I recently cleared up some old files in our tasting room and came across an archive-worthy sheet: a magazine page with a line drawing of a curling rose vine that today features as a tinted varnish cover on Saltare’s wine labels. It took me straight back to 2007. At the time we lived on a rose farm in Rustenberg, Ida’s Valley, where the most beautiful roses permeated our cottage. I wanted a wrap-around label and had played with the concept of the name flowing into rose vines.

Our 2024 harvest started earlier than ever, but that was just the beginning of the changes that this year brought!

I am often asked about the name Saltare, pronounced [sal.ta.rɛ]. The story I tell is of a first-year viticulture student being tasked to hand disgorge the cap classique bottles that our class made that year. Opening bottle after bottle, I knew I’d specialise in méthode champenoise wines one day. The true inspiration, however, comes from the remarkable human capacity for smell - olfaction. I rediscovered the importance of smell in March 2021 when a Covid-19 infection wiped out

It is wonderful to witness a slow revolution towards biologically friendly and ecologically sustainable wine farming practices.

Saltare winemaker Carla Pauw on terroir in South Africa