Flagstone’s new winery up and running
for 2003 vintage
27 May 2003 by Lynn Bolin

New icon wines under ‘The Berrio’ range released

Even before the dust had settled around the construction work in Flagstone’s new winery in Somerset West, the grapes began arriving.
From most corners of the Western Cape they came - Tulbagh, Elgin and Napier, Mourvedre from high on a southern slope above Ashton, some ‘exceptionally late’ Pinot Noir from the Darling Hills, and Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc from Elim, the southernmost vineyards in South Africa.
Yet owner and winemaker Bruce Jack and his team were ready for them, having added an entire new floor above ground and an outside work area (in record time!) to the historic Sir Herbert Baker-designed building that is now Flagstone’s new official wine cellar. Dating from 1901, the building with its two large rose windows could hardly have expected to be reincarnated from its previous life as a dynamite factory into a virtual theater for scenes of such creativity as winemaking.
Now stainless steel tanks of various shape and sizes line the walls, filled to the brim with pressed grape juice in different stages of fermentation. More lurk outside, shielded from the sun under a large canopy and accompanied by other indispensable equipment like hoses, punch-down boards and sticks, and numerous oak barrels, some full, others cast aside.
The smell of fermenting grapes cannot be denied, and it’s easy to imagine that this building, now designed to handle a capacity of up to 1,000 tons of grapes, must be extremely happy - even punch drunk - with its change in destiny.
This year, Jack reminds me, is Flagstone’s year of consolidation as they have downscaled production to only 300 tons of grapes producing about 22,000 cases of wine, compared to 720 tons last year. Some of the experimental ranges have been phased out in order to concentrate on what the winery does best, but production will expand rapidly again to reach the maximum 1,000 tons by 2005, the winemaker assures.
Until now, Flagstone has made most of its red wine (accounting for 70% of its total production) at the V&A Waterfront, and the whites were created at Simon Barlow’s farm Nooitgedagt in Stellenbosch. Jack says the Waterfront premises are being retained for purposes of both offices and maturation, but Somerset West is now the focal point of the winery’s activities for both reds and whites.
Yes, this is where the winemaker has been spending many late nights recently, up at 4am with the 2003 harvest as he crawled up tanks and punched down caps. Fortuitously, it appears as though 2003 has been an excellent year in which to start off in its new premises.
‘The 2003 harvest has been fantastic, brilliant—the best I’ve ever experienced anywhere I’ve worked in the world,’ enthused Jack. ‘I’m really optimistic about the quality of both the red and white grapes. They promise some exceptional wines.’
Flagstone aficionados will, therefore, have to fight hard for their 2003 bottles when they are released, given the low quantity but promising high quality of the vintage. Competition will be made even fiercer by the fact that the cellar will continue to export about 80% of its wines.