Yule Georgieva: Welcome to Chats from the Wine Cellar, the official inventory podcast. I'm Yule Georgieva and this week I'm very excited to have our first winemaker in the hot seat, my friend Matt Day at the famed Klein Constantia Estate in South Africa. Now Matt, I usually tell people's bios for them, but you have such a good story about how you got into wine and then got to Klein Constantia. So I'm just going to hand it right over to you and you tell us the story.

Matt Day: Well, thank you very much for having me. It's a fantastic privilege to be on the show, especially all the way out there in Canada. I mean, I feel like we're in Canadian weather. I'm freezing here and raining and miserable. Lots of rubber there. Anyway, in terms of my bio, it's very simple. I've kind of grown up at Tlanconstantia. I've been here for the last 15 years. I started in 2008 at Tlanconstantia. Before that, I studied at the University of Stellenbosch. And I'm actually from Johannesburg, so moving from Johannesburg to Stellenbosch to study winemaking is a pretty stupid idea because there's no vineyards out in Johannesburg and it's basically the wild west out there. But I grew up on a farm, I can drive a tractor and a bike and I had this passion for farming so I decided to move to Stellenbosch, study winemaking. Long story short, I then landed up with my first internship at a wine farm called Nihlist in Stellenbosch and in that time I decided to make a barrel of wine, a barrel of Shiraz, purely because I thought I could drink it with my mates at university and have a good time and have some cheap wine. Going into that, I made the Shiraz, bought the barrel, bought some grapes, did my thing. It turned out fantastically, by the way, on first day of rotation. It took a lot longer than what I was expecting. So then I worked in Australia, Nebraska, then I came back to South Africa and at the time I was back in South Africa I bottled the shiraz, and I was granted a very privileged interview at Cankin Stancher with the then winemaker Adam Mason for just an internship position. And I just bottled the shiraz and I decided, well let me be a bit gutsy, I had a magnum of the shiraz that I had, that I just bottled in my class, I stormed into the interview and I slapped a bottle of, on this table actually, that I'm sitting at now, a bottle of curaz into the table. I said, Adam, hey, if you like this wine, you're asking me the job. If you don't like the wine, we'll carry on with the interview. And for some reason, we carried on with the interview and he didn't taste the wine, but he liked me and he gave me the job as an intern at Kankin Standship. I then worked for a couple of months and then I went to Santa Maria after that. Am I wrong? No, I worked in Santa Maria before starting Clank & Sancho after that incident. And then started off with Clank & Sancho and the rest is kind of history. I went from intern to assistant winemaker within a year. And then a year later, well a couple of years later, Clank & Sancho was actually put on the market and sold. And Adam being a winemaker then decided to move to Greener Pastures in Stellenbosch. And for some other odd reason, the owners of Clank & Stancher, the new owners of Clank & Stancher, kind of looked at me and they said, well, Matt, you've been here for a really long time. You understand the place, you know the terroir and all the rest. We'll give you one opportunity, one chance to prove yourself. And if you do well, you can have the job as head winemaker at Kankin Stancher. I don't think they realized I'd been at Kankin Stancher for such a short amount of time. I was also only 20, I think I was 27 years old then. So I was quite fortunate that they put all their trust in me and together with that, I was also quite fortunate that two owners of Kankin Stancher are friend legends. So we've got Bruno Prats, Sue Stone, Costas Esnel, and Robert Dubois and Chateau Angelus. So being a young winemaker, being very naive in terms of the way that I did things, I had the backing of two legends to kind of help with link tanks. We actually rebuilt the sailor and they helped me with a lot of the design and all this. And every year they kind of came out and it was kind of like an exam paper. They would go through and taste every single wine and crit me on it. And it got a lot less daunting as we went along, but it was a good fun. I never failed, I never got fired. I'm still here today and still tell the story of Street Pool. In my time at Cane, I've worked in Hungary, I've worked in Apple Valley. I've worked quite a lot in Sancerre, a couple of vintages out there, and the Linde Pomerol for Weber's property as well. So, long story short, I also now have taken over the responsibilities of making wine in Stellenbosch at Everwilker, which is our red wine estate. And for some reason I'm still here. I love this place. It is, I mean, it's kind of like the retirement job for anyone. And I guess the issue that I have is I started here, yeah, and I've reached a position that most people aspire to getting to at a very young age. So it's only onward and upwards from here on out.

