MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Think like an artist, work like a scientist

It’s unlikely that a career guidance teacher could easily identify the potential winemakers in a matric class.

He/she might more likely discern future lawyers, doctors, nuclear scientists and physical education instructors (perhaps even the traders and entrepreneurs) lurking within a group of 18 year olds. If my teachers were as smart as they pretended to be, I guess the unemployable and the future jailbirds would be visible too.

But what is it exactly that drives perfectly competent, academically successful young men and women to a career that faces daily challenges and where disappointments almost always outnumber successes? Every day they face the hazards of agricultural life, the frustrations inherent in working with nature and the complexity of commerce in the fast-moving consumer goods sector.

They have to think like artists but work like scientists. For most of the year they work outdoors in all kinds of weather — then, for a month during the vintage, they put in 20-hour days in a factory. Everything they have invested in time and emotion in over the course of the year comes together in that brief and often unpredictably turbulent period.

Sophie and Julian Schaal, both from France, stumbled into their particular model of the winemaking business — an enterprise spanning two hemispheres — through a series of happy coincidences and unlikely near disasters. Julian set out to become a sommelier. Disappointed by the experience, he took the winemaking skills he had learnt at a wine school in Burgundy and drifted into production.

Along the way, he worked as a harvest intern at Bouchard Finlayson. Later he found full-time employment there, acquiring an understanding of wine production in the Cape. In 2005 he was allowed to make his own wine at Newton-Johnson in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, investing his life savings to buy the grapes. By 2010 he had moved his small operation to Paul Cluver in Elgin, which is where he still enjoys the use of the winemaking facilities.

His wife Sophie at least studied to be an oenologist. She came to SA to improve her English. She has managed that perfectly, despite marrying a fellow countryman. Inevitably the challenge/charm of producing her own wine led her to seek out her own grape supplies: she makes a chenin and a syrah from organic grapes sourced in the Swartland.

Despite these commitments (as well as a young family) they found enough time to develop a wine business that runs on much the same model in Alsace. They buy their fruit from organic growers, just as they do in SA. But there at least they have built their own winery, in Hunawihr, where they have their home.

Julian’s focus in his SA operation is chardonnay and pinot noir. His entry-level range (Schaal Mountain Vineyards) offers exceptional value. The chardonnay sells for less than R200 and it is pure, concentrated and delicious. The pinot noir won the Platter pinot of the year award in the 2025 Guide. It’s much less classical in style, but it is certainly the Cape’s most credible competitor to the pinots from New Zealand’s Central Otago region.

His two premium cuvées are beautifully made, and altogether more serious. I prefer the Evidence chardonnay to the Influence pinot. The former has an opulence held in check by linear freshness; the latter feels as if it’s spent too much time in the gym.

Sophie’s two Born of Fire wines are equally well made, but wholly different — as much a reflection of her personality and aesthetic as the choice of grapes she has selected for them.

The 2024 chenin has a restraint and finesse that is sometimes missing in the more robust Swartland examples. Her focus is texture not showiness; the alcohol level (13.5%) has been well managed, helping to retain freshness. The syrah, from the 2021 vintage, has comparable generosity, in part the result of the extended wood ageing forced on her by the Covid lockdowns. At less than R200/ bottle both are seriously worth seeking out.

This column originally appeared in Business Day.