Coterie – a small group with shared tastes or interests.

A ripe and approachable wine of deceptively serious quality, a satisfyingly ripe, punchy blend of Cab Franc and Malbec of depth and substance.

Rich and textural expression of our Cabernet Franc Malbec blend. The 2023 vintage is aromatic and perfumed with the Cabernet Franc really shining through on the nose; bramble, mulberry and gentle ‘leafiness’. The Malbec brings structure and weight with blackberry, cherry & violets. Aged for 20 months in older and new French oak, providing firm but velvety tannins with a long and savoury finish with hints of mocha & smoky spice.

The Earth’s mantle thrusts up above the gentle town of Franschhoek, a wild slice of untamed mountain on which sits a farm named Wildeberg. An established wine region for some 350 years, sensible generations never thought to plant a vine here until a happy band of idealists recently craned their necks up at this hillside and, dizzy with hope, decided to give it a go. Franschhoek is on the very edge of the south-eastern corner of the Cape’s venerable Coastal Region, indeed Wildeberg’s property border runs over the top of the mountain where the Coastal Region gives way to the baboon-strewn road to Grabouw and the wider Western Cape.

The Wildeberg wines express the most captivating Franschhoek Valley fruit. In our Wildeberg Terroirs bottlings we look beyond our home to a clutch of exceptional sites of other origin.

A mountain rich in metaphor with the visual heft to flatter any wine, releases of Wildeberg and Terroirs express our continued purpose – exceptional wines of place, however humble the origin. If the abiding memory of our wines remains a textural sense of place then we are portraying the Cape as hoped.

Wildeberg’s rationale is to source the finest vineyards available to us across Franschhoek and the Coastal Region, from which cuvées the eyes are plucked to make Wildeberg and the Terroir Series releases In doing so there remains a small yet definitive expression of all the vineyards we worked with, and its these cuvees that are again selected to go into Coterie by Wildeberg. All fruit is hand-harvested in February from selected sites in Franschhoek and Paarl. Both cultivars are fermented whole bunch, with some whole berry fruit, there is no crush, just a daily pump over during the natural fermentation. We want to express place over cultivar so this slow, gentle extraction gives wines truer of origin than winery. The components are racked to French and Austrian oak, new and old, for 20 months before blending and bottling.

Grilled meats, especially lamb and spiced meat dishes.