Why is Southern Right called that?

For the southern right whales that gather in cold Walker Bay, a few kilometres from the vineyards. The name is more than branding: a contribution from every bottle goes toward whale and coastal conservation in the area. The label and the cause are stitched together.

What does Southern Right make?

Just two wines, and it has for over 25 years: a single Pinotage and a single Sauvignon Blanc, both from the cool, maritime Hemel-en-Aarde Valley behind Hermanus. It's a sister project to Hamilton Russell Vineyards, built on the same belief that focus beats range.

Is the Pinotage really that good?

It's the wine often called 'Pinotage for people who don't like Pinotage' — and the description sticks because it works. Grown cool and made with restraint, it's savoury and structured rather than sweet and jammy, and it has quietly converted a lot of sceptics. If one bottle changes your mind about the grape, there's a fair chance it's this one.

Southern Right

Two wines. That's the whole estate. A single Pinotage and a single Sauvignon Blanc, made for more than a quarter of a century in the cold valley behind Hermanus — and yet Southern Right punches so far above that tiny range it's become one of the Cape's most quietly influential names. This is the sister project to Hamilton Russell Vineyards, built on the same stubborn belief: do two things, do them completely, and skip everything else.

The name is a whale. And the whale is the point.

A grape rehabilitated

Start with the wine that made the reputation. Southern Right's Pinotage is the bottle most often handed to someone who swears they hate the grape — and it tends to end the argument. Grown on the cool, maritime slopes of the Hemel-en-Aarde and made with a deliberately light hand, it comes savoury, structured and fresh, the polar opposite of the sweet, coffee-drenched caricature that dogs Pinotage at the cheap end.

"Pinotage for people who don't like Pinotage" is a sales line that happens to be true. This is the bottle that does the converting.

Its role in the grape's modern comeback is hard to overstate — it showed a generation of drinkers, at home and abroad, that South Africa's own variety could be genuinely fine. Not louder. Better.

Sauvignon Blanc as a serious wine

The white is the sleeper. Where most Sauvignon Blanc chases green zip and gets out, Southern Right treats it as a fine wine — lower in alcohol, longer on the palate, all texture, minerality and a saline pull straight off the cold ocean nearby. It's a grown-up take on a grape usually served young and simple, and it's a local and international best-seller for good reason.

Set it beside the flinty Sauvignon Blanc of Constantia sometime — two cold Cape addresses, two different accents, both making the case that this grape can be more than a summer refresher.

The whale on the label

The name honours the southern right whales that gather to calve in Walker Bay, a few kilometres downhill from the vines, through the winter months. It isn't decoration: a slice of every bottle sold goes toward conservation in the area. Drinking well and doing a small amount of good are, here, the same transaction — and it's woven into the estate's identity rather than bolted on.

Visiting

Fold it into a Hemel-en-Aarde day. Southern Right sits within the same run of celebrated cellars as its famous sibling, so it drops easily into a route through the valley, and the contrast — a serious cool-climate Pinotage and a textured Sauvignon after a morning of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay — is exactly the change of pace a tasting day wants. Tastings are by appointment and may be arranged alongside Hamilton Russell, so check how it's currently handled before you set out. Confirm the arrangements on the estate's own site before you travel.

What to buy

One bottle home? The Pinotage — it's the estate's argument in a glass, and the single most reliable way to change a doubter's mind about South Africa's grape. But don't overlook the Sauvignon Blanc: it's the more surprising bottle, a fine wine wearing an everyday label, and the one wine geeks quietly stock up on. Take both, and you've got the whole estate — which, refreshingly, is exactly two wines wide.