Unsurprisingly I tend to love vineyards and over the years I have been fortunate to have visited a number of what could be called unusual vineyards. In the Karoo in South Africa it is not unusual to find a combination of a vineyard with Ostrich rearing. In the Douro Valley in Portugal the steepness of the vineyards, which rise almost vertically from the river, send anyone with a vertiginous sensitivity into apoplexy. This last weekend it was to another vineyard right here in Kenya that could be categorised as being at the extreme end of the winemaking scale.
The Great Rift Valley Winery is located in Naivasha about 90 kilometres west of Nairobi. The vineyard lies at about an altitude of 1,900 metres with about 35 to 40 hectres of vines and the farm is framed by hills all around that rise to over 2,500 metres. The brand of the vineyard is Leleshwa, which refers to the Masai name of trees with a distinctive white flower that are common to the area. The vineyard has been in existence since 1994 when the previous owner of the farm planted about 3 to 4 hectres of vines suitable for wine making.
The vineyard changed hands in the late 1990’s and now falls under the portfolio of the Kenya Nut Company owned by a prominent Kenyan businessman. For the last two-and-a-half years the viticulturalists, winemaker, and pretty well everything else, has been James Farquharson. James born in Kenya of Scottish ancestry spent time in the South Africa’s Cape first completing a BSc in Viticulture at Stellenbosch University before practicing his craft at a number of estates, including becoming the red winemaker at the prestigious Boschendal Estate not far from Franschhoek.
The biggest problem James has confronted is the low yields of the vines when he inherited the vineyard. Crop yields were as low as 1.5 tonnes per hectre, which makes commercial wine making economically unviable. For grapes such as Sauvignon Blanc for a commercial vineyard a minimum of 5 tonnes per hectre and hopefully more around the 8 to 9 tonnes per hectre is desirable. James is getting there in terms of increasing yields by applying techniques such as particular types of pruning. James has for example introduced a pruning system of 6 to 8 bud canes instead of the 2 bud spurs that was being used at the vineyard. This encourages fruit production although other problems include loss of grapes to birds and animals such as antelope and monkeys.
As mentioned in a previous blog, there are a number of challenges growing grapes and making wine bang on the equator. Vines perform best within a band of latitudes approximately between 30oN 50oN and the mirror image for the southern hemisphere, 30oS 50oS. Look at a map of the world and all the famous wine producing areas fall into these latitudes. The reason is partly climate as to produce grapes suitable for quality wine making it is generally agreed that vines require a period of dormancy. In the appropriate latitudes and the on-set of winter, cooler temperatures encourage the vine to shut down and the sap falls from the plant above ground to the roots. Vines perform best when they have long daylight periods particularly during the summer ripening period. In Europe the 14 to 18 hours of daylight in the summer enable the vine to produce quality fruit; the right balance between sugar and acid as well as other phenolics properties.
In Naivasha James cannot do much about the length of days as they are what they are about 12 hours a day all year around. To encourage dormancy James tries to starve the vines of water. Naivasha receives on average around 550mm of rainfall annually. This year rainfall patterns have been far from normal with to date over 750 mm. The other technique often used by grape growers in the tropics is to waken the vine from an induced dormancy period by applying hydrogen cyamide (Prussic acid) the commercial brand name in Kenya is Dormex. An advantage of this application is that as well as wakening the vine it also encourages the uniform setting of fruit.
Despite the challenges of growing vines on the equator James has in a very short period of time achieved considerable success. The Leleshwa brand currently produces a very good Sauvignon Blanc with bright fruit and a definite varietal character. A rosé wine is also produced and the next venture is to add a Shiraz to the brand line. Marketing wine is a major industry in itself and in Kenya there are additional challenges. James hopes that the country’s tourist industry will want to serve Leleshwa highlighting the fact that it is a unique Kenyan product and all things considered it should be a winner. James is philosophical when it comes to accepting that the specific challenges of Naivasha mean that his wines are not necessarily going to be challenging Burgundy Gran Cru’s or Bordeaux First Growths and that is in any case certainly not the objective. Good quality, technically sound wine at an affordable price (Leleshwa Sauvignon Blanc retails at about KSH550 (about $6.80) a bottle in Nairobi) and a unique Kenyan product makes more than enough sense.
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