Yule Georgieva: Well, it is a very special place. It's probably the most beautiful estate in, I'm going to say, in the state, just because I have a very soft spot for it. But that's a great story about them coming and tasting with you. How intimidating.

Matt Day: Yeah, sure.

Yule Georgieva: You're a legend for taking your work, but obviously, as you said, you've done great. So let's turn to the estate itself. Now, Klingenstente is a very special estate within South Africa. Tell us a little bit about the history, what it meant with South Africa's initiation into wine back in the 17th century, but then also about this revival in the 20th century that brought it back onto the map.

Matt Day: Okay. Well, I'll try not to tell you too much because the story is very long. The bragging point that we have is Constantia Valley or the Constantia wine farm is the oldest new world producing vineyard in the world. So to put that into perspective, it was founded in 1685 by Simon van Stel. And that is way before Australia, way before Napa or wherever else. The only other wine was made for church, for communion, and that would have been in some of the colonies. But anyway, so Simon van der Stel, and going back to the story about the beauty of it, he surveyed the soil and the land throughout the Cape in those days. He was the governor, he was granted any land that he pleased to start his estate or his farm. And that's exactly what it was. It was an experimental farm to see what they could do and how they could push the boundaries and what they could grow. And as a result of these soil samples that they took that they actually sent back to Holland to have analyzed or checked, he decided to plant his flag here in Constantia. And my story is it's purely because of the beauty. And if you do come here, as you know, it's on the Cape Peninsula, we're right between the ocean on both sides. And we're overlooking Table Mountain and Stellenbosch and all the rest. It is a beautiful spot. And just imagine having a property right here. The other benefits is we had the trade route coming through Syracuse. The harbor or the port in those days was in Silentown, and they would have traveled through Constantia to get to the colony, up to the Cape of Good Hope or the Cape Castle. So we had all the wagons coming through and it became a very easy point to pick up wine, to pick up produce, I guess we were being grosser there. So he started the vineyards, he didn't make it famous, he was the pioneer. He then moved on to find a little wine growing area called Stellenbosch, I don't know if anyone's heard of that. It's something they make, they make a little bit of red wine and stuff. So he went on to find Stellenbosch, under Stel. Fastly after him, his son was involved in all this. It was a guy called Hendrik Klutie, who got a lot of the credit for making the sweet wine of Constantia. We've done quite a bit of research today into the history, and we've actually just written a book on it under Constance, or the sweet wines of Constantia. And we found there was actually a guy called Johannes Fellain that was very, very influential in the old sweet wine of Constantia. And often I talk about the success of the sweet wine of Constantia. I say that was purely because it was the sugar that formed preservative in the wine that meant it could be on last voyage on the way back to Europe without oxidizing, going more criminal risk. And then you could picture this wine from deepest darkest Africa that the King, Queens and Aristocracy were sharing. And that was my old story. It was because of the sugar that could be preserved and lost that voyage. And it kind of wasn't. Looking into the history, Johannes Glein had these incredible ideas of burning sulfur in the barrels and a whole lot of things that we still do today with tank and stand ship. One of them was fantastic. He said in order to stop weevils from climbing into the, this is a long story, sorry, but it's quite cool. I mean, in order to stop the weevils from getting into the bunch zone, he took leaves and he tied string around it, around the stem with the leaves. And because the weevils, they couldn't get through the leaves, they couldn't climb up the trunk and they couldn't get into the bunch zone and attack the bushes and the berries and stuff like that, which was fantastic. We do a very similar thing today. It's a very organic way of doing it. We tie cotton wool to the trunks and their feet get stuck in the cotton wool and they can't get into the lead soil. So instead of spraying everything, he had a really cool organic way of doing it. So that's how smart he was. And he was the guy that started making the sweet wine of Constantia property. And he would have made the old famous vintages of the 1791s. And I've been fortunate enough to taste that vintage. It's absolutely insane. It's an incredible wine. A more recent wine was just sold in auction for 60,000 pounds, and that was the 1821. I've also tasted that. It's still alive, you know, that preservative or that, you know, the sugar and the sulphur, whatever they did in those days meant that this wine could last forever, which is fantastic. Let's fast forward. So he made it famous. The farmers then divided when Hendrik Plüter had it. He left the farm to his two sons. The oldest son got Kro Constantia, which is our neighbor, and the youngest son got Kling Constantia, Kro meaning large and Kling meaning small. So that's when the farms were divided. That was in about 1820s, 1822 I think. I'm making this up by the way, it's somewhere up there.

