It all started, as the best things in life often do, with a glass of wine and something of an epiphany. Budding Shanghai-based chef, Alex Xu, was holidaying with his then-girlfriend (now his wife) in New Zealand in 2012. It was their first trip together, and the pair had decided to do some tastings at wineries in Central Otago and Marlborough. One particular Pinot Noir they encountered awoke something in Xu. He didn’t know it at the time, but this was the first in a series of wine-tasting experiences that would change the course of his life. “We were on a tastings tour,” recalls Xu of the seminal moment. “There was a group of us travelling from winery to winery on a bus, but when we got to Aurum in Cromwell, our last stop of the day, the owner, Brook Lawrence, came and really spent some time with us. He walked and talked us through the vineyards, we tasted out of a barrel, and he opened a few bottles to taste. He talked about – in a very straightforward way – why each wine tasted a bit different even though they were all from the same parcel, essentially. He spoke to us about how there were different approaches to making wine from using whole-cluster or de-stemmed grapes, to oak, to length in barrel.” Sipping the wine as Lawrence spoke about the various methodologies and decisions that contribute to its flavour, made Xu realise in that moment, that the way wine is made – grown, picked and then prepared and vinified – is similar to the way a chef works. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, making wine is like farming and cooking, but maybe the cycle is a bit longer.’” How flavours and textures work to deliver deliciousness in food is something that Xu was increasingly fascinated by, but his experience at Aurum that afternoon in 2012, opened his mind to the complexity of winemaking and the different elements at play in the glass and on his palate. “It was so fascinating to me to taste a wine made using 100% whole cluster and then compare it to essentially the same wine made using de-stemmed grapes. It was probably the first time I tasted wine and was simultaneously aware of how it was made. We’d visited maybe three wineries before Aurum, and I really remember how the tannins were entirely different, texturally, from anything else we had tasted. Those whole-cluster wines were much more expressive and seductive to me – specifically Aurum’s Madeleine Pinot Noir. It was spiced, really floral, lifted and bright. I already knew that I loved Pinot Noir, but that was a real ‘wow’ moment.” Shortly afterwards, Xu signed up to WSET, not because he knew he wanted to be a wine professional, “but simply to understand better what I was tasting and why I was enjoying those things,” he explains. The principles and tasting techniques he started to adopt soon began to feed into his approach to cooking.  “It gave me a kind of mental grid to help evaluate wines – colour, aroma, flavours, acidity, alcohol, tannin, body, intensity, complexity, length,” he explains. “On one super fun R&D trip to Tokyo to learn as much as I could about ramen, I applied that kind of thinking and rigour to how I evaluated a whole bunch of different varieties.” His interest in wine, it would seem, was sharpening Xu’s critical faculties and improving his ability to identify and appraise different elements of flavour. In 2015, just as he was making the final preparations to open his restaurant, Baoism, in Shanghai, Xu became ill with mononucleosis (glandular fever). Locked in a fever for days, he decided to head to the countryside to recuperate. More specifically, to his family’s country retreat in Yuhu Village in the foothills of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in rural Yunnan. Yunnan is one of China’s most southwestern provinces, lying south of Sichuan and bordering Tibet to the northwest, Myanmar to the west, and Laos and Vietnam to the south. There’s no heavy industry, making Yunnan one of the least polluted corners of China. Instead, its 394,000 square kilometres encompass snow-capped mountains, rice terraces, lakes, forests and agricultural land.  