Jackie grew up on Vrede, the farm next to Anysbos Fourth child of Willem and Cornelia Davids. Her mother calls her Suzette but we, and the whole valley, call her Jackie. Her life changed when she fell pregnant at the age of sixteen and still at school. The father of the child, Ashley, was working […]
I have seen it before and I’ve heard it before, but I have not experienced it like this before. Bottling our wine on our farm. Not all of us have our own bottling plants. We hire F..Off big trucks with huffing ‘goeters’ and puffing things to come to us to bottle our wine. It reminds […]
After some glorious winter rainfall on Gabrielskloof, sinking into the soil profiles to quench the thirsty deeper roots. We’re through the sensitive flowering cycle for most of the white cultivars, but the reds are lagging due to this cool period. Some pressure to get through the last few blocks for suckering, and to keep a […]
BOT RIVER WINES WENT ROAD TRIPPIN’ The Bot River Wineries embarked on an epic adventure and the wonderfully eclectic bunch of winemakers dusted off their gumboots in exchange for their city savvy attire. Hitting the road for a trip to Johannesburg, Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Maseru (Lesotho) to promote the beautiful Bot River Wine Route was […]
What an exciting time of the year all flushed, bright and green. Training and shaping young vines to form the backbone and arms to bear fruit for the future, now that we have had some meaningful rain these young vines will grow at a rapid rate and hopefully fill the cordon wire by the end […]
Following the driest August in our 45yr history, we received this beautiful deep wetting rain over the last weekend. Very happy farmer now. Young plantings of Chenin, Pinotage, Grenache and Mourvedre are especially loving it. This will carry the vines a long way trough the season. Looking forward to harvest 2020!
Sometimes you need little angels to show you the way. And if you are lucky enough you’ll recognise them. There was this person sitting next to me at my brother-in-law’s birthday party seven or eight years ago. I told her that we ha some grapes and we hoped to make some half decent wine from […]
It was Simon the first van der Stel, governor of the Cape, who started it. Combining his name with a forest of yellowwood trees to create a name for the settlement that would become Stellenbosch. The land we bought near Botrivier had no name. Simply a number. 880. The original name was Avontuur. But there […]
In 2007 Johan and Sue Heyns bought two pieces of land that would become Anysbos. The remains of a stone cottage became our home and the old muleshed, offices and a tasting room. We built dams and roads and planted olive trees. Twenty two thousand of them. In 2012 we planted the first dryland bushvines. […]
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