The term legend is not given easily. It is also not always the one painstakingly caring for a heritage vineyard that gets the deserved recognition. But on the eve of his retirement, it is time to honour Dirkie Morkel of Bellevue Wine Estate outside Stellenbosch. He has nurtured one of the four oldest Pinotage vineyard blocks in South Africa, for the past 45 years.
The Morkels owned Bellevue since 1861, before it was sold in 2014 to Marinus Neethling. Dirkie stayed on as farm manager to care for this historic vineyard of bush vines planted 70 years ago – in 1953 – by his uncle, Pieter (PK) Morkel.
PK joined the family farm in the mid 1930’s as a young winemaker, after a few years of teaching at a school in Paarl. Farming, winemaking and rugby were his passions in life. He had to divide his time carefully between the vineyards and wine cellar of Bellevue and playing centre/wing for WP and the Springboks.
He planned to plant Gamay Noir in the winter of 1953, but couldn’t not find enough young vines. Gerrit Nieuwoudt of Stellenbosch Farmer’s Winery (SFW) then recommended that he plant this new, rather unknown cultivar, Pinotage.
At the same time, Paul Sauer, one of PK’s rugby friends and teammates, planted Pinotage on Kanonkop on the other side of Stellenbosch. This specific vineyard block (nr.202) of three hectares, still exists today and its grapes are used to produce the famous Kanonkop Black Label Pinotage.
The third historical Pinotage block is on Uiterwyk, farm of the De Waals on the southwestern side of Stellenbosch. According to them, they have planted their Pinotage block in 1950, making it the oldest Pinotage block in South Africa. A relative of the de Waals from Uiterwyk, C.T. de Waal, was a lecturer at the Oenology department of the University of Stellenbosch. He made the first barrel of Pinotage in the experimental cellar of Stellenbosch University in 1941.
It is quite a feat that the three oldest Pinotage blocks are situated in the country’s first and oldest wine route, the Stellenbosch Wine Routes, which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2021.
The fourth historical Pinotage block is at Meerendal Estate, Durbanville ward, which forms part of the Wine of Origin Cape Town region.
LET US TAKE A FEW STEPS BACK IN HISTORY… Stellenbosch can truly be reckoned as the home of Pinotage. Prof. Abraham Izak Perold, the first professor of Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University, wanted a grape cultivar uniquely adapted to the South African conditions. Although he travelled widely and researched about 177 different wine cultivars, he could not find a cultivar, to his opinion, that was suited to the South African environment.
He then decided to establish a new grape cultivar that is well adapted to the South African climate and soil, by means of crossing. This is done by placing the pollen of one cultivar with a tassel on the flower of the other cultivar and then harvesting the seed (pips) after the ripening of the grapes.
His experiments came to fruition in 1925 when he crossed the popular French cultivar, Pinot Noir (pollen parent-father), with the lesser-known Hermitage (today better known as Cinsault – the flower parent-mother). Pinotage was born! He originally planted six vines of this crossing in his garden to be able to look well after them.
Unfortunately, prof. Perold died before he could taste the wine made from Pinotage grapes. Thanks to the intervention of Prof. Chris Theron and his colleague, C.T. de Waal, at the University of Stellenbosch, the vines were well cared for and propagated accordingly.
Back to Bellevue… In 1959, six years after establishing the Pinotage block on Bellevue, PK started making wine from the grapes. In those days, all the Bellevue wines were sold in bulk to SFW and that also happened with the 1959 Pinotage. After two years of aging in the SFW barrel maturation cellar, the first single cultivar Pinotage was bottled in 1961. It was done under the Lanzerac label, at that stage a brand of SFW. A special commemorative vintage was bottled in 2019. Only 2 200 bottles were released in 2021 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of this special wine.
Dirkie’s relationship with this Pinotage block dates back another three decades. Dirkie was (as an eight-year-old) present when his uncle PK visited Bottelary Cooperative Cellar in the spring of 1959 with several glass jugs of young red wine. Dirkie says: “One needs about 24 bottles to enter a wine in the Young Wine Show”, which is an indication of the quantity of wine P.K. brought with him. Dirkie’s father, Danie, was at that stage the wine maker/manager at Bottelary Cooperative Winery, close to Bellevue.
The reason for PK’s visit was that he wanted to enter this young 1959-Pinotage for the annual South African Young Wine Show. However, he did not have the necessary equipment to cork the bottles. “He asked my father to assist him with the bottling and corking of the bottles for the show.” Dirkie still remembers his father saying that he does not understand why his brother wanted to enter this wine for the Young Wine Show, because it did not taste very nice! “I think it was because nobody knew Pinotage at that stage and a young Pinotage can be rude on the tongue!” laughs Dirkie.
A month or so later, the Bellevue Pinotage 1959 won the prestigious General Smuts trophy as the best wine overall at the South African National Young Wine Show. Obviously, this news was immediately spread across in every newspaper. The Morkel family still have a newspaper article that says: “Springbok rugby player is Union’s New Wine King!”
Dirkie and his father bought Bellevue from PK in the late seventies, as PK’s son was not interested in farming. Dirkie obtained a B.Sc. Agricultural degree (Viticulture and Oenology) in 1974 and then started working at Nietvoorbij (Research Institute for Viticulture and Oenology) nearby Stellenbosch. Although he was allocated to do research in the viticulture department, he had the opportunity to make wine in the experimental cellar during his last year at Nietvoorbij. In 1978 he returned to the university and graduated B.Sc. Agriculture Hons. (Viticulture).
He joined his father at Bellevue at the end of 1978 and started farming on his own in 1983. (His much-loved uncle PK died in 1993 and he lost his father (Danie) in 1997.) He immediately started taking care of the 1953-Pinotage block. At that stage its size was three hectares, but today it is only 2,5 hectares. The vineyard still produces the same excellent quality fruit as in 1959, when South Africa’s first commercial Pinotage was made from this vineyard. Today this vineyard block yields +- 7.0 ton of grapes annually. The 1953-Bellevue Pinotage (O.V.P.) wine is made from these grapes but some of the grapes also find its way to Lanzerac, as part of the special Pinotage project.
In November 1984 Dirkie had the privilege of tasting the (first) Lanzerac Pinotage 1959 with some of the South African wine legends of that time. “I have a photo where I am standing with Gert Nieuwoudt, Dr Charlie Niehaus, Prof. Chris Theron and uncle P.K. Morkel, after we have tasted this classic wine. It was an incredibly special moment in my life.
Commenting on the quality of wines made from old vineyards, Dirkie mentions: “I believe – unlike some others – that wine made of grapes coming from old vines are not (always) necessarily better. It depends on your personal preference. Wine from the older blocks taste different to me: always more elegant and ‘feminine’, and the older I get, the more I enjoy this wine style.”
