Waterkloof Wines

The Free Bacchus Story

Christiaan Loots brought the first Percheron horse onto Waterkloof in 2008. The estate now works seven of them, one horse and one handler to every eight hectares, drawing a purpose-built cart that ploughs, carries compost and holds fruit at harvest. Loots has been consistent that the decision was economic rather than romantic.

That is the reverse of how horse-ploughing is usually sold. A tractor runs the same wheel lines on every pass and presses the ground beneath them into a pan that roots struggle to cross; a horse never treads the same line twice, so the soil stays open. Paul Boutinot, a British wine merchant, had spent years looking internationally for a site capable of what he called a defining sense of origin. He took this one in October 2003, bottled the first Waterkloof vintage in 2005, and committed to the conversion in 2008.

The Schapenberg rises to three hundred metres about four kilometres from False Bay, close enough that the wind off the water sets the terms for the farming. Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel grazed sheep on this hill in the early 1700s and used it as a lookout, spotting inbound ships in time to run his produce into town ahead of his competitors.

Chickens and sheep work the rows alongside the horses. The estate holds Demeter biodynamic and Ecocert organic certification, and is one of only two certified biodynamic producers in South Africa. Wine Advocate scored the Circle of Life Red 94 points, and the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show has named Waterkloof the country's best biodynamic producer.

What is unusual here is not the biodynamics but the arithmetic behind it. Most estates farming this way present it as a philosophy and quietly absorb the cost. Waterkloof argues the horses pay for themselves — a harder claim to make, and a much easier one to check.