Xu describes Yunnan as ‘China’s breadbasket’, explaining that the variation across the province in elevation and climate means that the region enjoys a long growing season, yielding all kinds of gastronomic wonders that are prized throughout the country and beyond. As well as the tea, coffee and tobacco of central Yunnan, the province is probably best known for the wide variety of mushrooms it produces. Wild morels, porcini, truffles and a mushroom called matsutake or ‘pine mushroom’ in Japanese. Yunnan still exports tonnes upon tonnes of them to Japan each year, although they’re also enjoyed locally, sliced very thin and dipped in soy sauce and wasabi. The food of Yunnan reflects many influences. “I’m Han Chinese and that’s the majority ethnic group,” explains Xu, “but we have, I think, 25 different ethnic minorities in Yunnan. There are Tibetans, Laotians, ethnic Thai, ethnic Leong – and that’s just the tip of the cultural diversity iceberg. And even though we’re pretty far from Vietnam and Laos here in the Northwest, we still have a lot of lime and mint here. In the summer, the sun is really intense because of the high UV radiation at the altitude, so we eat a lot of foods that are very fresh. Our cuisine puts a lot of value on nuance and delicate complexity, rather than power and spice.” Xu’s Shanghai-resident parents holidayed in Yunnan in the early 2000s and fell in love with Yuhu Village. On discovering there was no running water, they helped the villagers build a pipeline from a glacier atop the mountain, and as a show of thanks, the villagers gave them some land on which they built a house.  Despite the abundance of beautiful fresh produce grown elsewhere in the province, the landscape around Yuhu Village is almost completely devoid of agriculture due to the barrenness of the soil. But its wide-open spaces and fresh mountain air (at an elevation of 2,800 metres) were the perfect tonic for Xu’s mononucleosis recovery. Within two days, he shook off the blanket under which he had been shivering for weeks and, almost suddenly, was back to rude health and able to enjoy being out in the sunshine and open countryside. And that’s when he saw something he’d never seen before: a group of villagers digging melon-sized rocks out of the ground. “I asked my friend what was going on,” says Xu, “and he explained that the rocky soil is so poor and so bad at retaining water that nothing really grows. So instead of harvesting crops, the locals dig up rocks that can be used for building projects.” Sloping landscape, poor and rocky soil, cool climate – something clicked in the back of Xu’s mind. “I remember thinking ‘Maybe we could plant vineyards here.’ It’s weird because there are no vineyards in that part of Yunnan, and I had never considered planting vines or making wine until that very moment.” Two weeks later, Xu was back in Shanghai, busier than ever as the head chef and proprietor of his just-opened restaurant. But he had made some calls, reaching out to friends about his ‘crazy idea’. He was introduced to David Tyney, an Australian viticultural consultant who had been working in New Zealand for around 15 years. Over the next 12 months, also working with Simon Clark and Feng Liu, they collaborated to establish whether or not growing vines would be feasible – installing a weather station, analysing soil samples and, ultimately, identifying a small parcel of land outside Xu’s village that had potential. Xu planted vines in May 2017 knowing that, at some point, he’d have to choose between the restaurant and the vineyard project. When his landlord got in touch later in the year to say that he was upping the rent at Baoism, it made the decision easier than anticipated. Now able to focus solely on the vineyard, Xu asked his viticultural consultant the best and fastest way to learn about making wine. The answer came: “Work vintages”. The memory of the Pinot Noirs he had tasted at Aurum called him back to New Zealand, where husband and wife team Brook and Lucie Lawrence welcomed Xu’s request to come and work the 2017 harvest with them as their only additional help managing their four-hectare site. “I’d heard from my consultants that making wine is very much like working in a kitchen,” says Xu. “It’s mostly cleaning but I would be there to work hard, observe and absorb. I was already used to a world where cleaning and physical labour were very much part of the job, but what I found on my first vintage, working with Lucie and Brook, was that winemaking has this incredible combination of intellectual curiosity and satisfaction.  You’re constantly thinking about how and why, trialling different things here and there, understanding how different viticultural or vinification decisions affect what ends up in the glass. Plus, you have this real satisfaction from doing physical labour that you don’t get in a lot of work. It had a pace that was a little bit slower than restaurants – still very intense – but it felt more sustainable. And at Aurum I saw that when people are really good at what they do, they kind of glide around the winery, the way great chefs glide around their kitchens. It made me want to become better. I understood that that’s what I want to be like, and I understood how the work would appeal to me. I also learned that this was a real business – that I couldn’t just throw myself into it without giving it proper respect.” One of Xu’s big learnings at Aurum was about quality over quantity. “They’d been hit hard in the economic crisis of 2008 and had to shed 10 hectares of their site, leaving them with just four. So they were down to bare bones. What they were doing, if they got it right, would just about support them.” A sobering thought, but Xu was inspired.  