Springfield Estate
Made With Honor
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Springfield would rather intervene in the vineyard than in the cellar. "Good wine is grown, not made," they say. Most of their wines are fermented using natural wild yeasts found on the grape skins.
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Meet the Vineyard
Springfield Estate is a family-run wine farm owned by ninth-generation descendants of French Huguenots, who came to South Africa from the Loire in 1688 with bundles of vines under their arms.
Set in the heart of the mountain-ringed Robertson Valley in the Western Cape, Springfield terroir is diverse.
Fortunate to have many different types of soil on the estate –some are rocky, consisting of about 70% quartz rock, where other areas are rich in lime and others are more sandy loam-like soils.
By recognizing these differences in terroir we have been able to make complex, terroir-driven wines from site specific vineyards.
Springfield’s cellar dates back to 1902, and is geared towards our back-to-basics and minimum manipulation approach to winemaking. They believe it is most important how the grapes are grown and cared for in the vineyard; precise farming develops good grapes. Rows are plotted by GPS so they align with sunset and sunrise over the spine of the vinyard. Most of the picking is done at night by hand.
No pumps, crushers or presses are used in our red wine cellar; instead, grapes are transported using a gravity flow system and fermented whole, to limit any spoilage or damage to the delicate berry.
The wine is then bottled unfiltered and unrefined wherever possible. Dedicated barrel and bottle-ageing cellars allow us the luxury of ageing the wine for 2 years in barrels and 4 years in bottles as long as necessary until it is ready for release.
Due to the risks of natural wine making, Springfiled won't release certain vintages if they are not up to their standards.
The Springfield philosophy is to produce wine as naturally as possible. The winemaking process is kept direct and uncomplicated – the wine is left to make itself, as was done centuries ago. Using a combination traditional methods, modern technology and risky winemaking techniques, the Bruwer family is able to handcraft wine true to its motto: Made on Honour.
