Esteemed winemaker De Wet Viljoen joined the Wildekrans team from Neethlingshof where for over twenty years he was the winemaker producing exceptional wines.
Having grown up on a wine farm near Worcester, Wildekrans winemaker, De Wet Viljoen must have learned a lot about wine growing and making, simply by osmosis. But, being the youngest of five children, he was not about to inherit the family farm so he went to Stellenbosch University to get educated instead, notching up a B.Sc. in Microbiology before finally reconciling his roots and studying Oenology and Viticulture.
“You start with a very clear idea of what you want but you can’t follow a recipe to get there,” he explains. “It’s more a case of developing an understanding of the vines – knowing them, not theoretically or generically but tangibly. It’s a relationship you conduct on a localised scale, where you chart the soil changes within each vineyard, and through the vineyard management techniques you use, come to know what you can expect from each section of every vineyard. If you get the basics right, it’s far easier for the wine you make to express its origin and personality. The rest follows naturally.”
In De Wet’s own words, “Wines are like humans; we have a place where we were born and raised, and this contributes to who we are. With wines, I aim to create wines with personality and a sense of place.”