Bertus Fourie, Coffee Pinotage and Fire

We work with him in South Africa. Here is what we know of his path, told without embellishment.

Who is Bertus Fourie?

A South African winemaker, trained in microbiology, chemistry and oenology, holder of a master's degree from Stellenbosch University devoted to the effects of oak ageing on wine. That is the portrait his path allows; we will not say more than we know, and we will not speak in his place about what he is looking for today.

Where does Coffee Pinotage come from?

From 2001, during trials on different oaks applied to Pinotage. He tells of opening the cellar door one morning and finding that the room smelled of coffee. We have that episode from his account, and we were not there to verify it.

Out of that observation came Barista Coffee Pinotage, a style of wine built around notes of coffee and chocolate, which found a wide audience in South Africa and to which the nickname "Starbucks" has remained attached. The combination of yeasts and oak profiles that produces this character belongs to him. We will not publish the recipe, first of all because we do not have it.

What does oak do in this story, and what do we not know?

Toasted oak carries roasted compounds, and our most heavily toasted profiles often evoke grilled notes, cocoa, sometimes coffee. That kinship we find again on the tasting bench every campaign.

Between a grilled note and a clear, recognisable coffee aroma, there remains a step we do not know how to take on demand. The share belonging to the wood, the share belonging to the yeasts and the share belonging to the grape variety in a wine like that one, we have not separated them ourselves. So we will not present oak as the cause of this wine. It is part of it, and that is all we can honestly write.

Fire, outside the cellar

Bertus Fourie cooks with fire under the Asador Carneology name, and the braai, the South African barbecue, holds an important place in his work as in the way he entertains. He took part in the Ultimate Braai Master television competition.

We mention it because the same material keeps coming back: wood, a source of heat, and attention paid to the way heat transforms a food. Our trade comes down to the same gesture, applied to a stave rather than to a cut of meat.

TERRA.LOCI.

He co-founded this project with Johann Fourie and Pieter du Toit, around wines that seek to express the characters of the different South African wine regions: Chardonnays from Elgin, Chenin Blancs from the Swartland, Pinot Noirs from Walker Bay. The project was named Newcomer Winery of the Year 2025 in the Platter's by Diners Club guide.

Why we are telling this

Because a good part of what we learn about wood comes from people who use it in ways we had not planned. Our technical sheets give orders of magnitude; they do not say what a curious winemaker will find by pushing a toast further or by pairing a profile with a particular yeast. Coffee Pinotage did not come out of a catalogue.

We will not say that our products made this wine possible, that would be claiming another man's work. We will simply say that working with Bertus Fourie teaches us things, and that part of what we understand about oak today comes from exchanges of that kind. The questions we are asked most often about profiles are gathered in our questions and answers, and if one of our benchmarks does not hold in your cellar, write to us: we would rather correct it than defend it.

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