I went to a Pinot presentation and workshop hosted at Bramon and run by Jan Boland Coetzee. I met some interesting people and tasted some pretty fine wine. In conversation I asked a fellow attendee how many bottles he thought would be the minimum that a farm would need to produce in order to survive. He was emphatic that no-one could survive on an output of less than seventy thousand. Well, that was pretty bad news for me: at maximum production we hope to produce about six thousand bottles. That was a year or so ago. Since then I have come to understand that the “70,000 recipe” is nonsense. Any fool must know that every wine is different and that the number of bottles it takes to reach your break-even point is largely dependent on your cultivar and quality. Looking back, I am amazed that I allowed myself to be so downcast by the pronouncements of that “expert”.

Having said this, the only way we will be able to survive in this game will be to produce a really superior wine and to capitalise on the novelty of the new region. So far, almost no-one here is doing Pinot. It is going to be a miracle if we pull it off but the signs so far are good and we are not looking for the kind of income that supports a lavish lifestyle. People are buying our wine (no doubt they have to drink half the bottle just to get over the shock of the price!), and the quality has improved with each harvest and promises to continue doing so.