Lazarus to rise no more: Alheit says Radio Lazarus vineyard is gone

The small plot of old Chenin Blanc vines used to make Alheit Vineyards’s ‘Radio Lazarus’ label has gone past the point of recovery, winemaker Chris Alheit has said, and 2017 will be the last bottling of the wine.

Final flourish: The Radio Lazarus vineyard in happier times

Writing in the latest newsletter from the winery he said that the 2018 vintage had been: “very challenging.  Sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes joyous, always furiously charging forward with no regard for comfort or convenience.”

One casualty of the year has been the two hilltop blocks that make up one of the Alheit’s old vine Chenin range, Radio Lazarus (the others being Cartology, La Colline and Magnetic North).

Cause of death: the on-going drought and attentions of antelope desperate for anything green to eat.

Speaking to the drinks business Alheit was stoic, reasoning that while it was a shame to have lost the vines they were not the oldest vine stocks around – having ‘only’ been planted in 1971 and 1978.

He said: “Radio wasn’t that old but it was on an extreme site that killed it in the end. It’s on the top of a slope that’s always very dry and three years of drought just pushed it over the edge.

I wish we could do something about it but unfortunately just can’t. It’s got to the point it’s unrecoverable.”

A very little fruit was salvaged from the younger of the two plots, eight crates from 2 hectares, but to all intents and purposes 2017 is the last vintage of the label.

Although Alheit has put a brave face on it, it’s clearly a tough loss both for him and his wife, Suzaan, who put so much effort into restoring and nursing the vineyard back to health since they began farming it in 2011.

And for fans of both Radio Lazarus and Alheit’s wines it is of course a sad blow as it is exactly the sort of wine that has been winning South Africa and its exciting new wave of winemakers such plaudits and fans in recent years.

Finishing on a brighter note, Alheit aid that he was able to “crack a smile” at the thought that he and his wife had been able to save the vines from “death row… and yet they lived on a few more years to make some of the loveliest wines we’ve ever had the chance to work with.

“It is said that the inscription on the second grave of Lazarus read: Four days dead and friend of Christ.  Goodbye Radio Lazarus.”

And, as ever in life, while the Radio Lazarus plots may have bowed out, but Alheit reported that a new Riesling vineyard planted in 2015 at high altitude near Ceres gave its (tiny) maiden crop this year, enough for perhaps 250 bottles.

Vines in Paardeberg this vintage

Despite the loss of the Radio Lazarus vineyard and others in South Africa in Skurfberg and Swartland that can also be linked to the drought, Alheit was keen to dispel the notion that it was a bad vintage or that huge numbers of old vines are being lost.

“It’s been quite a good one,” he said, “there were some pretty bad photos going round of vines suffering and dying but it was only in a few spots.”

Many other old vines by contrast, including five of his own blocks in the Skurfberg, were green and healthy, even towards the end of the harvest this March.

“Soil plays a huge role in the plant’s ability to cope with drought,” he said, noting that it had been vines on shale and schist soils that had been struggling the most.

Quantities were extremely small, in some cases half that of 2017, but quality is extremely high.

Alheit said the Paardeberg and Stellenbosch Chenins looked “excellent” and it had been a good year for the drought resistant Cinsault.

“One thing remains absolute: the grape vine is an astonishing thing, surely one of the greatest drought resistant crops in the world,” he concluded.

And just to show that there are still some seriously old vines thriving in South Arica, Alheit also mentioned in his newsletter that an old Hanepoot (Muscat d’Alexandria) vineyard planted in the 1890s has come back under his remit.

The aim will be to make a passito/straw wine from it.

“Hopefully [this] will get the best out of this remarkable old vineyard,” he wrote.