Paul Jordaan had plenty of experience with Chenin Blanc and the Swartland working alongside Eben Sadie as the winemaker. Paul met his winemaking business partner Pauline Roux in 2016 while she was working with Adi Badenhorst on the Paardeberg. After realizing they shared the same winemaking vision, in 2018 they started a brand together, Paulus Wine Co. The duo’s first wine ‘Bosberaad’ loosely translates to a ‘gathering in nature’, and in this case a literal one. The aim is to produce a wine in partnership with nature, finding and maintaining that natural balance between all the controllable and uncontrollable, visible and invisible elements involved. Searching for the ‘right’ vineyard to launch was actually 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.
The fruit was handpicked and whole-bunch pressed directly to old French barrels where the juice fermented and naturally settled. The wine was kept on the lees and malolactic fermentation occurred naturally in barrel. After ten months of aging the wine was racked and bottled without fining or filtration and a sensible hit of sulfur dioxide.