Historically wine in South Africa has been a Western Cape affair, but recently Justin Vermaak, a formidable entrepreneur teamed up with Mauritz Koster, award-winning wheat farmer decided to combine their love of wine and their immense admiration for the Drakensberg, into birthing the first wine estate in The Central Berg.
Their vision is to produce world-class wines in a zero footprint fashion – thereby adding to the deep history of the Central berg and the San peoples that stayed there.
Cathedral Peak seemed to fit the bill , and back in 2007 the two gentleman started their endeavour by planting some 2ha of vines. From this their cellermaster – Andri Hanekom has proudly produced a surprisingly astounding series of wines. As a result planting has been expanded to 29ha and plans to further develop this to 60 ha over the next 10 years. This is part of the concept of turning this into a KwaZulu-Natal wine destination and by the taste of what is in the barrels from the 2014 pickings it can be believed that this will be an award winning region soon.
Development plans include the boutique wine section with individual plot owners of 2ha of vineyards and an additional 4 ha of land. The wine and wildlife program is planned for freehold title that include traverse rights into the vast game section.
It is planned that the estate will also eventually have a residential section in the future.