Despite the pressure they were under to make it work, he admired the decisions Brook and Lucie made in the field, in the winery and beyond. For example, as part of their uncompromising focus on quality, they held on to bottles for the amount of time they felt was necessary before releasing them. “While I was there, one of their 2014 Pinots (they make three) won Best Pinot Noir in New Zealand,” says Xu. “It was a testament to how good they are as winemakers.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Xu trusted his tastebuds to lead him to his next vintage experience. In 2015, he had attended a blind tasting event in Hong Kong hosted by Jancis Robinson MW. One wine stood out. “The theme of the event was to blind taste Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines from across the world,” says Xu, “and I look up to Jancis immensely, so I felt I had to be there. As everyone does at some point or another, Jancis called one wine completely wrong. What she had called as ‘a great, great white Burgundy’, turned out to be a Quartz Chardonnay by Australian winery, Bindi. When it was revealed, Jancis wasn’t surprised: ‘It’s a Bindi? Of course, that makes sense,’ and she spoke about how serious the work is there and how great the winemakers are.” As Xu contemplated the delicious liquid in his glass, he found himself thinking what a triumph it was for New World wine; that it in the unprejudiced environment of a blind tasting event, the Jancis Robinson had put an Aussie Chardonnay in the same quality bracket as top white Burgundy.  Having sought out and enjoyed Bindi wines on several subsequent occasions, Xu applied to work the 2018 vintage with owner-winemaker Michael Dhillon. Though almost twice as big in size as Aurum’s, Bindi’s operation was still small enough for Xu to have a hand in everything during the vintage. And beyond the day-to-day harvest and winemaking work, Xu got to taste and discuss wines with Michael and his family in the evenings. “What was wonderful at Bindi was, because I was living with the family, I cooked a lot for them – almost every night – and they opened a lot of very special bottles. I found that so valuable; that they shared so many incredible wines with me, that we talked about them, and they were able to articulate why those wines appealed to them. And the wines weren’t all monolithic, there was quite a bit of variation in how the wines were built, structurally, even in the grape varieties, but you could see that Michael had a very clear idea of what he valued, of what mattered in wine to him. I realised that I needed to do that too, that my responsibility to my work, to my dream, wasn’t just about becoming a technician – simply knowing how to make wine – because that’s not enough. I needed to figure out what matters to me, to understand it and to be able to articulate it, and to evaluate wine from that vantage point.” Xu still speaks to Dhillon regularly, having gained a mentor as well as invaluable experience. He has also stayed in touch with Brook and Lucie at Aurum. In fact, when he mentioned to them that he was keen to do a vintage at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy, they told Xu that they knew the Seysses family personally, and would be happy to write a recommendation. They did, and Xu was offered a spot on Dujac’s 2018 harvest crew. “That was such a nice moment for me and a really great example of how people in the wine industry are much less directly competitive than people in restaurants,” says Xu. “There’s a much greater sense of sharing knowledge, and I love that. It’s still amazing to me, not just how much information the best winemakers in the world are willing to share about how they make their secret sauce, but also that they’re willing to go out of their way to help people like me find opportunities to learn and grow.” Xu’s winemaking learning curve and his palate education continued apace at Dujac under the tutelage of Jeremy Seysses and his wife Diana (who splits her time between Dujac and Napa where she is the winemaker at both her family vineyard, Snowden, and Ashes & Diamonds). Xu was one of just four stagiaires along with a sommelier from a 3-star Michelin restaurant in New York and a young but experienced Australian couple, who were all encouraged to take it in turns to choose four bottles from the cellars to open in the evenings after a hard day’s work.  “They would give us the inventory for the cellar and say ‘Ok, pick four wines and we’ll blind taste them.’ It was so much fun! We would taste and talk – and the really cool thing was that most of the wines we were trying were made by the family’s friends at neighbouring domaines. When you blind taste with people, you start to understand what they like, what they don’t like, and particularly how they think about wine. Because we were in the winery tasting the fermenting wines every day, and also out of barrels – when it came to tasting these amazing bottles every evening, we really got a sense of what Jeremy and his father Jacques valued in wine. It was such a privilege – so many wines I’ll never taste again but will remember forever.” Xu particularly remembers the wine he tasted on the evening of Jeremy’s birthday. Diana asked him to cook a special birthday meal (Chinese dumplings from scratch), while Jeremy brought up some very special bottles from the cellar. Two bottles of La Tâche – a 1966 and a ’72 – for starters, and Xu’s eyes glaze over at the memory of them. “Those wines were magical to me. First of all, the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) bottles in the Dujac cellars are direct exchanges because the families are close. Aubert de Villaine is the godfather of Jeremy’s son – he came to lunch one day, and I think I was slack-jawed the entire time – but you know, those wines had entered the cellars in the 60s and not moved. Talk about pristine storage conditions – they’d travelled only a few kilometres to get there! The next thing to say is that these tasting experiences were my first with Pinot Noir that old – around 50 years.  Tasting them was mind-blowing as I had no concept of what it would look and taste like at that age, but simultaneously a validation of all the things that I love about Pinot Noir. 1966 was one of those years, a bit like 2017, where the vintage produced wines that people just drank straight out the gate as it was so delicious.  People didn’t really know if wine like that would fare well over time. But tasting it confirmed that the ’66 La Tâche had retained the balance it started with. Yes, it had gained all the savoury, leather and undergrowth characteristics, but all the purity of fruit and aromatic expressiveness and complexity still formed the core of the wine. But maybe the roses had gone from fresh to dried, and strawberries from fresh to gently baked – but the sweetness and succulence, the perfume and the spice, everything was still there. The ’72 was interesting too because, unlike the ’66, it was a really difficult vintage. And yet the wine had aged remarkably gracefully – all the elements were there, it was just a bit quieter perhaps, less intense than the ’66.” Xu also remembers Jeremy opening a magnum of 1964 Clos de la Pousse d’Or – the first vintage made by Gérard Potel whom Jeremy’s father, Jacques, had worked with and learned a lot from. “The magnum was pristine, and the wine exhibited all the things I love about Burgundy: perfume, texture, massive complexity and spice. You know that way that Pinot Noir can be weightless without being light or lacking intensity or energy? It had this weightless intensity and a savoury complexity that was just stunning. So beautiful.” Through the wines Xu was tasting, he wasn’t just building a vision for the kinds of wine he hopes to make in Yunnan, he was starting to understand something much more profound – the kind of life in wine he wants to make for himself. At the end of his season at Dujac, when Jeremy asked him if he wanted to visit some other Burgundy domaines to do some tasting and maybe think about where next to approach to do a vintage (as a result of the subsequent tastings – and Dujac’s influence – Xu worked the 2019 vintage with Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey), Xu had perhaps the biggest epiphany on his wine adventure to date. He knew that he didn’t just want to nurture fruit on the vine and turn it into wine, but also – like his own mentors – nurture and encourage like-minded people to follow their noses, awaken and educate their palates, and start their own wine adventures. With just under three hectares of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines planted on the south-facing slopes of his Miao Lu vineyard in Yunnan, Xu is fully committed to maintaining more than a flow of vinified grape juice in the coming years. The knowledge and passion that flows freely around the vigneron’s dinner table, and the convivial spirit of generosity Xu discovered at each world-class winery, are just as important to his vision for Miao Lu. Yes, making exquisite, thoughtful wine with love and care is vital – but so too is the culture of sharing, savouring and celebrating good wine in good company, and raising a well-nosed glass – as often as possible – to hard work, friendship, and the magic you simply can’t bottle. This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue One

