Hamilton Russell Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

Anthony Hamilton Russell moved the whole estate to organic farming in 2015, in one go, and says it was the first in the area to do it. He has never certified any of it, and he has said why, on the record and by name: the bureaucracy, deferring to a European body, and a reason that matters more than either.

The estate’s own reports are unusually frank about the cost. Writing in 2016 the estate said the move was “significantly more expensive at this stage” and that the approach “leaves very little room for error”. Beneficial fungi replaced much of the copper, Hamilton Russell told Grape Collective, and the vineyard manager was sent to Niagara to learn how growers there handle disease in a humid climate. The 2017 notes record Trichoderma used against botrytis.

The Hemel-en-Aarde is a valley outside Hermanus, and Hamilton Russell Vineyards, established in 1975, was its pioneering wine producer, in the words of WWF South Africa’s register. The estate’s own notes on its Pinot Noir describe concentrated red berry fruit, sweet spice and velvety tannins, with the structure to keep for decades.

There is one third-party check on any of this, and it is not an organic one. The family’s farms are on WWF South Africa’s Conservation Champions register, with a membership date of 1 April 2006. The entry describes a private nature reserve of mountain fynbos and two small wetlands within 407 hectares under conservation across the family’s adjacent properties, and records 63 hectares against the membership itself. That register has published criteria and somebody else administers it, which is exactly what a Track B listing needs and rarely gets.