Based in the cool-climate Elgin Valley in South Africa, Kershaw Wines is a small, quality-focused producer specialising in Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah. The Elgin Valley’s remarkable terroir is a unique combination of higher altitude, ocean proximity, distinctive cloud cover patterns and pronounced diurnal shifts, allowing wines that capture precision, balance and nuance. Founded in 2012 by Richard Kershaw MW, the operation started with Chardonnay and Syrah, with Pinot Noir joining in 2015.
Richard is one of only a handful of Masters of Wine in the world who actively make wine, and the only one who makes wine in South Africa. Born and raised in the UK, he was a chef before he found wine, working in California, Chile, Bordeaux, Hungary and Germany before settling in South Africa in 1999. He passed his Master of Wine exam in 2011 and joined the Cape Winemakers Guild in 2021, an invitational membership of passionate winemakers who have played a pioneering role in the South African wine industry. His approach to winemaking is both scientific and deeply personal. Over the years, he has spent countless hours studying how different Burgundian clones behave in Elgin’s cool-climate soils, developing an algorithm that matches clones and soil types to each barrel.
The team behind Kershaw Wines is close-knit and hands-on: winemaking is led by Richard, supported by Dudley, his oenologist. ‘We’re a tight-knit, slightly obsessive and very proud team, proof that small can indeed be mighty, especially when fuelled by good humour, good coffee and a shared love of fine wine,’ Richard says.
All wines are made in small volumes with meticulous attention to detail. When they pick grapes during harvest, they pick according to clone and soil type, matching soils and clones to each barrel. Though they take 11 parcels of grapes, they end up with 21 batches of wine. By tasting every six weeks over 10, 12 or 18 months for the red wines, they can make decisions based on maturation progress: stirring, turning the barrel or doing nothing at all.
For Richard, one of the most joyful moments in winemaking is the period leading up to harvest, when he can walk the vineyards, taste the berries and sense what the forthcoming season will bring. He loves that anticipation, the subtle clues in flavour and aroma that hint at what’s to come. Once harvest begins, everything sharpens into laser focus: marketing, logistics and all other distractions fall away. Life becomes entirely about the grapes and the wine they will become. Then, once in the cellar, amid the noise of presses and equipment, there’s a serene sense of achievement. Watching the wine ferment in a barrel, hearing it quietly bubble away, you enter a very special zone, a moment of calm in the chaos.
His philosophy centres on expressing a true sense of place, making wines in a non-interventionist way that reflects those qualities in the glass. The emphasis is on the vineyard first, but he believes maturation plays an equally important second role, whilst winemaking is arguably only third. For him, it’s about precision and purity, where science, craftsmanship and a true sense of place come together in the glass.
