Danelle van Rensburg has joined Bussell Retief, one of the four cousins now taking responsibility for this major winery on the banks of the Breede River between Robertson and Bonnievale.
Van Loveren is one of South Africa’s largest family-owned business’s supplying wine to the domestic market, while it also exports to more than 20 countries around the world.
Danelle, who specialises in small wood maturation, will be responsible for the Van Loveren and Signature ranges, as well as introducing a top-end Cap Classique starting in 2008.
She jumped in the deep-end, joining Bussell and the team in the middle of the red wine harvest and has now had an opportunity to settle into this winery, which produces more than 600,000 cases of wine annually.
“We have had success with two wines in our Signature range this year, while our 2007 Chenin Blanc this weekend clinched a gold medal at both the 2007 Robertson Young Wine Show as well as the 2007 South African National Young Wine Show,” said Phillip Retief, who heads up marketing and management.
Van Loveren also walked off with the BMW Trophy for the number one winery for having the five best wines nominated at the Robertson Young Wine Show.
The two premium wines in the Signature range which received accolades were the 2006 Van Loveren Chardonnay Reserve which garnered a gold at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show and the 2004 Van Loveren Cabernet Sauvignon, which is being served on SAA first class flights this month.
“We are proud of all our wines, but the Chardonnay in particular was carefully hand-harvested from 16-year-old vines grown on 25 hectares of the farm’s limestone rich soils. The wine goes through a double selection process before being placed in new French oak barrels, where it spends almost five months fermenting further and maturing.”
“We would like to drive these successes even further and feel that Danelle has the potential and the experience to help us achieve just that. There is an ever-growing demand for our wines both on the domestic market and internationally and Bussell needed to split his responsibilities for specialisation purposes. Danelle, comes in as a fully-fledged winemaker and will be responsible for a very important area in our winemaking programme,” said Phillip.
She is a Stellenbosch oenology and viticultural graduate, who has travelled widely, working seasons at wineries in the Margaret River area in Australia and near Lake Geneve in Switzerland. Danelle has travelled widely through the wine areas of Australia including the Barossa and Clare Valleys, as well as Adelaide and Sydney. While in Europe she visited wineries in various areas in France, spending most of her time in the Loire Valley.
Danelle’s joy and enthusiasm shows in her work, and she does it with such humor and in such a manner that she motivates and increases the curiosity of the people around her. Danelle always involves everybody and thus is a great team member, creating proud workers who enjoy their work, and motivates them to look further and see the bigger picture. Danelle’s feet are flat on the ground with no pretences: “Wine is about enjoyment, laughter, gathering with friends and family, but also about accuracy, diligence and particularity.”
This young winemaker has come a long way before joining Van Loveren, including assistant winemaker at Stellenzicht and winemaker at the successful wine farm Raka near Stanford. It is this experience she brings with her as both she and Van Loveren enter a new era
