blend], we use about 20 percent of concrete. So that creates more freshness, keeps it vibrant. We often don’t have huge acids from all the bottlings, but we can't think of making a demi-sec bottling in our region; it’s too warm. The wines will be unbalanced and we don't have the same acidity profile [as cooler regions]. So we would rather work with bone-dry fermentations. I mean, two grams of sugar or lower, which helps showcase the acid. We also work with a lot of lees. We love salinity conversations, be it an uptake from the soil in terms of elements solubles, or also the way we mature the wines and what's happening during fermentation in terms of production of succinic acid.

And we love directness in wines. We try to make wine in a very pure way to showcase the purity of the soil, not masked by sugar or masked by clean fermentations with esters and cold-fermented clean juice with inoculated yeast, or for that matter anything else that you can do to intervene to make wines in a style that's more understated.

How does that compare to the styles that used to come out of the region?

[David] It wasn't like that 10 years ago. We learned from these older vintages that we would rather bottle it slightly more on the austere side with lower pHs and knowing these wines will age 10-plus years (or 15, hopefully), as opposed to starting off very big. The region started like that: we had 13 percent [ABV] and up to 14.5 percent for white blends. And yes, it's powerful and it's beautiful. And we often open these old bottlings, but they are quite a lot of hard work sometimes.

Of the varied soil types found in the Swartland (including clay, limestone, granite), would you say any have been the most impactful in achieving your desired “purity, focus, freshness” style? Which is the most challenging from a growing and viticultural perspective?

[David] The typically loose, very sand-like, weathered, or decomposed granite soils we work with in the Paardeberg – that's the preferred backbone for most of our wines. Probably 60-plus percent of all our wines will be based on that, because that gives us the purity. On the red side, [it offers] more bright fruit, more gentle tannins. The very poor conditions these vines grow in is our preference.

[Nadia] In terms of the projects that we are busy with, the main wines are really to showcase all the differences in the Swartland area in terms of all the soils, sites – different varieties of different soil sites. And then the single-vineyard project is more to focus on the unique soil of a specific site. And I think within the four single-vineyard chenin blocks, we can really make a distinction between a typical granite and then also a shale soil, which gives us almost a fruit-forward profile. There’s also the western side of Malmesbury – really deep, red iron-rich soils –and then further west it’s more gravelly but also iron-rich soils that we work with. And each has its own unique characteristic and unique challenge in a certain sense. An example: The 2016 vintage, the beginning of the heat waves. For the Skaliekop chenin, which is shallow shale soil-driven, we actually had to harvest earlier because of the heat waves than we normally do or did. And then at the end, we learned so much because the profile of the wines actually improved by harvesting it earlier. And we did that because the vineyard was starting to lose green leaves because of the heat.

Can you talk about your grenache and your efforts to create red wines from the region reflecting a more delicate and balanced style than might have been seen from reds in the region in the past?

[David] Our region is known for amazing syrah. And if you look around us, definitely beautiful wines. But it’s the elegance and the ethereal part of grenache that excites us in terms of red wines from our region. I tasted, I think back in 2007, a grenache from Vriesenhof, from a legendary winemaker named Jan “Boland” Coetzee, and that caught my attention for the first time in terms of our country being able to produce something so pure, perfumed, elegant and detailed in style. And I've worked for many wine producers over the years, with different styles, different approaches historically, and mostly with syrah or syrah-based reds, be it in South Africa or a vintage in the Cote-Rotie.

FROM THE VAULT: WINEMAKER DAVID SADIE OF DAVID & NADIA ON GETTING FRESHNESS RIGHT [DECEMBER 2023]

Grenache requires much less water and it's a very strong grower. It's able to survive. Just from a pH viewpoint, I like the way that it handles the hydric stress, handles a lack of water. It's a bigger-berry grape, which in warm regions works well to showcase freshness. It's important to think, “What is your inspiration? What do you want to see from your region?” Because we can make grenache in like 10 different styles if you want. It’s important to understand your own philosophy about purity of grapes. We’ve used maybe 60 percent concrete every vintage for the last five or six years. And then the older component of [French] oak will be 500-liter barrels. We don't use new oak to specifically avoid masking or drying out the styles.

