The birthing of The Hammer

Imagine the dream of opening your own restaurant or starting your own winery. I was fortunate enough to hook up with a world-class winemaker who has multiple 90+ point wines in The Wine Spectator, who allowed me to live my whim. We produced what I hope you will think is a serious wine. Flashing back to April of 2003.....

Have you ever taken the flight back from South Africa to Atlanta? The seventeen hours gives one the opportunity to do a lot of thinking. I had been a wine importer’s liaison representing perhaps the most important selection of South African wines being brought into the US. Regular visits with many of South Africa’s top wineries and cutting edge winemakers had put plenty of ideas in my head. While sitting in concourse A at Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport, waiting for my flight back to Jacksonville, I decided to make a call. The call was to Jose Conde of Stark/Conde in Stellenbosch.

The ex-pat status of Jose is intact as he is originally from Kansas City. Jose is a graphic designer by trade and fell in love with a lovely lady while graphic designing in Tokyo. Turns out that Jose’s wife, Marie, has parents who lived in Japan but moved back to her father's home country and purchased a significant vineyard in Stellenbosch. After $300 sushi dinners in Tokyo and two adults with two children living in a 600 square foot apartment began getting old, Jose and Marie also decided to move to South Africa. The South African graphic design business was not what Jose was looking for and he began taking winemaking courses. When he decided to take the plunge into winemaking, he was guided by one of the best in the country if not the world, Neil Ellis.

Jose makes his wine in a converted house that is behind the Neil Ellis winery. Today his winery is light years ahead of where it was when Jose first began making wine there in 1998. The walls have been gutted and the size has been expanded. When you try to picture a ‘garagiste’ winery, you need look no further than Stark-Conde Cellars. Jose originally began producing less than 1000 cases of wine per year. The winery is now chugging along at between 2 and 3000 cases. There are no forklifts, just biceps and triceps lugging chilled, 20kg boxes to the sorting table. The must is all punched down by hand in half ton bins. When the harvest is in full force, Jose may break out the 3 ton bin. The 3 ton bin gives a humble demeanor to the puncher who feels that they are the master of the half-ton bin. I ate everything in sight for six weeks and lost weight after dealing with the 20 kilo grape relay races and the six times a day punch downs. I encouraged Jose and Marie to open up a spa-retreat where they could receive free labor and still be paid a couple of grand a week per person by their free labor.

Jose and I initially met at a ‘Wines of South Africa’ tasting at the Helmsley Palace in New York. Being our company’s liaison to the South African wines, I was helping the wineries that we represented pour their wines. My associate, Michael Swain came up to me and mentioned that he thought that some of the most interesting wines that he tasted during the event were at the Stark/Conde table and they were not currently represented in the US market. Michael was right, the wines were terrific. Being with a semi-progressive/semi-conservative company, I had to convince the President of our company that we should take on Jose’s wines. Given the small amount of wine that Jose produced, I was able to barter a deal based on the fact that I agreed to sell the whole allocation of Stark/Conde in Florida should it not sell elsewhere.

Back to the Hammer. When I called Jose from Atlanta, my thoughts were to try and produce a wine differently than Jose was producing. Jose’s wines are terroir-driven from the Jonkershoek Valley. The gentle punch-down micro-vinification in half-ton bins are very similar to the techniques used in Burgundy. This procedure brings out the silkiness in Jose’s wines and tends to showcase his vineyard’s terroir. My thought was to try and put a bit of oomph in the process by fermenting in 500 liter barrels turned on their side with the heads off. The fermentations were vigorous, the integration with the new oak successful and the wine now sports a body rich in glycerin with a rich and toasty ‘Starbucks-like’ character. Given that the capacity of fermenting in a 500 liter barrels can only handle around 40 percent of the juice that will fill the barrel, we ended up fermenting what we could not accommodate in the barrels in Jose’s half- ton bins. The half-ton bins tempered the new 500 liter French oak barrels and eventually enhanced the balance of the Hammer. The picture above shows Jose's previous sorting table for the selection of the best grapes. Jose now has a new high tech version that is much quicker and more precise. I had recruited soldiers for the harvest. The guy in orange is Wine Warehouse founder Tom Dorn.

The other difference between The Hammer and Jose’s Shiraz wines is that The Hammer was produced from multiple terroirs with the hope that the multiple sources will contribute to the complexity of the wine. After all, Grange is produced from multiple terroirs. Jose’s wines look for site specificity to provide a reference point to his wines. The Hammer looks for…….well…..whatever it is that we think we can do from wherever it is that we think we can do it, with the hope of creating a more harmonius whole.

Pre-vintage decisions are often carried out in a crystal ball. We had no idea how our presumptions would turn out and unfortunately some of them failed. One of our sites on the Stellenbosch/Paarl border turned out to have a lot of stress in the vines which in turn showed in the juice. In this case, stress equaled rubber. The glass half full here is that even though we lost money selling this juice in bulk, I’m certain that I lost at least two pounds punching these grapes and was likely to be sporting much more upper-body definition from the experience.

