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The Alvi’s Drift wine cellar is where carefully selected grapes – hand-harvested in the early morning for optimal flavour – are crushed, pressed, fermented, and matured. Here, a combination of modern and traditional production techniques is applied in tandem with an unhurried, low-intervention approach to winemaking.
Our cellar is responsible for processing more than 5,6 million litres of wine with every vintage.
Here, our head winemaker, Alvi van der Merwe, and his team live out their passion for crafting our winery’s much-awarded, internationally acclaimed white, red, rosé, Cap Classique and sparkling wines.
Every Alvi’s Drift wine follows a unique journey through our cellar. Here, many of our varietals in the red wine blends are fermented and matured using different methods of wine production, with each wine vinified separately in order to showcase the distinct character of each grape varietal.
OUR WINE RANGES
“It’s quite simple. We work with fruit. In order to extract maximum flavour, you need to pick any fruit at optimal ripeness. Ultimately, the production of wine is the preservation of fruit.”
- Alvi van der Merwe -
Each wine component is painstakingly prepared ahead of the wine’s final blending, to bring forth the very best of the fruit-driven characteristics that Alvi’s Drift wines are so well known for.
Wild yeast fermentation is often used, as this gives rich complexity to our wines – allowing wine lovers to appreciate them even more. Instead of fermenting for a week or two, many of our wines ferment for a month or two instead.
“When the grapes start coming in, that’s when Alvi starts to play. He’s tasting the juice, checking the pH, asking for input, experimenting with different wild yeast strains. People often tell him he’s wasting time, but he’s not, he’s creating. The attention to detail, the level of care – with Alvi, it’s always 'Can I do it better?' Our passion for wine really comes to life in the cellar. Alvi, myself, and our winemaking team, it’s like a symphony in which we all have our unique part to play.”
– Junel van der Merwe –