Yule Georgieva: It sounds very official.

Matt Day: Yeah, I know, if you make it up with confidence, it's really good. But it's pretty much in that time zone. So that's when it was divided. And one thing that I must stress is the old wine of Constantia was called the Sweet Wine of Constantia. It was never called Blender Constance or anything like that. We've recreated the wine today and being the Blender Constance as a tribute to that old wine. So we'll carry on with the story about 1885. I've had a bottle of 1875. It's also just as good. It's more fresh, more perfumed, more aromatic than those older vintages. It's still ranking very well. 1885, a couple of things happened. Oedium, so Moldew hit the Cape and destroyed a lot of the vineyards. Velostrata, we always talk about, destroyed a lot of the vineyards as well. The English started a pre-trade agreement with the French, so they started to import wine from the French instead of their colonies. So we struggled with selling wine then and with export and trade. So a lot of the wine industry within the Cape kind of came to a standstill. And then it slowly, then it went into the era of the corporations, so the bigger producers that were buying a lot of grapes and all the rest. So we stopped producing wine in 1885. We only recreated the Vandekonstant in 1986. So the new owners bought the property in 1980, part of the vineyards recreated the Sweetwine Constantia and started planted the Sauvignon Blanc that went up in the store and did a fantastic job in reviving this insane product and brand. Yeah. Cool. Long story, but it's a great history.

Yule Georgieva: It's such a good history. I love your point about it being the oldest New World estate, right? Because I think many people do think of South Africa as an old world, sorry, as a New World entry within the world of wine, but really it's not. I mean, I think the Medoc didn't start producing wine until after Simon van der Sels started, right?

Matt Day: Yeah.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, it's crazy, yeah. So we spoke a little bit about the Vindiconstells. For all of our collectors who may not know what that is, let's actually dive into that one because that is a very special wine. So tell us a little bit about the Vendée Conceales and what makes it so special and distinct among the sweet wines of the world.

