Episode 279 - JC and Carolyn Martin of Creation Wines

And we'll talk about how you've given something back a little later on.

But first of all, for those, JC, who don't know Hemel-en-Aarde, tell us about it.

We know it's a cool climate region.

We've talked about that already.

But just give us a bit more of a picture of this beautiful region.

So most probably when you, when you, um, experience South Africa, with not having a huge background into the whole wine industry, you wouldn't expect to find on the southern tip of Africa a sort of cool climate wine region.

And, uh, especially then a region who would be suited to plant Pinot and Chardonnay.

And when I came the first time in 2006 to work, um, as an internship at Glen Carlou, and then, uh, later on had the chance to travel a little bit through the, through the country to see the different wine regions.

Obviously, I had a chance at that stage to also coming along to the coastlines into the Walker Bay, and at that stage there was really, that region was very young.

It was just started, um, 15 years before I was here.

So we could just see the first estates in the, in the Hemel-en-Aarde and who was, uh, Hamilton Russell and Bouchard Finlayson, and that was just the start of, uh, Newton Johnson.

So it was very exciting to see that it was out of, uh, climatic circumstances, a completely wine world compared to Stellenbosch, Paarl, uh, Franschhoek, the places I worked.

And me coming from a more cool climate background in Switzerland, um, definitely quite hooked into Pinot Noir and, uh, wines with, um, acid and freshness.

I, it really excited me to find a little pocket like this.

Now, the other thing what is also obviously a point of excitement is, is, uh, in, in, in wine term context, everything is long-term.

And, uh, when you really want to establish yourself a project from, from scratch, you, you sort of cannot start too late in your life.

And what really played sort of in our hands was that we had a chance to establish a new estate in relative young age that we still should see a big part of the benefit in our own generation.

And to go from a blank sheet, it does really excite.

I mean, we, we really had a sheep farm, and we converted that sheep farm to the wine estate, and it, it, it obviously holds a few surprises, uh, and challenges, but it's incredible rewarding to, to convert this kind of, uh, barren land into a, a vibrant, uh, place.

And it even up to now still excites me because obviously you learn ongoing on a new place like this.

But, um, that, that cool climate over the last 40 years even slightly became more meaningful with, um, having in the later few years now had climate change impacts.

We sort of, we sort of slightly avoided the same heavy impact that many other wine regions in the world in the moment undergoing.

So we have this, we call the big fridge in front of our doorstep.

So we have that ocean who sits pretty much the whole year round at 12 to 14 degrees, who really allows us to, to grow vineyards at near perfect conditions.

And, uh, when we all most probably would agree that the grapes is the most value when it comes to quality, it is therefore really the most critical thing is to find these pockets where grape grows in the best conditions.