Vine Path Blog 1/22: Big Flower/Botanica Wines
Ginny Povall
Happy New Year! We’re thrilled to showcase the fresh vintages from one of our dearest friends and rising star winemakers, Ginny Povall. Hailing from Framingham, MA of all places, Ginny is a self-taught winemaker producing incredible bottlings from her regenerative estate in Stellenbosch South Africa. We’ve featured her wines in the club collections before, and we always have some available in the store because they’re so gosh darn good. So good in fact that an actual cult around her wines has formed amongst shoppers in our store, which comes as no surprise to us. Her wines just keep getting better and better with each passing vintage and that’s why we’re excited to once again share with you the wines of Big Flower/Botanica Wines.
A map of the Western Cape of South Africa
Ginny established her winery in 2009 on Protea Heights Farm, an old flower farm in Devon Valley, Stellenbosch. The vineyards were converted to organic practices in 2014 and have since advanced to a regenerative agriculture approach. As she says, “…the principles of regenerative agriculture, a next generation system of organic farming that increases soil fertility, builds biodiversity, improves soil’s water holding capacity and enhances our ecosystem to support healthy vineyards and fields. Key to this agroecological approach is no-till farming, a practice which aims to capture carbon in the soil and aboveground biomass, reversing current trends of atmospheric accumulation in an effort to slow climate change. At the same time, it offers increased yields, reduced disease pressure, greater resilience to drought and climate instability, and higher health and vitality for soils.” (I’m quite fond of this summation.)
Interest in regenerative agriculture has exploded in recent years, spurred on in the wine world by famous winemakers like Mimi Casteel in Oregon and Francois Chidaine in the Loire Valley of France. Regenerative agriculture has grown in influence so fast that General Mills(!!) is now in the process of converting 1 million acres of farmland to the practice by 2030. This approach is so novel that in viticulture it was only in 2020 that the first certification for regenerative agriculture was created, with the Paso Robles giant Tablas Creek Vineyard being the first to earn the certification.
One might reasonably ask, how does this matter to the quality of the wine? In an interview last October in Wine Enthusiast, Mimi Casteel put it this way: “This is, of course, a completely subjective answer, but yes, I definitely feel as though the wine quality here is a direct reflection of the improvements over time, and a return of a truly biological component of where we’re from.” Of this trend towards environmental farming, the iconic wine importer Neal Rosenthal writes, “this is all to the good because a soil that is vibrant, that has not been abused by synthetic fertilizers nor by pesticides or herbicides, gives life to the sacred vine.” And then on this idea’s connection to terroir he writes, “the goal, then, after the harvest, is to establish the conditions necessary to permit the character of the fruit to be expressed through the wine.” If what a great wine is is the clear expression of it’s terroir, that is the wine’s ability to express a place and time, then an environmentally responsible approach to winemaking and viticulture is a necessary precept to that end. No wonder that nearly all of the world’s most iconic, expensive, and highly regarded wines are made through the practice of some sort of organic/biodynamic/regenerative approach.
Perhaps I belabor this point, writing over and over again month after month about the importance of terroir and responsible agriculture to wine. But why would I stop? I’m a hatchet man in the name of it!
Flower Girl Albariño
Flower Girl Albariño
In 2018 Ginny grafted a plot in the Protea Heights vineyards to Albariño and we’re thrilled that she did. This grape virtually doesn’t exist in South Africa, though we find that regrettable. Albariño is fresh, bright, giving, and fruity by nature, a perfect refreshment wine! This bottling is exploding with stone fruit, citrus, and white flowers with a lightly grassy aroma and a firm mineral core. In thinking about wine we tend to favor the older, tend to prefer the wines that have to age to reach their full flower. Why though? If a wine shows it’s full self in youth and is still balanced, complex, flavorful, and satisfying, would we not call that wine great? Some food for thought for you to pair with this wine. 155 cases of this wine are produced annually.
Big Flower Cabernet Sauvignon
Big Flower Cabernet Sauvignon
Crafted entirely from estate fruit grown at Protea Heights. The name ‘Big Flower’ pays homage to Protea Heights’ history as South Africa’s first commercial flower farm, further emphasized by the gorgeous floral illustrations on the labels. The vineyards the Cabernet is grafted on were established in 2009 so this is still very much so a young-vine wine, though it certainly shows the potential of the vineyard as it develops. Aged for 11 months in old French oak barrels before bottling, the Cabernet Sauvignon shows off a mix of ripe dark fruit, tobacco, and spice with a rich and full texture. 280 cases of this wine are produced annually.
Big Flower Cabernet Franc
We are admitted obsessives about Cabernet Franc. It is easily classed among the most underappreciated and underrecognized grapes on earth. And what a shame! It’s one of the most dynamic and transparent expressers of terroir there is. Cabernet Franc, along with Sauvignon Blanc, is the parent varietal to Cabernet Sauvignon, which at about 200 years old is a relative newcomer to the 15,000 year old winemaking scene. Cabernet Franc is a varietal that’s rich in pyrazines, which make it’s wines notably savory, spicy, and vegetal. For a warm region like Stellenbosch, the expression is fuller, riper, and more intense than you’d find in a place like Bordeaux or the Loire, which also make exceptional Cabernet Franc. 135 cases of this wine are produced annually.
Botanica Mary Delany Collection Pinot Noir
Botanica Mary Delany Collection Pinot Noir
Wines in the Mary Delany Collection are sourced from vineyard sites around the Cape. The art on each label are collages created by the late British artist Mary Delany back in the late 1700s and boy are they gorgeously detailed. Pinot Noir is extraordinarily difficult to grow anywhere let alone a punishing, drought prone, hot area like South Africa. There are very few locations in the Western Cape that can do right by Pinot Noir, which is why such careful selection of vineyards for this bottling is so necessary. The grapes in this bottling are sourced from two plots, one in Hemel-en-Aarde (South Africa’s ‘grand cru’ for Pinot), and another in Stellenbosch. The wine is whole-berry fermented and then aged in neutral French oak for 9 months before release. The percentage of new oak seems to get smaller with each vintage, a trend we’re quite fond of. When done right, South African Pinot is rich and sappy with notable woodsy aromatics and ripe fruit tones without any loss of crisp acidity or any rasination of the fruit tones. This bottling checks all the boxes. 320 cases are produced annually.
A vineyard in Hemel-en-Aarde