Porseleinberg

The Free Bacchus Story

Porseleinberg means porcelain mountain, a name the ground does not live up to. The hilltop south of Riebeek-Kasteel in the Swartland is blue schist, about 80% rock with very little topsoil, and the man who farmed it for fifteen years called it hardcore. Marc Kent of Boekenhoutskloof bought the farm in 2009, looking for Syrah grapes for The Chocolate Block. A small patch of Shiraz already growing there, fruit Eben Sadie had once bought for his Columella, became the first Porseleinberg, released in 2010.

Callie Louw lived on the hill and made the wine from 2009, and it is the only wine he made under the Porseleinberg name: a single Syrah, whole bunches fermented with wild yeast in concrete tanks and aged mostly in large oak foudres. The label is printed by hand on an Original Heidelberg platen press. In August 2025 Louw left to farm land of his own on the Paardeberg. Eben Meiring, who had worked extensively with Porseleinberg fruit at Boekenhoutskloof, took over, and Kent, who has blended every vintage with the winemaker, carries on doing so.

The wine is usually compared with the northern Rhône, with Côte-Rôtie and Cornas: a lot of tannin, a savoury and perfumed side, and a long life ahead of it. The Swartland is warm and dry, and Louw used nitrogen-fixing cover crops to feed the life in the soil and hold on to moisture.

The vineyards have been farmed organically since 2009, apart from a pause between 2014 and 2016 while the business grew quickly, and in 2024 Louw said Porseleinberg was fully certified organic again from 2023. The certificate bears that out, though not under Porseleinberg’s own name. Ecocert’s EU certificate for Boekenhoutskloof Winery lists Porseleinberg from the 2023 vintage alongside the parent company’s other organic wines, and records that Boekenhoutskloof also makes wine that is not organic. Neither name appears on the US organic register.