Friday, April 13, 2007

End of harvest - it feels great!


It’s a wonderful feeling you get when you look back on three months of harvest and you see all the frenetic activity and all the hard work and it seems to have paid off, but its also great to kind of slow down a little bit and relax and kick back. Its amazing, I feel like I have a little bit of free time I’ve actually got some time to see my friends to do something social as opposed to working all the time and spend time with my family.
I would say that every South African producer is probably finished harvest now -perhaps there might be some late harvest producers who are still going but it seems that it’s all done and dusted.
The leaves are starting to change colour on the vines as autumn approaches. There is a little bit of a nip in the air we’ve got a cold front in the air for the last few days, we had some torrential rain over night and a few days ago, even switched on the heating in the house so that’s obviously the first time that harvest is over and winter is upon us. Now there’s a calm before the storm as I start planning all the travel and the promotional activities around the world the use their company. The launch of the next Vilafonté vintage will be on the 4th of July 2007, it’s a 2005 vintage and we are very excited about it but much more about that later.
See you…

Here is an image of the prosed signage on the back wall of the new winery...

Friday, March 09, 2007

Famous Dutch journalist visits Vilafonte

We had a very interesting visit this week from Jan and Yvonne Rook - influential and extremely well travelled wine journalist from Holland whose www.flyingwinewriter.com www.wijnplein.nl websites are one of the most influential wine mediums in Dutch industry. His comments are published daily to the site and are read but a dedicated trade following of almost 3000 people. He was funny and interesting and provided so many amazing stories of his travels around the world. It was a pleasure to be around such experience. have a look at the video that we filmes - Jan said that he is usually the one doing the interviewing and that he was unaccustomed to having a wine producer interview him ... we like to turn the tables.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Harvest Team 2007

From LTR:
Bernard le Roux (winemaker), Edward Pietersen (Viticulturist),
Zelma Long (Winemaking partner), Phil freese (Viticulture partner),
Mike Ratcliffe (managing partner), Ronald Spies (Viticulture manager)

Monday, December 11, 2006

The Vilafonte winery is almost finished.


Watch the vlog
More footage of the amazing state of the art Vilafonte winery taking shape in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Vilafonte is South AFrica's first luxury wine brand as well as being the first ever joint-venture between South Africa and the United States.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Introducing Vilafonté Team members

Dear Team Vilafonté and friends,
It gives us pleasure to introduce two members of the Vilafonté team.
Edward Pietersen (left) has joined our team as Winegrowing Manager working directly under Phil Freese, Winegrowing partner. Edward is responsible for our babies, the vineyards, on a day-to-day basis and has a huge responsibility in this sense. He brings a level of commitment and an obsession with quality that has been embedded into his psyche by Phil. You will be hearing much more about Edward in the future. edward@vilafonte.com
Bernard Pré Le Roux (right) joined the Vilafonté winemaking team in August 2005 as Winemaker working directly under Zelma Long, our Vilafonté winemaking partner. He brings excellent experience from Hamilton Russel and Tokara and has been a huge asset to our team. His attention to detail and unwillingness to compromise are his hallmarks which are exactly what is required at Vilafonté. Watch this space! bernard@vilafonte.com
They are pictured here last week receiving the GOLD medal at the Classic Wine Trophy, the only wine competition in South Africa judged solely by French sommeliers.
Best wishes,
Mike, Zelma and Phil