Johan Meyer, AKA “Stompie”, has made a name for himself in the ever-emerging South African wine industry in a very short time. While his namesake Signature wines reflect his love of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir , Stompie felt that there was a gap in the market for affordable, well-made, organically-farmed & low-sulfur wines from the Cape. Thus, he founded Mother Rock in collaboration with his UK importer Ben Henshaw of Indigo Wines. This is very much a Cape wine label, with the whites rooted in Chenin Blanc and the reds rooted in Cinsault.

The Mother Rock umbrella includes the affordable, everyday line Force Celeste, the namesake Mother Rock line that is a little more serious, and then the zero-zero Brutal! line which is the most risk-taking. The latter is the first and only South African wine project to be granted permission to use the Brutal! label, a project that was founded by Laureano Serras, Joan Ramon Escoda, and Anthony Tortul in Catalonia. The only requirements are that it be ‘zero/zero’, meaning nothing is added and nothing is taken away, and it must be an experiment – in other words, it must be intentionally made, not just funky leftover juice. Stompie’s Brutal! wines join the club alongside Christian Tschida, Valentina Passelacqua, Matassa, Do.t.e, etc.

Today, Stompie and his wife, Anri, are the sole owners of Mother Rock. They are building their new home estate, Platteklip Vineyards, at the top of the Piketberg Mountain in the northern reaches of the Swartland. Stompie even applied for – and was granted – a new Wine of Origin appellation called Piket-bo-berg that is, today, a monopole of just his estate. Platteklip Vineyards is located at over 2,000 feet above sea level; anything below this height is designated as W.O. Swartland. While they wait for the vines to mature, Stompie sources his fruit for all the Mother Rock wines from organically-farmed plots throughout the Swartland. In the winery, Stompie has moved almost exclusively to concrete diamonds for fermentation and aging, though some wines still age in used oak. There is no SO2 added before or during fermentation, though the wines are often lightly sulfured before bottling for stability (with the exception of the Brutal! wines which never see sulfur). Ultimately, Mother Rock is about showcasing the best and purest expression of the Swartland’s diverse terroir.