FONDATA’s Gavin Lucas speaks to the restaurateur-turned-winegrower Alex Xu about the series of epiphanic moments in the company of great winemakers that completely reshaped his future

Restaurateur-turned-winegrower Alex Xu shares the series of epiphanic moments with great winemakers that completely reshaped his future

FONDATA: Epiphany Wines

Epiphany Wines 

“People seem to like it,” says Callie Louw in his thick Afrikaans accent. The winemaker behind Porseleinberg shrugs, casual about his wine’s success. Since its first vintage in 2010, this Swartland Syrah has rapidly become one of South Africa’s best and most sought-after, much to his bemusement, it seems.  The 173-hectare estate is rugged and wild, sitting atop the Porcelain Mountain (Porseleinberg in Afrikaans) in the Swartland. The first vines had been planted here in 1997, with wines previously marketed under the Schonenberg label. Louw first came across the site while at Rustenberg, who sourced fruit from there – the bunches and individual berries were so tiny that Louw thought at first that the owners weren’t giving them the best fruit (although he may not have put it so politely). But those miniscule bunches were all these rocky schist soils, with almost no topsoil, could muster. However small the yields, the quality and concentration was enough to convince Marc Kent (Managing Partner and Technical Director at Boekenhoutskloof) to buy the farm in 2009 – and he approached Louw, who was then working at Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards (now Fable Mountain Vineyards), to develop the property.  The team instantly set about a massive planting program and there are around 90 hectares under vine today. Most of the fruit was destined for Boekenhoutskloof’s flagship wine, The Chocolate Block, but with 4.5 hectares of older plots and a ramshackle shed-cum-winery, Louw – with Kent’s blessing – decided to do something different, and Porseleinberg was born.  “It’s a really special site,” Louw says, explaining how the vines sit on almost pure bedrock with just a skin of topsoil over the blue schist. “We’re effectively farming little bonsais here.” It tells you just how challenging this site is that only half the vines they planted in 2009 survived; but the results are clearly worth the effort. And they weren’t the first to recognise the site’s potential – as well as Rustenberg (where Adi Badenhorst was then winemaker), Eben Sadie had sourced fruit from the property for Columella in 2000 and 2001. While the wine came originally from just 4.5 hectares, today there are 14 dedicated to Porseleinberg, with the first of the younger vines coming on stream from 2013. When Louw arrived in 2009, the vines were dry-farmed – and he managed to get 3.5 tons/hectare of fruit in 2010. But the yield was a tiny two tons the following year; it was clear that dry-farming just wasn’t an option for this site, the soils too poor to hold onto the water – if the skies even gave any. “Schist is actually spelt wrong, it’s supposed to be s**t,” Louw says, laughing. Despite the need to irrigate, he’s well aware of the costs involved – particularly given any water they use needs to be pumped seven kilometres and up the mountain. During the drought between 2016 and 2018, the river they use for irrigation dried up, Louw’s house water ran out in May – and police were patrolling water sources. There’s no avoiding how precious a resource water is here.  The site had been farmed organically and Louw continued this, however in 2016, when they looked to plant another 45 hectares, he wanted to make sure that he gave these new plantings the best chance – and be able to farm organically in the long term. As of 2023, the property is once more certified organic, having been able to return to the process in 2020. And it is firmly in the vineyard that Louw focuses, feeling not just that quality comes from the vine – but from the soil, as he gradually looks to build the level of organic matter. “The only thing that I can do better is farm better,” he says.  The winemaking is relatively simple and hands-off (as Louw says, “I’m quite proudly lazy in the winery.”) – but has evolved over the years. Louw uses 100% whole-bunch, although the fruit is crushed lightly (previously by foot, now by being run through a pump) to avoid carbonic fermentation and its more confected aromas. The fermentations are all native, with alcohols generally sitting between 13.5 and 14%. Maturation is in a combination of foudre and concrete, and varied more over the first four vintages as Louw figured out what worked (with the 2010 and 2011 vintages aged in concrete only). While some of the early vintages spent up to two years in concrete and oak, he has reduced this to 12 months (from 2014), favouring more time in bottle prior to release instead.   Although the wines are decidedly fresh and balanced, the pHs are naturally high – between 3.7 and 4.1, with most vintages sitting at the higher end of that spectrum. Given the risks of bacterial spoilage that this brings, SO2 levels are relatively high (around 100ppm total) – something Louw feels is essential for wines that are absolutely built to age. And that’s something that has long set Porseleinberg apart.   “I’m still wearing the pants I bought in 2004 – I know nothing about style,” Louw jokes. There’s no shortage of brilliant new-wave South African wine, however most are built to be open and approachable in their youth – not necessarily glou-glou, but leaning into the lighter style of reds that has become fashionable. Porseleinberg was, at least at first, decidedly not. The earlier vintages are stern and serious, and need(ed) significant time to resolve and soften – it’s that style (whether Louw would describe it as such or not) that has earned the wine the moniker “Cape Cornas”, a style that is both thanks to the natural intensity of the low-yielding site and Louw’s love of old wine.  But the 2018 vintage brought a significant shift – one that has taken Porseleinberg to new heights. Louw visited a friend who was working at Domaine Jamet, and saw how rather than using punch-downs or pump-overs, they submerged the cap throughout the fermentation and maceration, allowing them to extract more gently. Most winemakers might have trialled the technique on a parcel, but not Louw – who says, frankly, “I put my chips all in.” He returned to the Swartland and set to work, making his own plates to hold the cap in place during fermentation. Fortunately for him, the gamble paid off.  