De 10 van Alvi van de Merwe

12 Aug De 10 van Alvi van de Merwe

The Alfalfa farm, where Alvi’s Drift is located, has 4000 cattle, a cheese factory, 2000 pigs, chickens, 150 ha of fruit. That means a lot of work. 500 people work for this passionate entrepreneur. Some of these families have been working at Alvi’s Drift for three or four generations. These 500 people either live nearby or are picked up. There are schools for the children. The 38 managers are given a house and a moped to move around the site. The family does not have to leave the site to go shopping, because in addition to the butcher and cheese factory, Junel has also single-handedly created a large vegetable garden. As you walk and drive, you see all the employees doing their work, also around the house. It is striking how attentive and friendly everyone is. That is related to Alvi’s vision of management. ‘You set the lines and let everyone do their thing, there is little point in sitting on top of things. People have their own responsibility.’  A BIT OF A WEIRD QUESTION MAYBE, BUT IF YOU WERE A GRAPE, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU BE? Now you’ve got me, because that’s easy to answer for me: Cabernet Sauvignon! Wine from this grape only gets better with age (just like me 🙂 ). When young, Cabernet is hard and tannic, then the wine becomes soft and supple. And don’t forget, Cabernet is the backbone of most blends. Just like me in real life!  

YOU WERE A DOCTOR BEFORE YOU STARTED ALVI’S DRIFT. DO YOU MISS NOT WORKING AS A DOCTOR ANYMORE? It was a great privilege to be a doctor and I miss the close contact you build with young parents during childbirth. You form such a strong bond. But the world of wine has always been a dream for me and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We have great fellow producers who have become friends. Wine is not just a product. Wine is chemistry, biology, geography, history, food and so much more. I am a blessed man: I meet really nice people and travel to the most beautiful places. I am very grateful for this.   WHAT IS YOUR FIRST ‘WINE’ MEMORY? I remember when I was a young boy of about 8-9 years old, I had to help my father pump wine over at night and on weekends. I had to start the pump and Dad would sit on top of the tank checking the level of the wine. We also checked the sugars and tasted the must together. These are the flavours and aromas I thought about when I missed home.   WHAT PART OF THE WINEMAKING PROCESS DO YOU ENJOY THE MOST? I love the harvest, every year I can create a new product. Every year is the best year in my mind and I love the winemaking process.

  WHICH WINE WOULD YOU TAKE WITH YOU IF YOU WERE SITTING ON AN UNOCCUPIED ISLAND IN YOUR ONCE? (AND ASSUMING YOU WERE ALLOWED TO BRING WINE) I would always take a chenin blanc, a wine with nice primary aromas. We often go by car to the small idyllic coastal town of Tofu in Mozambique. This is about 2,800 km from the Cape and 500 km north of Maputo. It has some of the best diving and surfing and really beautiful beaches. The Signature Chenin is a wine we always enjoy then.   WHAT WINE WOULD YOU BRING IF JUNEL WAS ON THE DESERT ISLAND TOO? With Junel, I couldn’t go anywhere without champagne. She would never come with me otherwise. For her, life is a party and we always have something to celebrate!   ALVI’S DRIFT IN CORONA TIMES Corona also hit South Africa hard. The lockdown even prohibited the sale of alcohol (and cigarettes) and no export until June 1. Alcohol consumption was prohibited – except in one’s own home. To this day (we are now talking about mid-July) you are not allowed to drink alcohol in restaurants. ‘Luckily we have a multi-farm, we grow our own wine. And meat, chicken, vegetables, cheese and fruit are also abundantly available’.   WE HEARD ABOUT THE ‘YOU SAVE TRUCK’. WHAT IS THAT? For our staff, more than 500 people including families, we had arranged a so-called You Save Truck, a shopping bus that came to our site. The staff could do their shopping there and also withdraw money. This way, the staff did not have to go too far to do their shopping. Everyone who works for us lives fairly close to the farm. But to go to the city, it is quite a few kilometers walk. So we asked Shop-rite to come here. And everyone could just do their shopping. (a kind of old-fashioned SRV-man!) A great solution.   WAS EVERYONE ABLE TO CONTINUE WORKING WITH YOU? We didn’t have any sick people at Alvi’s Drift, we did have a few infections, but no one got sick from that. The Alvi’s Drift farm is big enough that keeping distance from each other wasn’t a problem at all. Everyone was able to continue working. And we are very grateful for that.   YOU ARE THE LARGEST PRODUCER OF VIOGNIER IN SOUTH AFRICA. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT? When you think of viognier, you immediately think of the Rhône or the Languedoc. It was increasingly being planted there, so we thought/hoped that this would become a trend. Fortunately, we were not far off the mark. When people all over the world heard that viognier had also been planted in South Africa, we received requests from everywhere. And now we are the largest viognier producer in South Africa. Mind you! “We make something like 240,000 bottles of viognier. The vast majority is in the Signature series, a very small percentage goes into our Reserve CVC (Chenin / Viognier / Chardonnay), a very tasty white blend, an even smaller part goes into the red 221 and the Bismarck”.   WHAT’S NEXT? Despite this special Corona year, we are of course not sitting still. We are making new wines again! We got so many ideas from traveling at the end of last year. The 221 series is being expanded with a Pinotage, of which a small part – 3% – is matured in wood. That will be a fruity wine with backbone. Inspired by Bordeaux, I am also working on a white Bordeaux blend: there is Sémillon in the wine, which is mainly characterized by Sauvignon Blanc. Due to the wine legislation in South Africa, this wine will of course not be called a Bordeaux blend, but Reserve Sauvignon Blanc. By the way: the same South African wine legislation has ensured that the Muscat de Frontignan made from the Muscat de Frontignan grape can no longer be called Muscat. From now on it will go through life as Nectarina. So when our stock with this label runs out, we will switch to the Nectarina. And besides that my MCC is ready, the Methode Cap Classique – you know, from the second fermentation in the bottle – Brut Nature. Without dosage. A gem. Enough news. Hope to see everyone again soon in the Netherlands.