Testalonga I Wish I Was A Ninja Swartland

Craig and Carla Hawkins are two of the most important, pioneering icons of South African wine. Their label, Testalonga, was born in the Swartland in 2008, at a time when the Swartland Revolution put the region on the map and proved it is much more than a land of cheap plonk. Winemakers like Adi Badenhorst, Eben Sadie, and Chris and Andrea Mullineux set the scene for true terroir-based winemaking, and then the young(er) guns like Craig, Carla, Johan Meyer of Mother Rock, and Jurgen Gouws of Intellego came along, pushing boundaries even further. They began playing with skin contact on their whites, earlier picking dates, lower sulfur levels, etc. in a way that their predecessors hadn’t. Testalonga was born of that ilk, and today, it is known internationally as an honest producer making single-vineyard, varietal wines. When they started, Craig and Carla were trailblazers in orange wine. At that time, no one was making skin-contact Chenin Blanc with four weeks on skins; it was something of an abomination. But after a trip to Italy, tasting a skin macerated Vermentino from Antonio Perrino, Craig’s curiosity became a compulsion. “It spoke of something that I hadn’t felt before,” says Craig. When he couldn’t find anyone making these kinds of wines back home in South Africa, he took the challenge upon himself, and named his label after Perrino’s nickname, Testalonga, which is also a fabled Italian bandit. Prior to releasing his first wine, a novel, skin-contact Chenin Blanc, Craig was the head winemaker at Lammershoek, where he experimented with earlier picking, slight skin maceration, and extended lees contact, though to a lesser degree than his own project. He had also been fortunate to learn under some of the greats: Eben Sadie, Stephane Ogier, Remy Pedreno (Roc d’Anglande), Dorli Muhr in Austria, Dirk Niepoort in Portugal, and Tom Lubbe (Domaine Matassa). The evolution of Testalonga over the past fifteen years has been a story of maturity. As Craig and Carla have become wiser stewards of their land, their wines, too, have become more confident, more serious conduits of their origins. While the ethos is still the same (“a good wine doesn’t need all the props to be held up”), the approach has shifted to tell a truer story of place. “For us,” says Craig, “it’s about the truth and finding the best way to get there.” Everything they do in the vineyard and cellar is in service of honestly conveying site. In practice, this means taking a firm stance on organic farming, which Craig believes is paramount to the authenticity of his wines, and it means being a little less dogmatic in the cellar. From 2018 onwards, they’ve experimented with filtering their wines, and they won’t shy away from adding sulfur. After all, if the wine can’t last six months in bottle to tell the story, what good is the story itself? In line with telling a truer story of place, Craig and Carla purchased their home estate in 2015, a hamlet at the northern edge of the Swartland where it touches Olifantsriver and Cederberg. Whereas they used to push boundaries with their winemaking, these days it’s more about the viticulture. In 2018, they planted a host of varieties fit for their warm, dry, Mediterranean climate, like Marsanne, Roussanne, Grenache, Carignan, and Macabeo (Viura). While they wait for these vines to mature, they continue to source from their original growers whose farms span from the granitic soils of the Paardeberg to the limestone soils of the West Coast. Their line-up includes the approachable Baby Bandito and more serious, structured El Bandito series. The Baby Bandito wines are each named with phrases one might say to a kid: ‘Keep on Punching’ (Chenin Blanc); ‘Stay Brave’ (skin-fermented Chenin); ‘Chin Up’ (Cinsault), and ‘Follow Your Dreams’ (Carignan). The El Bandito label is reserved for the top vineyards of bought-in fruit. The list has grown over the years to include varieties like Muscat, Tinta Amarela, and even Harslevelu. Vineyard and cellar practices remove the human imprint to focus on purity of variety and site: organic farming, only irrigating young vines, manual harvest, spontaneous fermentation, and very reasonable sulfur additions. Everything they do is based on a taste – and intuition. “I pick on taste. I press on taste. I blend on taste,” says Craig. “It’s about a feeling in the wine that I’m looking for.” In the fifteen or so years that Craig and Carla have been making Testalonga wines, they’ve played an integral role in developing an innovative wine culture in South Africa. Rather than sticking to blind dogma, they have stepped outside of their egos to allow for adaptation, for an expanded identity, for a truer story. “There are some producers – not very many –,” writes wine critic Tim James, “whose sudden absence would leave an irreparable hole in the fabric of the South African wine industry, so unique and valuable are they. Craig and Carla Hawkins have over the last decade or so built Testalonga into such a producer, one that brings real integrity into the mix too.”