The more recent vintages display more perfume, precision and finesse, without sacrificing the almost fearsome structure that makes them so age-worthy – and, as Louw says, it means he does even less work in the winery (“I fit about one more beer in a day,” he says, smiling). While earlier vintages were more about their tannic framework, the fruit, Louw suggests, is more present now – covering the tannins in the wines’ youth.  When I ask Louw if he wishes he’d used the submerged-cap technique from the start, his answer is no. “It’s amazing to grow up with the wine,” he says. And somehow that makes sense, for this is clearly a very personal project. Although Boekenhoutskloof might own Porseleinberg, it is run and managed totally separately. During our conversation and as we taste through a complete vertical, back to 2010 (the first time Louw has ever had the chance to do so), it is clear that this is not just a wine from this specific place, but also from this specific wine-grower. Over 12 vintages, the style evolves, the variation between years shining through, but the mineral backbone and structural imprint of this site remains. It’s a remarkable wine, and one that is only set to get even better as the vines age and Louw builds on his experience. Ignore it at your peril.  Tasting every vintage of Porseleinberg: 2010 to 2021 2010 Porseleinberg: From the original 4.5 hectares, the first vintage of Porseleinberg offers a savoury, bloody, iron-rich nose, with an edge of herbal, menthol notes and dried red fruit. The immense structure is still present, although the tannins have softened with over a decade in bottle. That structure is complemented by a bite of fresher, dark fruit and juicy acidity. Aged for 16 months in 65% foudre and 35% concrete.  2011 Porseleinberg: This wine still feels young, the nose brooding with dark fruit, leather and liquorice, the palate tightly packed with intense, black-berried fruit and a chalky grip of tannins. With the year’s conditions only two tons per hectare were harvested, the smallest crop ever from the site – and given the small volumes this was never released, with only 800 bottles made. Aged for 24 months in concrete egg.  2012 Porseleinberg: This is more supple and soft than the 2012, with a savoury and saline profile. There’s more elegance than the first two vintages, with dark, intense fruit yet with an appealing purity, complemented by notes of tobacco spice and liquorice allsorts. Only 2,760 bottles were made. Aged for 12 months in concrete egg.  2013 Porseleinberg: The fruit here is distinctly different – sweeter strawberry with a touch of herbal eucalyptus alongside savoury hints that point to the beginnings of tertiary development. It’s incredibly concentrated, structured and compact – a wine that is built for the long-haul. Aged for 24 months in 60% foudre and 40% concrete.  2014 Porseleinberg: The 2014 was one of the more open vintages in the line-up, from a particularly wet year and late harvest. The nose entices with an earthiness, a dusting of cocoa, deep red cherry and chocolate-covered strawberries. There’s a juicy purity to the palate with a chalky grip and savoury, smoky edge to the long finish. Aged for 12 months in 100% foudre.  2015 Porseleinberg: This is still a little reductive, and will benefit from additional time in bottle. As this reduction blows off, it reveals a fynbos-accented nose of dark fruit. From a cool vintage, the palate is a tight ball still – intensely mineral and chalky, with impressive purity, but it’s not yet revealing its potential. One to watch. Aged for 12 months in 90% foudre and 10% concrete egg.  2016 Porseleinberg: The 2016 vintage brought the driest winter in decades and another tiny crop. The wine is full of sweet red fruit, but there’s a firm, stony minerality to the nose, as well as floral and spicy tones that give it lift. There’s a fine-boned framework here and gorgeous freshness. Aged for 12 months in 70% foudre and 30% concrete egg.  2017 Porseleinberg: The 2017 vintage is sweet and concentrated; offering both a swarthy dark profile and a sweet, red-fruited intensity. It’s tight and bold, with an iron backbone, firm tannic structure and a powerful finish defined by its dark fruit and minerality. Aged for 12 months in 70% foudre and 30% concrete egg.  2018 Porseleinberg: The 2018 vintage is the first in which Louw used the submerged-cap technique – and there’s an instant shift in the style of the wine. It’s brighter, more aromatic with more intense herbal and spicy notes, while the palate is layered with juicier, crunchy red fruit that masks the tannins. The finish is long, spicy and mineral. Superb. Aged for 12 months in 90% foudre and 10% concrete egg.  2019 Porseleinberg: This vintage saw a break in the drought for South Africa, with rainfall around average and a relatively cool growing season. The nose here is dominated by herbs and spice – green peppercorn, dried rosemary and sage; leading on to a palate that offers pure red-berried fruit. There’s a mineral, chalky, furry grip of velvet tannins that frames the generous cherry fruit, with a saline mineral finish. Delicious. Aged for 12 months in 90% foudre and 10% concrete egg.  2020 Porseleinberg:  The 2020 vintage was warmer and the wine speaks to that – with richer and darker fruit character that dominates its profile. The warmer conditions have added a polish to the wine, with more open feel, despite the trademark structure that sits behind the fruit. The wine is a little reductive at this stage, and needs more time to unfurl. Aged for 12 months in 90% foudre and 10% concrete egg.  2021 Porseleinberg: The latest release of Porseleinberg is unsurprisingly impressive, but with a finesse that suggests it could be Callie Louw’s best vintage to date. A long, cool growing season with sufficient rainfall resulted in a leisurely harvest in 2021, allowing the team to take their time to pick. Since the shift to submerged cap in 2018, quality here has leapt ahead. The 2021 shows a spicy, mineral intensity – with the fruit more subdued, taking a backseat to the stony structure and texture of the wine. It’s supple, flowing across the palate like silk, yet with a super-fine grip of mineral tannins and the shy fruit that points to its immense age-worthiness. Savoury herbal tones mingle with the red fruit, while there’s a saline freshness and spicy pepper tones that linger on the long finish. Amazingly approachable now, it will only improve with a couple of years in bottle and continue to evolve over the next 15 years or so. Aged for 12 months in 95% foudre and 5% concrete.   Browse all current listings of Porseleinberg 