Climate change is a concern for most wine-producing regions. As the conditions in the Swartland become hotter and dryer, what do you consider to be your best lines of defense at David & Nadia?

[Nadia] It’s more extremes that we find now. I think the most important thing is just to keep on being adaptable and play the ball as it bounces. David already mentioned just to never be certain of what needs to be done when – just to be open-minded in every season. Especially in terms of the cover crops that we plant each year within or between the vineyard rows. It’s important that we focus on establishing a decent cover crop to retain the moisture in the soil and to improve the biology in the soil. And then typically we will roll flat the cover crops and not plow the soil or work it in.

And then in a wetter season, typically that cover crop we can leave longer to ripen more before we roll it flat because the vineyard still has sufficient moisture in the soil, the budding vineyard. Whereas in a drier season, it's important to roll it flat earlier. So yes, just paying attention to what the season brings to you and deal as it comes. Also, in terms of [planting] new vineyards, David already mentioned how well grenache noir is suited for the area. So given that, we can also be prepared for hot and dry seasons and to work particularly with varieties that are well suited for those conditions.

Can you talk more about sustainable or organic practices at David & Nadia?

[David] About 30 percent of what we farm is farmed organically – slowly but surely. But the biggest question we ask ourselves is how many times do we need to pass through the vineyards in each season? And I've heard about recent producers in France that in the month and a half to two months before harvest, they've had 19 sprays, which is a lot. So we talk more about regenerative farming and a sustainable approach. You think about things like biological farming in terms of investing in the soil, which is what we do. We make our own compost. We add back. So that's a good foundation for us. For us, we think about the future.

The Swartland is known for producing wines with distinctive texture and tannins, a reflection of its soils, vines and climate. What other hallmark qualities would you like the region to be known for or do you consider to be unique to the region?

[Nadia] Just in terms of the people working together to improve and make more widely known the brand, Swartland. I think that is something unique already taking place in the region. But it would be great if the Swartland can be known as a big landscape in terms of the land under vineyard or the wine of origin area. It’s actually just a handful of producers [around 30] so that's also quite unique in terms of the size of the landscape. Also, the ageability of the Swartland wines. Give them an opportunity to age and not drink them right away. Maybe a year or two after release … keep the wine a bit longer. The longevity might just surprise you.

[David] It’s the biggest region in our country in terms of wine or vineyards. Across the Cape, we've been known for more mass production or cooperative styles. Some quality came out of it in the late 1980s and 1990s, and people started thinking differently about this very warm region that we are in. We also want people to recognize the diversity of styles. Although we almost all make chenin, not everyone makes a straight grenache or a straight pinot or syrah. We celebrate the differences and the diverse portfolio of price points, because we can't all just make either cheap or expensive wines.

As wine consumption worldwide declines, the industry is considering ways it could better attract and retain customers, especially among the younger generations. What are your feelings about how not only Swartland and South Africa can do a better job of attracting new consumers, but how the wine world on the whole could be smarter in doing this?

[David] If you think of the alcohol levels of bottlings, there's a good reason why often people move away from drinking port or let's say higher-alcohol bottlings or fortifieds. And then for that same argument, moving away from drinking nonfortified wines that historically used to be bottled at 15 percent or 16 percent alcohol. I think they've adapted to healthier living. We should look at alcohol levels and look at freshness in wines. Wine shouldn't make you tired. And I'm not saying that it should be one-dimensional, quaffable wines, at least not for us. We want to make it quality and more complex. We bottle our wines at 13.5 percent, 13 percent. The lowest-alcohol bottling that we've had recently is 11 percent. It’s just purely when that vineyard ripens. Tourism is important too. The amount of Americans that spend time in Africa, especially in privately owned game lodges, that's an amazing market. Singita is one of the largest that we work with. We can't just expect people to come to us or know about us. The strategic placing of those lodges is very important.

I think the most important part of it is to just keep on focusing on more education on each market and to have a very focused approach as a core. Because with loyalty in terms of customers, be it an importer, distributor or local clients, they all have good people and good friends that they want to recommend to. So I think if you focus on the core and you don't try to reinvent the wheel every year, keep your head low and focus on offering beautiful vintage variations and offerings to the same people, that will organically grow into an emerging market.

– Susan Kostrzewa