In this entry to our 2023 wine writing competition, wine enthusiast Dinah Longden writes about Samantha O'Keefe of Lismore. See our competition guide for more.
Dinah Longden writes I have been a wine enthusiast for almost all of my life, which in my case amounts to almost 50 years of legal drinking. When I retired from my local government job, I decided to pursue my wine hobby through the WSET certification process. I enrolled at nearby Plumpton College for WSET Level 2 and three years later I left the college with Levels 2, 3, and five-sixths of the Diploma, having been thwarted in my attempt to finish it by contracting Covid. I also have a BA (Hons) in International Wine Business. I have now completed the WSET Diploma and await my result. This (now 4-year) study programme has been fascinating and life-enhancing, and having completed the Diploma earlier this month, I decided to enter the JR Writing Competition for the first time. Previous attempts were curtailed by assignment deadlines. I consider myself very fortunate to live in East Sussex, in striking distance of Plumpton College, and surrounded by vineyards that are producing some of the finest sparkling wines I have ever tasted. I intend to pursue my interest in wine for as long as I can, taking opportunities that come my way to judge, write and organise tastings.
Greyton, in South Africa’s Western Cape, slightly inland and up the mountain a bit from Hermanus – 325 metres above sea level in fact – is home to Lismore Estate Vineyard. The tribal lands that preceded Greyton were home to a farm known as Weltevreden (which translates as ‘well satisfied’). The pioneering winemaker, Sam O’Keefe, might be well satisfied now, but that has the ring of smugness, and that is something Sam is not. No one can deny that Sam has had a hard time since moving from her homeland in California to set up Lismore but in her characteristically positive way, she would probably describe her tenure so far as encompassing the best of times, along with the worst of times.
Sam O’Keefe is a Californian who moved to South Africa to follow her dream of establishing a winery, and importantly, providing an idyllic lifestyle for her young family under the South African sun, surrounded by hiking trails that wind through the spectacular open landscape. This dream was to be short-lived.
Sam’s first glimpse of South Africa was in 1992, when as a student of political science, she was sailing round the world and happened to be sharing her vessel with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his wife. It was two weeks before the South African Apartheid Referendum, tensions were high in the country and there was a great deal of anxiety about the future. Archbishop Tutu, however, was optimistic and Sam remembers there being ‘so much love in the man’ (Atkin, 2020)1. Perhaps this chance meeting with Tutu shaped her ambitions, or maybe she already shared his optimism. Whatever role he played in Sam’s life, in 2000, she, along with her husband and their first baby, were in South Africa ready to settle down. They bought an old dairy farm in Greyton and set about planting a vineyard and establishing a winery.
No vines had been planted in the area before and the nearest vineyards were 50km away. Greyton is a very cool area – too cool for traditional South African grape varieties – and is surrounded by mountains. The region had been used for growing apples. But apple prices had collapsed, and the dairy was not doing very well. For Sam this represented right place, right time. The fact that she had neither experience of grape growing nor oenological knowledge did not deter her from the vision she held. Many people did not take her seriously, but she wanted to do something with her children and grow a business as a family. Two years later her husband had gone, leaving her with their young children.
By 2015, Sam had proved the doubters wrong and was making wines modelled on those from the Northern Rhone - from Syrah and Viognier - and a new style of textured wines in an oxidative style. In 2018, she was invited to join the Cape Winemakers’ Guild, an invitation that is extended to winemakers who have been responsible for the production of outstanding wines for a minimum of five years. At the time, this was the pinnacle of her achievements. Not the fact that she had started her business from bare land, coping with the loneliness of such a remote location and raising her two boys single-handedly in an adopted country, but because it was not just about making wine, it was about making the best possible wine that expressed terroir, from land that had nurtured her ambitions. Through Sam’s pioneering efforts, Greyton is now established as a South African Wine of Origin, in recognition of the specific terroir of the region. In 2019, Lismore was producing 75,000 bottles, and had caught the attention of sommeliers, who listed its wines in top restaurants. That December, Lismore’s tasting room was finally finished and had opened in readiness for the tourist season and Christmas sales, and the harvest was just a few weeks away.