Porseleinberg has become one of South Africa’s most collectable wines. As the estate releases its 12th vintage, Sophie Thorpe tastes through a full vertical and talks to winemaker Callie Louw about what makes the site, and wine, so special

Porseleinberg is one of South Africa’s most collectable wines. We taste through a full vertical of the Swartland Syrah and talk to winemaker Callie Louw

An icon in the making – Porseleinberg

Porseleinberg: an icon in the making

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Storage is charged at HKD 40 per 12-bottle case per month. A minimum monthly storage fee of HKD 80 applies, covering up to 24 bottles.

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By selecting third-party shipping, you will take full responsibility for all aspects of legal compliance and authorize Vinfolio to transfer the items to the party specified in your instructions. Items shipped via third parties will remain in their original packaging.

Collection times are between 8:30am - 12pm & 1:30pm - 4:30pm, Monday to Friday. Wines at Will Call, that are not picked up within 10 business days, will be transferred to storage and subject to a $1.50 per bottle stocking fee.

Items to be sourced and shipped to our state-of-the-art fine wine storage facility for the best possible safe-keeping where you can arrange collection from our warehouse address in Napa.

Will Call (Napa)

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We're in the final stages of upgrading to our brand-new trading platform. As part of this transition, we're currently migrating all customer-owned inventory to ensure a smooth and seamless experience.

Our new and improved platform will be ready for you on Friday, April 4.

