S African Pinots make progress

Pinot Noir was probably first planted in South Africa in the 1920s (the crossing with Cinsaut to produce Pinotage was made in 1925), but serious Pinot wine-making began only in the late 1970s. That was when a rich, wine-loving businessman, Tim Hamilton-Russell, decided to establish, against all sorts of traditional and regulatory odds, a hopeful Burgundian outpost in the Hemel en Aarde (‘Heaven and Earth’, pictured here) Valley just inland from the Atlantic village of Hermanus – unprecedentedly southerly and cool for Cape wine-making.

This was a time when Oregon’s now-great Pinot industry was starting to...