‘Here’ is the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley in South Africa, one of the country’s southernmost estates and one of the closest to the ocean, lying just behind the old fishing village of Hermanus. And here is where Anthony’s father Tim, the Johannesburg-based chairman of advertising agency J Walter Thompson, bought 170 hectares of undeveloped land in 1975 specifically to plant classic French grape varieties in a cool climate. He planted the valley’s first vines the following year and made his first wines in 1981. These included Grand Vin Noir, a Pinot Noir released in October 1982 that couldn’t be labelled by grape variety or vintage until the country’s restrictive wine quota laws were dropped in 1985, largely thanks to Tim’s efforts. The wine won great acclaim.

Tim continued until 1991, seeing the wines’ and the estate’s reputation grow around the globe before handing it over to Anthony, who returned to South Africa from management consultancy in London after Nelson Mandela’s release in 1991. He bought the property in 1994.

Switching tack to concentrate exclusively on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Anthony commissioned in-depth soil research. It identified 52ha of stony, iron- and clay-rich shale-derived soil as prime material for the two varieties. By then replanting was already underway to replace the original Swiss BK5 Pinot Noir clone with four Dijon selection clones – well before anyone in South Africa had them.

Two things are striking about the choice of Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. One is that, unlike in Burgundy, there is no limestone, the Holy Grail for many Pinot Noir producers, whether or not they aspire to a Burgundian style. And the subsoils are very acidic, unlike limestone soils. The other is that the climate is maritime, not continental. Not only is rainfall higher than in Burgundy but the average temperature across the four key months of the growing season is lower; even the hottest days are cooler than in Burgundy.

Above all, though, it’s the heavy clay soils that Anthony credits with working the ‘serendipitous magic’ on their wines. The soils, he says, are fairly marginal: if anything, they battle with low vigour, making it ‘quite difficult commercially’. Their Pinot Noir yields are often below 20hl/ha and have rarely reached 25hl/ha, although they will increase modestly in future because of the work they’ve done on their soils, including organic viticulture and regenerative farming.

Talking about vigour and yields takes us to another distinctive feature of Hamilton Russell Pinot. That acclaimed 1981 Pinot Noir was from vines that were barely five years old. Young by any standards, but Anthony doesn’t buy into the ‘old vines are superior’ theory. There’s a knee-jerk reaction that old vines are good, he says, ‘but low yields throughout their life gives us old-vine behaviour with young vines.’

Anthony is talking, first, at a retrospective masterclass in London in March 2022 to celebrate 40 years of Hamilton Russell Vineyards Pinot Noir, then in a follow-up zoom tasting with me three months later. We tasted seven vintages at the first, starting with the inaugural 1981 and ending with 2021 – vintages that he says were all generally well-received and are indicative of their time. In June, we tasted the seven most recent releases, including 2018 and 2021 that were at the earlier tasting; 12 different vintages in all.

A lot can happen in four decades of winemaking and it has. There have been five winemakers, book-ended by Peter Finlayson (1979–1990) and Emul Ross, whose first solo vintage was 2015 and whom Anthony hopes will stay a long time: ‘There’s no ego in his wines. It’s about purity and balance. He’s restrained with oak and is very reluctant to interfere with acidity. He never fights the vintage.’

The early wines were made from less ripe grapes – the Swiss BK5 clone picked almost before full physiological ripeness – and they were aged in French barriques for almost twice as long as now, a high percentage of them new. Four Dijon selection clones replaced BK5 in the second half of the 1990s, the emphasis gradually shifting to clone 115, producing darker, riper, richer, more structured wines.

Today, all fermentation is with organic endemic or indigenous yeasts, sterile filtering went in 2005. François Frères has become the main cooper and the level of toasting has been fine-tuned to include a significant component of blonde toast (essentially untoasted). Careful racking and longer settling time before bottling are routine and the cellar was completely overhauled in 2014 to provide a dedicated Pinot Noir area with small, temperature-controlled open-top fermenters, allowing optimal cap management.

The vineyards, fully organic since 2015, benefit from some biodynamic treatments and regenerative farming to promote soil life, water retention, natural vine nutrients and disease resistance. The cellar’s focus under Emul Ross has been on restraint and non-intrusive winemaking, emphasising purity of site, vintage expression, fruit perfume and concentration and improving texture without high alcohol. It’s working. And how!