Matt Day: Sure, so let me grab a bottle so everyone can see it. I've got a couple of maps. Those are for display, not to wet the whistle between work. No, that's for display. It is four o'clock, so it's almost one o'clock. And that's the 2012 Vanderconstance, which is my first tattoo of BDC on record. In terms of Vanderconstance, it is a unique sweet wine. It's not a sweet wine that's made from botrytis, it's made from raisins, and it's made in the old style that they would have done for those first couple of vintages of the sweet wine constantia. It's made from Muscat Prontina, or Muscat de Pettigrand or Muscat Blanc. And in the old days they used to use semi-iron Pontac and Shannon Blanc as well. We've tried, we've experimented, we've looked at it, none of those cultivars work for the style of wine that we're trying to make. The reason for its success is because Muscat has got very thick skin and it's able to raise the malleable point that we need for sugar. Let's move on in terms of vineyards. We plant this on the warm slopes of Campin Stanshire. I say warm slopes, the property is in a very cold area where we've got the ocean on both sides. So hence we can get a lot of sunlight which helps with raisining, but we've also got the cool conditions to help with a very long ripening season. In terms of how it's done, we harvest over two months. So we start with a very early stock that's got high acidity to the very late stock which is predominantly just raisins. It gets to the point that the guys go and pick individual raisins and that forms the heart and soul of underconstance. And I mentioned it earlier, it's not a botrytis vine, it's not a noble land harvest. We don't want that, we don't want to make the same style as the other great sweet vines in the world. Our point of difference is that we are different. So we pick all those batches. I guess the point that the guys are so specialized in the business that we say, right guys, today we want 30% raisins on a bunch and that's what they'll go out and pick, or 40% or 80% and that's what they pick. We bring it into the cellar. And the cellar, the winemaking is quite interesting in that we kind of make it like a red wine. So we don't try and protect it from oxidation and press it straight away or anything like that. We want to extract as much sugar and flavor out of the skins as possible. So we do one week cold with non-saccharomyces and yeast on it just to protect it on the skins and then we warm it up and we finance it on the skins for another week. We'll then press it and generally over harvest for those two months we've got roughly about 30 different batches that we'll harvest. So every single batch is then pressed separately, it goes into its own tank. And then I get to a point that we're very focused on at the moment. Sweet wines are not popular anymore. Sweet wines are very often unliked and that's purely because they're too sweet, they're too overpowering and too cloy, they're not, it's just too much at the end of the meal. So we're looking for that balance factor, that X factor that means that the wine is almost sweet but tastes dry, if you can, if that makes sense. So in order to achieve that, we start blending those 30 different batches during the fermentation process, with the goal of blending the very early high acid stuff with the very late sweet stuff. And we're trying to get to that rule of thumb, ratio of 14% alcohol to 165 grams of sugar. In terms of sugar like that, to put it in perspective, a can of Coke is about 180 grams per liter of sugar. So that's kind of the level of sugar that the Bundy constant is. I'm not trying to break the constant of Coke, but anyway. So if you get it into that ratio, that's kind of like the happy medium, that it forms an environment that your yeast can't survive in anymore. So it becomes really stable. You don't have any refermentation, you don't have any issues later down in the line of the aging of the wine. So you don't have to stop it with temperature, you don't have to add salt, you don't have to filter it. So we blend all those components and those 30 different batches get compressed into about 6 different batches that have that perfect ratio between sugar, alcohol and acidity. And that's as good as you can get it for a sweet wine. We then put it into barrel for one and a half years. The point of that barrel age is we have about 50 to 60 percent new oak barrels, 500 liter barrels. At that point you get a lot of oxygen uptake and you get a lot of oak uptake. So that's where it evolves from a very primary Turkish delight aromatic pretty kind of wine and evolves into something that is more expressive, a lot more powerful. I call those secondary characteristics. So that's when you start to get the apricots and citrus and blossoms and all of those. So it evolves in that one and a half years to that complexity point. And then we want to put it into time capture and protect it. So we take it out of barrels and we put it into very large format oak foudre. So they're four and a half thousand meter tanks. They have very thick staves so there's no micro-oxidation happens, no air intake into the wine and that then preserves it from going from secondary to tertiary, keeps it in that secondary characteristic kind of flavor but you're still getting oak integration so you're still getting evolution of the wine without aging the wine. We then take it out, we basically will blend for about six months with a specialist blending panel so there's a lot of work, what I'm trying to say is there's a lot of work that goes into every single bottle of Vanda Constance. It's not just a sweet wine. It is unique and it does have that point of difference. I think that's what's made Vanda Constance very special in the last couple of years. It's light and delicate enough to have it in front of the mill. It's not just a sweet wine for the beginning of the mill.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, it's, from my own perspective, I adore it, you know I collect it. I've actually served it next to Chateau d'Yquem at tastings, and it is always a hit, right? It is a different style because Chateau d'Yquem obviously has that botrytis characteristic, but it is a wonderful wine that does hold its own next to even that top. So how does it age Vendée Costas? Because you mentioned a few of the older ones that you've had and maybe you could talk a little bit about how your style, a bit of a fresher style, compares to some of those older styles from the 18th, 19th centuries, like the originals, but then how does your current style age and evolve in the cellar? What can collectors expect in 20 years from now?

Matt Day: Sure. So, sorry, that was just load shedding. The electricity's just gone off. I'll come back on again. I need to scan right. Welcome to South Africa. Luckily, the internet didn't get up. In terms of ageability of anaconstance, I have two preferences. I like to drink it within the first year of bottling. If you're looking for that big, wow, aromatic, explosive flavor characteristic, that's fantastic. The other, then, on the other side, excuse me, is it ages incredibly. I mean, it can last forever. It's going to outlast us regardless. I've actually got one wine in a cellar which is 2003, it's been 20 years in barrel and it is fantastic right now. I'm aiming to leave it for 50 years in the barrel just to see what happens. So in terms of aging, it's, oh that's what I wanted to get into. It is one of, it is probably the only investment buying in South Africa. So aged, it does get better. It's very scarce. I've been putting away a couple of cases every year. When I first started buying, when the Constance was worth next to nothing, and now it's worth 10 times more. So it is a perfect one to put away for the kind of your kid's university fund or whatever it is that value will appreciate, provided that I do my job correctly, I think it's essential. It will age very well and it will appreciate in value.

Yule Georgieva: We'll check in with you every 10 years and hold you to account. If our university funds are not turning out. But so, so, optimally you would drink it within the first year if you wanted that fresher, pungent, aromatic experience. And then what's the next sort of milestone?

