The triumph of the human spirit over adversity is the stuff that legends are made of, tales that never fail to inspire.
When Dorothee Kirchner stood at the gates of Druk My Niet wine estate on the night of January 9 last year, and watched her beloved farm and home burn, she faced a choice: allow the devastating fire to triumph, or endure the calamity with fortitude.
“I was reading William B Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy at the time, and as I stood there, minutes after fleeing my home with nothing but the clothes on my back, I resolved to take his message to heart: let go of the past, and focus on what I could control and manage,” says Dorothee.The fire had started in a pine forest high on the mountainside above the farm in Dal Josafat, between Paarl and Wellington, and the near gale-force wind drove the raging fire down the slope in minutes.
The scenes of devastation that greeted Dorothee and winemaker Alexandra McFarlane the next morning, were heartbreaking.
Every thatched building on the farm had succumbed, including the manor house dating back to 1992, and the damage to the vineyards was depressing to say the least. Thankfully, buildings with IBR sheeting roofs had survived – the barrel storage cellar, main wine store and recently completed maturation cellar and tasting room were largely untouched.
So, the 2017 harvest in the ground was no more, but at least the wine stocks were secure. With the help of neighbours, Alexandra was able to make a small quantity of merlot rosé from the one salvageable block, and the C68 Chenin Blanc, sourced from grapes on another farm.
Like Dorothee, her husband Georg, who rushed back from a marketing trip in Germany, was determined not to let the calamity get him down. “I knew we could not let the fire win. We had to rebuild.”
The couple spent the next year rebuilding the boutique 24ha wine estate, with the cellar ready just in time for the 2018 harvest, and officially re-launched in April this year.
While some of the vines had recovered quite well, the 2018 harvest was drastically smaller and the long-term prospects of the rest of the vineyard are unclear, but by the end of the harvest, there was at least new wine in the new tanks.
“I can’t believe that it is only a year since that fire almost broke our spirits,” says Dorothee, “but the hardships, the setbacks, the uncertainties are all behind us. We have endured, and we are set to prosper. Druk My Niet is back.”
Released from storage in the aftermath of the fire, Druk My Niet T3 2011 – an unusual blend of tempranillo, tannat and tinta amarela – is a wine to enjoy in celebration of life, and new life at Druk My Niet.
Time has softened out the tannins on these Portuguese varietals and the wine is soft in texture with complex, subtle flavours that unfold slowly.
It’s got a pleasantly musty fragrance and intense savoury flavours – deep, dark ripe stewed fruit with underlying leathery/saltiness; subtle whiffs of vanilla and chocolate. It’s a wine that you could eat!