Meet the winemaker: Testalonga

Testalonga is a winery founded in 2008 by Craig and Carla Hawkins in the Swartland region of South Africa. They make single vineyard wines grown from granite, sandstone and clay soils and work organically and instinctively with as little intervention as possible. Their first vintage was a skin contact Chenin Blanc and they make 2 wines: El Bandito and Baby Bandito, with wines from their newly planted vineyard Kloof (ravine in Afrikaans) on the way.

We had the opportunity to speak with Craig about his work. We hope you enjoy reading our conversation.

Can you tell me about your background - how you came to be a winemaker, and what influenced your style of farming and producing?

I’m not from a winemaking family - I originally come from the east coast of South Africa, which has a tropical kind of climate, a bit like Brisbane in Australia. We moved down to the Cape when I was around 15-16 years old and I got into wine through my older brother who’s 5 years older and started studying winemaking in the late ‘90s. I was still at school and I started doing some hours just working for him to make a bit of extra money, and I really fell in love with it from day one. I really enjoyed it, and I thought I was always going to do just farming to be honest. I wanted to do nature conservation and stuff like that, but then I discovered the transformation from vineyard to cellar. 

I took 2 years off school to go play hockey in the UK, and then when I came back I started studying winemaking at Stellenbosch University. I worked all over Europe - I have an Irish passport, and for about 5 or 6 years I did Portugal, Spain, Austria, France - so that was kind of where I cut my teeth. My first proper job was actually in Austria with Dirk Niepoort and Dorli Muhr - brilliant stuff, it was actually really integral to me, working in a completely different climate to South Africa. 

I started Testalonga in 2008. In 2007 actually, I was in France and came across the wines from Antonio Perrino, also called Testalonga. This was a really defining moment for me - I was living in a tent, I was drinking wines because I was an intern for Remi Pedreino from Roc d'Anglade and he gave me this box and said, ‘You have to try this. This is a white wine made like a red wine,’ and it just blew me away. So immediately I knew exactly what I wanted to do - in South Africa nobody was making these wines. I then came back to South Africa, obviously Antonio I use his nickname on the label, Testalonga is also a bandit from Sicily and I called the wine El Bandito, so there’s a strong link to Italy and Mr Perrino himself. 

I started in 2008 with my first skin contact, then in 2015 started the Baby Bandito and that’s where I started with Stay Brave. All my labels are from single, separate vineyards -  the Baby Bandito vineyards are less complex, El Bandito are a lot more complex, Stay Brave less again but it makes a delicious wine. The skin wine is on granite soil and Stay Brave is on clay - I find for skin, you get higher notes and slightly more depth from granite, while clay gives a slight sweetness, richness to the wine so it’s the perfect soil for Stay Brave.

What about your farming and winemaking style?

I always knew I was going to do organic farming - growing up in my family, we were always that way orientated and my older brother, he started getting into organics in his job when he was working in South Africa. He now lives in Australia and actually farms there organically at a place called The Wine Farm, it’s his and his wife’s company, they’ve been there 12 years. But organics, it was something at university that you could never find information on, there was literally 1 page - viticulture, you learned from a very conventional kind of way at university. Most of the places I worked at overseas were working organically and there was a lot of focus on it, and for me it’s a non-negotiable. It’s just the way I do things. 

My very first wine, El Bandito in 2008, I rented a vineyard from my now in-laws, and farmed this completely organically. And from there we’ve just kind of grown. In 2015 I bought my farm which is where I live now, and we farm organically. I don’t farm biodynamically - organic is a non-negotiable and I work on whatever I see in front of me and I don’t always see the value in certain sprays or treatments. I’m not knocking those that do, but I really just work with what I can see and understand in front of me.

Can you tell us about the vineyard, and where you are in South Africa?

We’re in the Swartland region of South Africa, which is quite a warm, dry climate very similar to Sicily and it looks very similar as well. It’s about an hour north of Cape Town and quite a large region. On the Western boundary you have the Atlantic Ocean and that’s quite breezy, anywhere from 10 to 14 degrees and that moderates the climate, and our Eastern boundary is mountains, so we kind of straddles those and get the two extremes. In winter, it’s not freezing but it’s cold and wet, with very warm, dry summers. 

It’s a big region - if you picture it in your mind, it’s a lot of wheat fields and among these are mountain ranges, either made of granite or sandstone, and that is where you find the quality vineyards. I work with 3 types of soil: sandstone, granite and clay-derived - we call it coffee stain. Granite gives you the more complex, perfumed, higher notes, the clay soils give you more obvious fruit and the sandstones we’re still discovering, but kind of a mix between the others.

Is there much of a natural wine scene there?

Yeah definitely, there are quite a few producers working in this way - 5-6 guys focussing on that style which is nice. But it's a big region so I suppose it's not that much.

Visit Testalonga's RAW WINE profile to learn more about the winery.