The Story of Syrah | Chapter Three

Drink to me only with thine eyes, 

And I will pledge with mine; 

Or leave a kiss but in the cup, 

And I’ll not look for wine. 

The thirst that from the soul doth rise 

Doth ask a drink divine; 

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, 

I would not change for thine. 

I sent thee late a rosy wreath, 

Not so much honouring thee 

As giving it a hope, that there 

It could not withered be. 

But thou thereon didst only breathe, 

And sent’st it back to me; 

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, 

Not of itself, but thee. 

Ben Johnson

Before moving to the Boland, the de Villiers family lived in the Cape Town suburb Tamboerskloof, for 25 years. Tamboerskloof is an integral part of the de Villiers family history as well as that of Cape Town and the Boland. Hence, the name of the wines.

Tamboerskloof means the valley (kloof) of the drums (tamboer). The Dutch settlers immigrated to the Cape in 1652 to farm with fruit and vegetables to supply the Dutch East Indian Company ships on their way to the east. Posts manned with spotters were established on the hills and mountains around the Cape peninsula. These spotters drummed the message of an approaching ship from one lookout post to the next until the farmers in the surrounding valleys heard the drums and proceeded to harvest their crops and hasten to Cape Town harbour with their wagons to meet the ship on arrival.

In the year 2000 we found the piece of land that stole our hearts – nestled in the Blaauwklippen Valley on the slopes of the Helderberg, outside Stellenbosch, complete with mountains, rivers and a forest. We renamed the farm Kleinood. Kleinood, the Afrikaans word from Dutch and German origin translates to something small and precious. This is exactly what Kleinood means to us and precisely what it is – a small farm, very dear to our hearts, specializing in the production of Rhône style Syrah.

Wine making is wind, rain, sun, and soil
mysteriously absorbed by the vine to become grapes
that we, through the fine balance between magic and science,
convince to become a thing of beauty, in every sense of the word.

We preferred to veer away from the traditional South African and Argentinean Shiraz clones commonly planted in the Cape Winelands. This was mainly due to the fact that they were not virus free, and we weren’t entirely satisfied with the wine styles resulting from them. Patience and perseverance were crucial at this critical stage. We were subsequently able to source Rhône Syrah clones 174, 300, 470 and 747 from a laboratory that planned to generate budding eyes from scrapings made from the mother plants and propagated in a laboratory. But we would have to wait an extra year.

To save time involved planting the root stocks for later field grafting of the clonal buds – a meticulous process of varying the rootstock type, the planting row widths, the plant spacing in the rows and the row directions to suit the terroir. The wild rootstock vines were allowed to grow vigorously under regular irrigation for a year, thus creating a strong root system. A year after planting the rootstock vines, everything above the ground was cut off and two shoots were allowed to grow from the stump and the shoots were tied to the first wire.

The clonal splits in the various blocks were based on the soil characteristics and vigour potential of the soil, as well as the rootstock. After a few months it was decided which one of the two shoots was the stronger, while the other was removed, thus allowing all the energy from a strong root system to feed the single shoot.

It was the first time that Syrah grapes from these clones were grown in South Africa.

Each of the 23 half-hectare blocks on the farm is managed as a separate unit and has its own individual irrigation system. In this manner we establish the pruning weight of the pruned shoots, the weight of the bunches, the size and weight of the berries for each block, affording us the opportunity to understand our vineyards, to create the correct balance between terroir, vine and grape and learn how to farm them better.

Thus, the grapes from each unit are looked after, irrigated, harvested, crushed, fermented and matured in wood separately and only at blending time do we decide which wine is good enough, with the final blend comprising all the different components which form the building blocks for our Tamboerskloof wines.

At arrival in the winery the bunches are sorted by hand on a sorting table. The berries are then hand sorted on a separate table after destalking before being crushed into a satellite tank that is electronically lifted up to roof level, suspended, and rolled from an overhead beam to the fermenter that has been earmarked to receive that particular block. This intricate process relies on gravity, which ensures the grapes do not undergo any harsh mechanical pumping treatment.

The same innovative system used for moving grapes, is used to operate the very soft pneumatic punch-down device, which replaces but replicates the labour intensive traditional punching down of the cap by hand.

The Kleinood winery, a study in simplicity, uses structural and technological expertise together with a clever combination of high-tech and tradition, so we can work very softly with the grapes and to afford the winemaker the most flexibility possible.

The cellar houses no less than 14 different size fermenters. This allows flexibility to ferment the batches of grapes coming from a specific block of  vineyard in a correctly sized tank. The ‘free run’ wine gravitates into barrels from the fermenters, while the fermented skins are scraped by hand into a basket for pressing in the basket press. Malolactic fermentation takes place in tank or a selection of French 500l medium-toasted, tight-grained oak barrels from a selection of coopers including Boutes, Sylvan, Garonaise and Cadus. The barrel maturation room has four different temperature zones controlled to facilitate malolactic fermentation in one corner behind a curtain, and cold maturation in another part of the room. The controlled humidity in the room ensures optimum humidity for the maturation process.

The wine is blended and then left in the blending tanks for at least three months for the various components to ‘marry’, integrate and develop the desired complexity, roundness and elegance. The Kleinood Tamboerskloof Syrah is matured in the bottle at a temperature of 14 to 15 degrees centigrade for a minimum of two years, prior to release.

The distinctive, yet characteristically understated, labels are hand printed with an antique press on hand made paper torn to size by hand and stuck onto each individual bottle by hand.

The front label bears only the name and vintage of the wine. The back label states its provenance. The sole insignia depicts a sheep bearing a flag, derived from the official de Villiers family crest.

Although our first Rhône style Syrah was bottled in 2002, the 2003 vintage was the first to be released, followed by the maiden vintage of Kleinood Tamboerskloof Viognier in 2006. The Kleinood Tamboerskloof John Spicer Syrah was first released in 2008, joined by the Kleinood Tamboerskloof Katharien Syrah Rosé in 2011.

If wine was a symphony,
terroir would be its musical instruments,
and the winemaker its conductor.

Lawrie Moore, a husband, the father of a baby daughter and winemaker, is now the conductor of Kleinood Tamboerskloof wines. He took charge of the vineyards and winery at the beginning of August 2025 and was responsible for the crucial phase of pruning the vines. Thus, he can truly be the conductor, from the first new buds to the bottling, of his first vintage in 2026.

Lawrie is an unassuming, no-nonsense man with a soft touch, an eager smile, ample energy, a penchant for getting things done and a passion for wine. We are extremely happy to have him in our midst with the new energy he brings, and are as excited and enthusiastic about his first harvest as he is.