On 17 December, a raging bush fire claimed her entire 16 years’ work in the space of 40 minutes. Suddenly everything was gone: her home, her winery, the whole of the 2019 vintage and 48 per cent of her vines were burnt. Her family and staff escaped, but some of Sam’s beloved pets, and the trees she had planted 16 years previously to mark the start of her wine adventure, no longer existed. It was a moment when she questioned her destiny. Natural disasters are every wine producer’s nightmare. Winemaking conferences are dedicated to subjects such as floods, hailstorms and fires and academic papers are rewritten as climate change predictions intensify, with professionals in the industry finding comfort in each other’s company. For most winemakers, an encroaching wildfire threatens to damage the harvest through smoke taint. With almost complete loss, it turned out that Sam was in the worst of company. And as she discovered, insurance against such events only goes so far. Sam was left with two options: either to walk away or to do it all again. She chose to do it all again.
Then came Covid-19. As the world went into lockdown in 2020, the impact on the South African wine industry was particularly harsh, with neither international nor domestic sales of alcohol permitted. In addition, years of extreme drought and economic disadvantage on the international markets meant that times were already difficult in the industry.
By 2021, as South Africa was lifting itself up again, Sam’s white wine blend of Chenin Blanc and Viognier, optimistically named Here Comes the Sun, was entered in the Cape Winemakers’ Guild auction, where Guild members submit their highly prized, rare bottles in order to raise funds for the Cape Winemakers’ Protégé Programme, which aims to nurture young talent in the industry. Sam dedicated her wine to the generosity of the South African wine industry, which had rallied round in her hour of need.
I have never met Sam O’Keefe. My impressions have all been gained from what I have read and the wines I have drunk. It is Sam’s resilience in the face of adversity that has inspired me to nominate her as my favourite wine person. As she proudly asserts, the wines she makes are ‘feminine’. The accolades continue to flood in for Lismore Estate wines, with international critics including Masters of Wine Jancis Robinson and Tim Atkin, as well as Robert Parker and Neal Martin, lending their voices in praise of her wines.
The cool climate and terroir that nurture the Lismore Estate wines produce intense and complex expressions of their grape varieties. There are no other winemakers in Greyton but that does not slow the desire to produce the best wines from each and every variety. The Viognier displays honeysuckle and orange blossom aromas, along with apricot and exotic fruits, yet manages to avoid the sometimes-cloying characteristics of the grape variety, while the Lismore Estate Reserve Syrah truly has feminine characteristics, combining a firm tannic structure with a lingering, perfumed finish. This wine is both light and graceful, yet intense, and as such, is a magical expression of cool climate Syrah.
There remains an under-representation of female winemakers globally. However, progress towards inclusiveness and parity is improving as women help to diversify the industry, and places at oenological institutions are increasingly occupied by women. The story behind Lismore Estates can only help to effect the shift in perception of women in a largely male-dominated industry. So much more than the ‘Queen of Viognier’ (as dubbed by Tim Atkin MW), Sam O’Keefe is an industrious, highly resilient, and positive winemaker with a generosity towards others. She has spotted opportunities where others told her she was crazy, taught herself the craft of winemaking, survived loneliness, homelessness and catastrophe and has come back a stronger and better winemaker. Sam would probably say this is partly due to the supportive nature of the wider wine industry, but there can be few people with the tenacity and drive to overcome and succeed in their chosen profession in the way that Sam has. For a winemaker to start from scratch and end up receiving the top bid in the CWMG auction, and that after the devastating fire, is testament to not only skill, but dogged determination and hard graft. South Africa’s problems with the wine industry continue, with average wine prices still very low, and many growers operating below a sustainable level of income. Winemakers like Sam are helping to raise the profile of quality wines from South Africa, demonstrating how they can compete with the better-known regions of both the old and new world.
It was the ‘Queen of Viognier’ who convinced me of the delights of this white variety. Were it not for Lismore’s Age of Grace, I might still be shunning this grape, and my wine journey would be the poorer for it. The wine world, too, would be so much the poorer without winemakers like Sam O’Keefe.
1Atkin T. (2020) Cork Talk with Samantha O’Keefe. [Podcast]. 15 May 2020. Available at: https://timatkin.com/cork-talk/cork-talk-with-samantha-okeefe/ (Accessed 15 May 2023).
The photograph of Samantha O'Keefe is courtesy of Lismore.