When winemaker Paul Jordaan is asked why he makes wine, he responds first with a full-belly laugh. “That’s a trick question,” he declares. But as he pauses to let the question marinate, his eyes start to glow as a grin escapes from the corners of his mouth. “It gives me a platform to tell the story of a place,” he says. “And hopefully my bottle is the first one empty on the table.”

Paul Jordaan has been able to tell many stories over the years, working alongside Eben Sadie as the winemaker for Eben’s company, Sadie Family Wines. In 2016, he met his business partner, Pauline Roux, who worked at Lammershoek, did a stint in Italy working with Adi Badenhorst, and also worked with Andrea Mullineux at Roundstone. They quickly discovered they shared the same winemaking vision, and in 2018, they started Paulus Wine Co. together. The duo’s first wine, Bosberaad, is an Afrikaans word that loosely translates to ‘a meeting or encounter in nature.’ “Wine is like the record of the meeting that took place the previous year, where everything comes together” says Paul. The aim is to produce a wine that finds and maintains that natural balance between all the controllable and uncontrollable, the visible and invisible elements involved.

Searching for the right vineyard to grow Chenin Blanc was quite easy, as Paul lives adjacent to the in-demand Schreiber’s Waterval Farm in the Siebritskloof Valley of the Paardeberg.  The organically farmed, bush vines were planted in 1980 on pure granite with granitic sand overlaid at 700 feet in elevation on an east facing ridge, limiting potent sunshine. Neal Martin of Vinous called the 2019 Bosberaad “one of the best Chenin Blanc wines that I have tasted in a long time.”  Pretty nice credentials for tasting the wine for the first time.

In 2021, the duo added Bartàs, another single vineyard Chenin Blanc but this time from the Rustenhof farm in Stellenbosch. Bartàs is a French (Occitan) slang word for ‘walking/struggling in the bush/vineyard to find your way to the cliff.’ It’s a beautiful metaphor of Paul Jordaan and Pauline Roux’s wine journey, and a nice homage to Pauline’s French heritage. They found their way, struggling along the cliff, and finally jumped to start a new wine adventure. We’re hopeful for more gems like these two from Paul & Pauline.