In Australia, the 2025 vintage is already under way. While in the northern hemisphere, this year’s crop of wine grapes won’t ripen until at least July. This contrast between the hemispheres has proved convenient for winemakers anxious to cram as much experience as possible into their lives, for jobbing cellar rats and for next-generation European wine producers keen to expand their horizons.
It has also encouraged some established wine producers to set up an enterprise in the other hemisphere. Torres in Spain was the first to branch out in this way; the family’s Chilean operation dates from 1979. Since then, there have been many others — mainly with northern hemisphere roots: Bourgeois of Sancerre in New Zealand, Chapoutier of the Rhône in Australia and California’s Paul Hobbs in Argentina. It works the other way round too. Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates now has considerable holdings in California and is dabbling in joint ventures in Europe.
Julien Schaal, of Julien Schaal Wines, is rather different. The operation that he runs with his wife, Sophie, is definitively bi-hemispherical but does not own a single vine. They have imported a distinctly un-European wine business model into their native France, making excellent wine by buying in grapes.
Schaal was born just outside Strasbourg, not into a wine family, but soon set his sights on becoming a sommelier. Two months working on the French Riviera was enough to shatter his dreams. He’d been hoping to be able to recommend obscure wines to appreciative customers but, instead, was simply asked to supply as many big names as possible to a largely Russian clientele.
This propelled him to wine school in Beaune, learning how to sell and then make wine. In Burgundy, he was the only student without a family wine domaine to inherit and an obvious place to gain practical experience. Fortunately, his teacher recommended him as an intern to a friend at Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe in Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the southern Rhône.
The Schaals have imported a distinctly un European wine business model into their native France, making excellent wine by buying in grapes
The following January, Schaal was introduced to the South African producer Bouchard Finlayson. He intended to go there for just three months to help with the harvest, but he fell in love with the South African wine scene. “There’s something very easy about the relationships between wine people there,” the 43-year-old Schaal told me when I visited him in Alsace last November.
Back in Europe for the northern hemisphere 2003 harvest, Schaal was sent to Lebanon for six months by Vieux Télégraphe, which had just invested in the wine operation Massaya. “It was the trip of my life,” he says now. “A hard one, but something you need to do in your twenties. We were buying grapes from the Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian border and used to go to Damascus for fun on Saturday night.”
After this adventure, South Africa beckoned again and Schaal returned there to a proper job at Bouchard Finlayson in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, inland from Hermanus.
Gordon Newton Johnson from the winery overlooking Bouchard Finlayson became a good friend and made the then 23-year-old Schaal an irresistible offer: a job plus space in the Newton Johnson winery to make his own wine. In 2005, Schaal spent his life savings of €5,000 on his first intake of grapes.
“It was a fabulous opportunity,” he says. “I still think I’ve been very lucky.” He must have some skill too for Julien Schaal’s Mountain Vineyards Pinot Noir 2023 from Walker Bay has just won the South African wine equivalent of an Olympic gold medal: Pinot Noir of the Year in this year’s Platter’s Guide, the South African wine bible.
Since 2010, with a short break at a friend’s winery, he’s been making the increasingly admired Julien Schaal Wines at the respected Paul Clüver winery in nearby Elgin. According to Paul Clüver Jr, Schaal has “brought an exciting dimension to winemaking in South Africa. One of the things I’ve always loved about Julien is his calm, solution-driven approach to challenges, best reflected in his signature phrase, ‘It is not a problem.’”
Schaal met his oenologist wife Sophie when she was an intern chez Clüver and, since 2021, she has made her own Sophie Schaal South African wines. The couple and their young daughter live, however, not in South Africa, but in the Alsace village of Hunawihr, in a beautiful modern house at the foot of the Clos Ste Hune vineyard, whose bone-dry Riesling has been made world-famous by the local Trimbach wine-producing family whose origins date back to 1626.
Schaal is keenly aware of the many differences between the French and South African wine culture. “In France, the fact that you’ve made wine for 100 years is an advantage but South African consumers are always looking for something new.”
An undaunted novice, he decided to try something different in his homeland. “I saw that the South African system of buying in grapes [rather than owning vines] works,” explains Schaal. “And I thought that I’d love to do the same thing in France, even though the entry ticket is much more expensive.” Grape prices in Alsace are two or three times higher than those in South Africa.
While Schaal’s South African wines are made from the Burgundy grapes Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, in Alsace he specialises in dry Rieslings made from grapes bought from a range of top-notch organic Grand Cru vineyards.
He initially worked with a friendly neighbour, Olivier Biecher, but from 2013 has gone his own way, determined to concentrate on top quality. His Alsace wines, about 25,000 bottles a year, are now so highly regarded that they have to be allocated.
The Schaals have built an immaculate winery next to their house, complete with concrete eggs shipped from South Africa. According to Schaal, “South African grapes are extremely inexpensive and I probably pay way too much for my grapes because the growers know I’m French.” He worries that low grape prices in South Africa will result in people pulling out vineyards — apples are more profitable. “But at least Walker Bay grapes are 10 times more expensive than Swartland’s, so that helps to keep vines in the ground there.”
Outside Europe and especially in California, the model of creating a “boutique” wine label by buying in grapes may be reasonably common, but it is much less so in France (although it has been growing recently in Burgundy because of stratospheric land prices there). During my visit, Schaal could think of only one other Alsace wine producer, Jintaro Yura, in a similar grape-buying position to himself. But he subsequently sent the list of “a few true gems that showcase an exciting, fresh approach to Alsace wine” published here.
The Schaal family have just arrived at their rented seaside apartment in South Africa’s Somerset West, shuttling between wineries, with his proud parents in grandparental role.
Julien Schaal recommends . . . Alsace gems
Terres d’étoiles
Christophe Mittnacht, who recently set up his own winery after parting ways with his cousin. www.terresdetoiles.com
La Grange de l’Oncle Charles
A new producer building from scratch. www.la-grange-de-l-oncle-charles.com
Domaine Exeterra
Florence Kachelhoffer, a young vigneronne who started her own winery after working for Marcel Deiss. www.domaine-exeterra.fr
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