Elgin Vinters

Different vessels, one cellar brief

Marinda Kruger-Claassen works across foudres, concrete eggs, open-top wooden fermenters and amphorae as Winemaker at Elgin Vinters in Elgin Valley. She has held the cellar brief here since 2018, alongside the work of Business Manager and shareholder, which gives her station a particular kind of weight: the same hands that read fermentations also carry the longer view of the estate. At Ridgelands Farm, on Appletiser Road, that means making wine inside a partnership rather than a single-family script. Six grape growers formed the house around fruit from the Elgin Valley, a high inland plateau shaped by orchards, vineyards and the mountain rim of the Kogelberg and Hottentots Holland ranges. Marinda Kruger-Claassen works within that collective model without letting it blur the line of the wines. Her visible output includes Sandstone Sauvignon Blanc 2021, Ponthuis Pinot Noir 2021, Oudebrug Merlot 2021 and Ironstone Syrah 2020, a set that moves through variety and vintage while keeping the cellar language controlled. The farm itself dates to 1890, but the present discipline is not nostalgia. It is the management of cool-climate fruit, vessel by vessel, with business decisions and bench-side decisions held in the same frame.

Cool fruit from a high valley

The method begins in the valley’s altitude and weather. Elgin sits between 250 and 500 meters above sea level, with cooling Atlantic influence and a diurnal shift that help grapes keep natural acidity while they ripen slowly. The house works with Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with Shiraz also part of the broader cellar vocabulary, and its sustainable direction rests on the region’s patience rather than force. One named source, Pine Tree Vineyard, was planted in 2002 and supplies Pinot Noir from Tukulu, Koffie Klip and Table Mountain Sand Stone soils on a north-west facing slope. In the vineyard, green harvesting before veraison narrows the crop, and vines are trained to a double Perold system for light and air. Harvesting is by hand, in eighteen-kilo boxes, with Pinot Noir picked in three stages. In the cellar, that Pinot Noir receives a four-day maceration before fermentation. The fruit is de-stemmed into open-top fermenters and closed stainless steel tanks; fermentation lasts approximately eighteen days, with punch-downs for the open-top portion and pump-overs for the closed portion. The measurements matter because they locate the style. Nothing here asks ripeness to do all the talking.

The room above the orchards

The tasting room gives the cellar work a long view. High ceilings, broad glass and valley sightlines set the pace, with vineyards and fruit orchards holding the edge of the room rather than a city street. Conversation stays easy. The place has the feel of a working country estate, not a polished set built around the bar; there is a country house on the farm, mountain scenery beyond it, and the sense that the vineyards share ground with the orchards that shaped Elgin before wine took hold. The region’s wine ward was declared in 1990, and the route is still young beside older South African appellations. That youth sits quietly in the room. The craft here is not a fixed inheritance, but a discipline being worked through each vintage at Ridgelands Farm.