The hills of Durbanville are considered some of SA’s best growing conditions for sauvignon blanc and semillon, so much so that Nitida, one of the region’s smallest wineries, punches way above its weight with no less than five styles of the two varietals.
Nitida’s impressive pedigree kicked off with a bang, earning a Veritas double gold for its first sauvignon blanc in 1995 – made by owner Bernhard Veller.
He took a week off his work as a metallurgist to make the wine from the grapes he’d planted three years earlier on the old sheep farm he and wife Peta had bought “just to live on”.
Nitida has grown into success from that running start, but chat to Bernhard or equally passionate sales manager Jacus Marais (he’s been with the farm for 19 years and “done just about every job there”), and it’s clear that they’ve remained true to their belief in keeping things small, personal and as close to handmade as possible.
“These wines are intimate,” Bernhard says, “I don’t do anything unless I can do it with honesty.”
That sense of honesty and love for the place comes through on the wine labels.
While they’ve won multiple design awards for Peta’s beautifully detailed illustrations of the natural flora and creatures that share the farm, the originals hand-drawn with inks made from the leaves of the protea nitida (waboom tree) that grows in abundance there, the back label descriptions are worthy of prizes in their own right.
Free of technical and marketing jargon, they give some of the clearest, user-friendly and most entertaining descriptions of what to expect in the bottle and what to enjoy it with.
Take the Wild Child wooded sauvignon blanc.
I can’t say it better than the maker’s own description: “Delightfully flirtatious partners impressive personality. Creamy nectarine smoothness hugs riotous strawberries and raspberry with quirky gooseberries teasing gentle lime. Discipline is restored with a nutty finale.”
Nitida’s many expressions of sauvignon blanc and semillon start with the “flavour kaleidoscope” of the “straight” sauv, harvested in 25 pickings over six weeks to give a set of building blocks that were separately fermented and matured, some with longer skin contact, some matured on the lees and then blended into a whole that balances zesty freshness with rounded silkiness.
The star Coronata Integration blends the “yin yang duality” of sauvignon blanc and semillon in a rich, full wine, the “fat” semillon rounding out the steeliness of the sauvignon – quite simply, it’s fabulous.
Golden Orb is single varietal sauvignon blanc, made from a single vineyard, the only block on the farm that can “see” the Atlantic, it’s intended as the truest expression of Nitida’s terroir.
No wood, but left on the lees for nine months and aged for a further 12, the result is complex and flavourful – “a swanky showstopper”.
The whites are rounded out with the straight semillon (“creamy, fine brioche with a meaty centre, like an accomplished pizza”) and a superbly subtle and elegant riesling.
Nitida wines are available at Prestons, Tops and Woolies.