Owner and Winemaker Samantha O'Keefe was a TV executive in LA and a single mother of two, with no winemaking experience.  She bought a remote mountain in South Africa in the early 2000s and planted a vineyard.  In 2019, Neal Martin tasted the wines and ranked them with the greatest in the world.  The story already read like a script for a TV drama, but then, just before Christmas 2019, we learnt that her home and winery had been destroyed in a devastating wildfire, which she and her staff narrowly escaped with their lives.   

'TV drama' comparisons do not do justice to what is likely to have been a traumatic experience for Sam.  A crowdfunding site was set up and other SA wineries lent barrels to make her 2020 vintage.  Happily, most of the vines have escaped damage and Sam's 2018 vintage was already in bottle, stored in cellars away from the winery.   

Self-taught as a winemaker, in a short space of time, Samantha created wines to vie with the very best in the world.  Neal Martin compares the Reserve Chardonnay to Corton-Charlemagne, whilst on Jancisrobinson.com Julia Harding MW describes the Hermitage-like Syrah as 'mouth-wateringly good'.   

For Martin these are among a new breed of wines "born in climactic knife-edge, dry-farmed vineyards, often from ancient vines, and with minimal intervention by talented and frequently young winemakers in the opening chapters of long careers."