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About description for demonstration purposes

shows all the items you currently store with us. These items can be sold, delivered or transferred.

At {shortName}

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represents all the wines that are in your possession and have been consumed.

This is the price you paid for this item.

Cost price

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The lowest price you're willing to sell at.

shows all the items that you have pre-ordered, including en primeur wines, and all the items on your watchlist.

Futures

You can set a sell price on items you're selling based on a % of current unit net value.

You can set a market price on items you're selling based on a % of current unit net value.

shows all the actions that you have taken on items in your Portfolio.

groups every action by type - Purchase, Sale, Delivery, and Inbound Transfer - so it's clear at a glance what happened to each item.

History

shows all the items that are currently in transit to or from {shortName}.

In transit

Local delivery is free for orders over HK$1,800 (to a single location). For orders below this value, delivery is HK$150 for up to four cases and HK$50 per case thereafter.

Shipping starts from €15 within Italy and €45 to Switzerland and the rest of Europe for up to 48 bottles (75cl). Costs vary by destination. Larger shipments can be quoted on request.

The date shown below is when your order will ship from our local warehouse. Your final delivery date, along with full tracking details, will be provided once our team has processed your request.

You can arrange collection from our Retail store on 22nd Floor, 8 Wyndham Street, Central Hong Kong.
Collection times are between 9:30am-13:00 and 14:00-18:00pm, Monday to Friday. We are closed on public holidays.

You can arranged collection from our warehouse STI INTERNAZIONALE SPA, on Viale del Lavoro, 57, 37051 Bovolone, Verona.
Pick-up hours are between 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM and 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM, Monday to Friday. We are closed on public holidays.

This is the current estimated market value for this item.

Manually set prices will be overwritten. Already listed wines are not affected.

Updates all unlisted wines to current market price.

Set all at market

represents all the wines you currently have in your Portfolio that aren't stored with us. Press the

My cellar

Name

Net price

New portfolio available

New portfolio

You do not have any invoices at this time.

shows all the items from your Portfolio that are currently on the market.

On sale

shows all the items you currently have in your Portfolio. You can perform individual actions on them from this page.

Overview

shows any items that are currently awaiting user action.

Pending

This is the dynamic estimated value of the item with trading margin removed.

This is the amount of profit you will receive if your listing sells.

Pre-authorised payments enable automatic transactions on your behalf, ensuring seamless and hassle-free payments. This allows recurring charges, subscriptions, or scheduled payments to be processed without manual approval each time.

The number of cases you wish to place on sale

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Before you request delivery, you can adjust the quantity for each item in your selection below.

* At time of sale a 15% trading fee will be deducted from the final sale price.

Total estimated value*'

The fixed custom price you wish to sell each item for.

Split into {caseSize} individual {bottleSize}cl bottles.

Title

shows all the items you currently store with us. These items can be sold.

Available for sale — items stored with {name} eligible to be listed on the marketplace.

Profile

This item is at Vinfolio, available for storage or shipping. For more information on shipping and handling visit vinfolio.com/shipping

This item is at FINE+RARE HOME Hong Kong, available for delivery or local pickup. Most Hong Kong deliveries can be made within 3 working days, an exact date will be available when arranging delivery. International deliveries have longer lead-times, please contact us for details.

Wines sold en primeur will be released from the producer after bottling, typically 18 months after the so-called campaign ends. Upon arrival your wine will be stored at Vinfolio in our temperature-controlled warehouse until you decide to take delivery.

We will source this item at the guaranteed price from our network of suppliers and arrange expedited shipment to FINE+RARE.
 The lead-time depends on many variables, but 2-4 weeks is typical for expedited sourcing.
 Once your order is confirmed, we'll keep you updated on its ETA.
 Every item is checked on arrival by our expert team, with photographs available on request (please note that charges may apply).

When a wine is on "pre-arrival", it means that we have a confirmed order on the bottles from our supplier and we are simply waiting for the winery or distributor to ship the wine to us. The delivery timeframe for pre-arrival wines varies significantly, depending on where the wine is coming from. We will notify you once they arrive at our warehouse and, at that point, you can decide to arrange shipping or list them for sale.

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