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 […]
We’re settling into 2019 and wines are in tank. Always a tricky time of the year just before harvest, it feels like a “hurry up and wait” scenario to me, but the grapes came in healthy, with our biggest problem being bird damage. This year we tackled the problem with bird nets and lots of […]
With our first year living on our new farm Genevievev MCC at Klein Botrivier underway, its been a busy one, dedicated to the challenges and also slowly creating our mark on the farm, one of our first to-do’s was renovating the 2 cottages on the farm so we could start sharing the farm with visitors […]
The wineries of Bot River invite you to join them for their fifth annual Barrels & Beards Harvest Celebration from 15 to 16 April. The 2016 vintage is in full swing, leaving not a spare minute in the day of a Bot River winemaker for trivial things like personal grooming. About six years ago, Niels […]
Please take a second to make your vote for the Bot River Wine Route. We’ve been nominated for the Award for Most Memorable Wine Route! This award goes to the most popular wine route selected by wine tourists who cherish memories of their experience of a particular wine region because of its ambience, accessibility, scenic beauty, soul, […]
On Sat 25th Oct Bot River Wineries hosted our annual barrel rolling competition. Wildekrans Wines won the barrel that was kindly sponsored by Toneleria Nacional. This is a community project that the Bot River Winery Association organises once a year and is a wonderful day for the local farm workers and their families and friends. […]
Long before the wine, wheat, lavender and sheep farmers took up residence in Bot River the Khoisan were roaming the land with their livestock, enjoying the rich pastures along the river. They produced butter, or botter in Afrikaans, which the early settlers came to trade and which ultimately led to the name Bot River. You […]
Just letting you know what we’ve been up to, we’ve been busy , mostly preparing for harvest, quietly and kindly informing the grapes to ripen perfectly , telling the weather to play nice and then we wait… The 13th and 14th of February were the harvest dates this year; rather appropriate considering how much bubbly […]
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