‘It's a wonderful time of year,’ says Alex Starey, winemaker at Stellenbosch's Keermont Wines.
‘It's late summer, the vineyards are full of lovely ripe grapes — hopefully and you are getting them off the vines and processing them and getting all the fermentations going, which is something to be celebrated.’
Alex has a great story to tell about the kind of celebratory mood this time can evoke.
‘I had an intern once, a French guy from Tahiti, and he loved the fact that we were making wine in such a natural way and that we actually stomped the grapes with our bare feet and things like that. One day, he asked me if he could take all of his clothes off and climb into one of the fermenting vessels — our red wines ferment at 30°C or more, and he wanted to feel the warmth against his skin.
‘And so he did just that. He took all of his clothes