Vondeling Wines was recently featured on the Country Life website.
“We’re a bit off the beaten track,” says Julian Johnsen with a grin when we finally get there. He wasn’t wrong. Vondeling wine estate, on the Voor Paardeberg section of the Paarl Wine Route, is somewhere between Wellington and Malmesbury, uncharted territory for us. Julian and his partners Anthony Ward and Richard Gower have 120ha under vine and 280ha fynbos spread over the Paardeberg mountain.
As he drives us around the land, Julian describes their minimum-intervention strategy, and strict waste- and water-management systems. “Over the last year, water levels dropped by nearly 50 per cent so we reuse every drop.”
