On our recent trip to South Africa we visited Silverthorn Winery in Robertson to taste their MCC (Method Cap Classique) wines with a view to adding them to our list.
John and Karen Loubster made us very welcome and we spent a lovely afternoon tasting their wines and YES we are adding 2 of their delicious sparkles to our list.
Here is news from John on their view of the effect lockdown is having on their business and wine trade in South Africa
"Covid19 has really upset the apple cart… herewith some insight:
We were lucky in terms of the 2020 harvest, being Cap Classique producers we harvest early and thus had no issues with transporting harvest teams and organising harvest logistics in the latter stages of the harvest.
We closed our tasting room in mid-March due to the fact that the majority of our customers are tourists from abroad and we felt very vulnerable.
Since then we have had no cellar door sales.
Our last retail sales for restaurants etc were the 24th of March.
We were lucky to have a few export orders which have helped cash flow tick over (UK, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands)
On a positive side – our children (Faine our daughter 23 years old and our son Tivon 20 years old joined us a week before lockdown)
We have had an incredible time together.
We have worked like trojans – clearing alien trees, building raised vegetable gardens, landscaping and naturally a lot of vineyard work, ploughing, sowing cover crops, preparing compost heaps etc)
We harvested olives which we had pressed for olive oil
We hike, swim, canoe and generally keep very fit.
This is good because we cook an awful amount and there is lots of sourdough bread baking.
Hopefully local wine sales will be permitted from the first of June
Tourism is a disaster and restaurants are folding left right and centre
Will probably take 18 months to fully recover
With respect to next year’s harvest – who knows – quality should be great with the amount of attention the vineyards are getting
We might have to rationalise production due to reduced cash flow…
So all in all – it has been a very interesting last few months…
Thanks John
We look forward to selling this high quality Sparkling wine.
We are adding 2 of Silverthorn's range
Green Man - £21.25
The Genie - £19.75
Good news for us is our shipment is scheduled to leave Cape Town this week so hopefully before the end of July we can offer these wines for sale!