Our site in Wellington was not far from our friend Marc Kent of Boekenhoutskloof’s site, which had what is called in wine lingo; a four by four. This phenomenon is where one’s acid is at or below four grams per liter and one’s pH is at or above the 4.0 range. This situation would have the professors at UC Davis’ heads spinning as this is the perfect equation for instability in a wine. We decided to purchase a bit of Tannat, the grape that one can find in Madiran which is know for its strength, spiciness and acidity, thus figuring that we could blend the lower pH and more acidic Tannat into the Shiraz and balance out this 4x4. The Tannat seemed nice and spicy, but this was in a very subtle way and we ended up not blending it and keeping it by itself. In an un-Marc-Kent-like fashion we succumbed to the chemistry gods and broke out the bag to bring the pH of the Wellington Shiraz down from 4.04 to 3.8. The Davis profs heads are still spinning, but now at a slower rate. The rest of our lots escaped the rath of the bag. The Hammer wines were bottled unfiltered. The heads are beginning to spin faster again.

In addition to the Wellington fruit, we harvested a few tons of Shiraz from a different site on the Paarl/Stellenbosch border, a ton from the Bottlery Hills in Stellenbosch, a few tons from one parcel in Jonkershoek and a half-ton from the block that goes into Conde’s Syrah and Neil Ellis’ Vintners Select Shiraz. Our eight tons ended up being just over four tons worth of production when all was said and done. We had to make a selection with our discarded lots being blended off into someone’s soup of Shiraz intended for the mass market. My hope is that our discards helped somebody’s blend. One grows attached to their different lots when you have done all you can to make them the best that they can be. Unfortunately if the flavor and aroma profile is not where you want it, the juice has to go.

Pictured above is William the crew chief at the winery. William, Zola and Joseph are an integral part of the harvest at Stark/Conde. They all speak Xhosa (pronounced by clicking your tongue and then saying o-za.) William's English is very good with Zola and Joseph understanding more English than they spoke. We listened to the Xhosa radio station during much of the grunt work and I even picked up a few words from William.

So there you have it. There are two Hammer wines from South Africa in 2004; a mere 270 cases of the Shiraz and 95 cases of the Tannat. Fifty cases of Shiraz made its way to the UK and is being sold by Richard Kelley, MW. Currently the Tannat has fleshed out beautifully and the Shiraz is indeed smokin.’

A recent e-mail from Jose: Hi Gregg, Just wanted to let you know that I had a bottle of The Hammer last night (March 19, 2007) and it was absolutely fantastic. I was really pleased. I think it will benefit from a bit more time in the bottle, but it was really good. I hope you will agree. Regards, José

This Shiraz has an opaque blue-purple hue. The bouquet is deep with plummy and blue fruits combined with smoked meat and roasted coffee. The initial impression on the palate is silky and broad. The mid-palate is expansive with the deep blue fruits coming through with vanilla and toasty notes on the lingering finish. Beautiful stuff. Substantial. Produced by nice guys. Drinking smooth and complex now but has a few years to go before peaking.

The Hammer ‘Coastal’ South Africa Shiraz 2004, Retail $29.99 Warehouse $19.99

This Tannat has around 15% of Shiraz blended in to give it a round attack on the palate. The color has medium plus depth with an eggplant purple hue. Raspberries scream from the glass with a slight meaty and light vanillan tone. Again this is silky on the palate with medium plus body. The raspberry-vanilla swirl hangs out for a long time on the finish. A super value for the price considering it was all produced by hand.

The Hammer ‘Coastal’ South Africa Tannat 2004, Retail $17.99 Warehouse $12.99

You CAN touch this………… They will be in the Wine Warehouse stores early next week. Hammer Time………

The Stark and Conde wines are limited production offerings. The current releases are:

Stark Syrah 2004, Retail $25.99 Warehouse $ 18.99

Dark and racy, with cherry, currant and blackberry notes stitched together with sanguine, vanilla and mineral hints. Long, tangy finish. Drink now. 391 cases produced. 87 pts Wine Spectator

Stark Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Retail $26.99 Warehouse $ 18.99
Nice focused mix of red and black cherry, grilled herb, mineral and toast notes. Streamlined finish. Drink now through 2008. 533 cases produced. 88pts Wine Spectator

Conde Syrah 2003, Retail $34.99 Warehouse $ 26.99

Ripe and streamlined, with a pure beam of black cherry and raspberry fruit stitched with tobacco, mineral and judicious toast. Solid, focused finish. Drink now through 2007. 164 cases produced. 90pts Wine Spectator

Conde Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Retail $ 41.99 Warehouse $ 31.99

Structured, with concentrated currant, coffee, bittersweet cocoa and dark olive notes and a tight, muscular finish. Needs modest cellaring to open up fully. Drink now through 2009. 396 cases produced. 90 pts Wine Spectator

South Africa is one of the most beautiful places on the planet and so are many of the wines produced there. A real progressive vibe is emerging in South Africa's wine scene. Many producers are isolating their best lots and treating them with the care and expertise that puts these cuvees in high company. Will write more about this next week. Dankie!