2023 Sadie Family "Skerpioen "White, Swartland, South Africa

ABOUT THIS WINE

Skerpioen (Afrikaans for “scorpion”) is one of the most distinctive wines in the Sadie Family’s Ouwingerdreeks (Old Vine Series), sourced from a unique coastal vineyard just north of Dwarskersbos on South Africa’s West Coast. Planted in the 1950s and just meters from the cold Atlantic Ocean, the vines grow in saline-rich soils composed of limestone and chalk—rare in the Cape and essential to this wine’s piercing minerality.

The vineyard is a rare field blend of Chenin Blanc and Palomino, dry-farmed and bush-trained. The 2023 vintage was shaped by cool, maritime conditions that preserved acidity and accentuated the vineyard’s natural salinity. Grapes are hand-harvested, gently pressed, and fermented with native yeasts in old neutral foudres and clay amphorae. No additions are made apart from minimal sulfur, and the wine is bottled unfiltered after 11 months on the lees.

The result is a wine of crystalline purity—more reminiscent of chalky coastal whites from Andalusia or the Loire than anything typical of South Africa. With notes of lemon pith, oyster shell, hay, and sea breeze, the wine is ultra-dry, understated, and tactile, offering an experience that is more about place and texture than fruit. It evolves slowly in the glass and promises 10–15 years of graceful aging.

ABOUT THIS PRODUCER

The Sadie Family Wines, led by visionary winemaker Eben Sadie, has become the benchmark for authentic, terroir-driven wines in South Africa. Based in the Swartland, Sadie has championed old vines, minimal intervention, and regenerative farming since founding the estate in 1999. His wines are known for their integrity, subtlety, and fidelity to place.

The Ouwingerdreeks is a deeply personal project—a series of single-vineyard wines sourced from South Africa’s oldest and most culturally significant vineyards, often planted between the 1920s and 1960s. These sites are dry-farmed, hand-tended, and treated with reverence, with the goal of preserving South Africa’s vinous heritage and expressing its diversity.

In both vineyard and cellar, Sadie follows a philosophy of humility and restraint: no irrigation, no chemical inputs, indigenous fermentations, and long, gentle aging in neutral vessels. The resulting wines are quietly powerful, age-worthy, and deeply reflective of their landscapes.

Skerpioen is one of the most radical and site-specific wines in the series—a wine that doesn’t chase fruit or richness but rather speaks of wind, salt, limestone, and the wild edges of the Cape.