2019 | Bruce Jack | Heartbreak Grape Pinot Noir

Producer Information

Bruce Jack (above) is an interesting guy. There’s a bit of a pioneer spirit about him – he’s prepared to do things a bit differently, as his Flagstone venture shows. He’s also one of those wine industry figures who is known as an ‘opinion former’, because he’s bright, articulate and is prepared to speak out. Bruce did a political science and English degree at the University of Cape Town, and then did a masters of literature at St Andrews University in Scotland in 1992. He then studied winemaking at Roseworthy in Australia – the first South African to do this —before working vintages here, there and everywhere. Eventually he came back to South Africa ready to do his own thing. Timing is everything, and Bruce was quite lucky to be starting out at an exciting time for South African wine. The wave was there ready to be surfed. But when he returned home he didn’t have a nice family estate to come back to. Instead, he had to start from scratch. So he decided to create a virtual winery in the trendy Waterfront region in Cape Town.Key to this operation was a huge chilling unit, which cost 500 000 Rand. This allowed Bruce to chill musts down to zero centigrade, to allow for prolonged cold soaks and lower levels of sulfur dioxide. The winery design also allowed for gravity flow, which reduces the need for mechanically stressful pumping. The first winery cost 2.6 million Rand. ‘We don’t buy grapes, we rent land,’ he explains, emphasizing the involvement Flagstone have in their growers’ viticultural management. When they started in 1999 it was very hard to get any grapes. ‘We had to beg, borrow and steal’, jokes Jack. A number of the current ventures are actually joint projects with vineyard owners.

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