Matt Day: So first year and then after about seven years. And then after that, if you want to go for that very aged character, then I've really started to enjoy the 1991-1992 Werner Constance. I think those are getting into that really nice tertiary kind of characteristic, which is fantastic. What I've done a couple of times is we do a five-course meal and you do Werner Constance for the parents. So you can do all different vintages to pair throughout the meal. So the very young one I'll do at the end with cheese, the very old one I'll do with the main course. So one of the best combinations I have is fillet steak with van der Kastens, very old van der Kastens. And then you can do that like seven year old van der Kasten with a kind of duck liver parfait or something like that, which is a match made in heaven.

Yule Georgieva: Oh, that sounds great. Now I'm getting hungry. And it's only 10.8. I'm ready for some foie gras. Are there any particular vintages, either under your watch or prior, that you call out as very memorable?

Matt Day: There's a couple. So the 2004 is a fantastic vintage. That was the first vintage by Adam Mason. It's one of my favorites. 2012 is my first vintage, so I have to love it. It's my first child. 2018 and 2019 are fantastic vintages to look out for. That's kind of the sum of all the effort that we've done at Cank & Sanch in the last couple of years coming together. And then if you go into the older vintages, if you can get your hands on any 1995 or 1996 vintages, they are fantastic. They have age. They're still very fresh. On 1996, I get, yeah. Do you guys have a prickly pear?

Yule Georgieva: Oh, no. I know what it is, but we don't, it's not from.

Matt Day: Yeah, okay, so it's a very traditional South African, it's kind of like a fruit from a cactus. You can call it that, very characteristic of that. And the 2000, the 1995 has a chocolate chili kind of character to it, which is quite unique. I've never seen that in a wine before, but it's out there.

Yule Georgieva: So that's why that one would have gone with the steak.

Matt Day: Yeah, for sure. Then going into vintages like 1986 and 1987, they are very sought after. I mean, they'll probably be the most expensive wines you can buy in South Africa at the moment. We only produced a couple of barrels, so if you can, get your hands on the Inyabla's and they work a lot, a lot better.

Yule Georgieva: Well, Vinicoceuse is probably, I'd say, your flagship wine, but it's not your only wine. So let's talk a little bit about the other wines that you make, because you're all known for so many Inyabla's you mentioned.

Matt Day: Yeah, so my favorite wine is actually Sauvignon Blanc. I love to make Sauvignon Blanc, crazy Sauvignon Blanc nuts. And that's kind of because I've grown up with the property and Clank and Stancher at Tarawa is perfectly defined for Southern Yellowblack. So on all the higher slopes of Clank and Stancher we've got planted to Southern Yellowblack. Again I spoke about the temperature, it's a lot cooler here because of the ocean and forms our air condition. We also have the east-facing and south-facing vineyards which are a prime location in the southern hemisphere for growing very good white cull spots. They're a lot cooler because of the morning sunlight and South Basin is obviously away from the sun. So those factors kind of play into our hand perfectly and that the terroir here is fantastic for salving. Very good pHs, very good acidity, creation source. All of that put together we make I think 55% of our production is sponsored to Sauvignon Blanc. It is our number one selling wine throughout the world. You can get it anywhere and everywhere. And the goal that I have, or we have at Cancun Sanchez, New Zealand is fantastic. It's a very, you know, new world approach. It's very defined and distinct in characteristics, but it's not for everyone. I mean, I'm very happy to drink a very easy 2D, 3D Sauvignon Blanc. And I do, I'm not slaying New Zealand here, but quite often Sauvignon Blanc has just become a cash cow. So you plant it in the wrong spot and you kind of just bring it into the sale, get it out of the sale within a couple of months and you sell it for a lot of money and it's a very quick turnover of money. So people have jumped onto the bandwagon. I mean, it's part of the, you know, the big five. So Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot, whatever, or Shiraz, I guess it's one of those. People know the name, they know what they get, and they'll buy it. So we've kind of lost the track, I think, with Sauvignon Blanc in the last couple of years in that people aren't taking it seriously enough. It's not regarded as one of the pure, and noble cult spoils anymore. And that's what our goal is, is to restore Sauvignon Blanc to the level that Sancerre is. I mean, if you think of Sancerre, you don't really associate it with Sauvignon Blanc anymore. You just think of it as being fantastic, big, proper, white wine. So that's the goal with our Sauvignon Blanc. We actually make, I think at one point, we were making 10 different Sauvignon Blancs at Paine & Sancher, with the sole purpose of experimenting, researching, playing around, going back to the basics and figuring out how to understand our land better and to make a proper wine from that. So those 10, I think we're doing six at the moment. Only one of them is commercially available all over the world. The rest are kind of geeky, familiar wine club member wines that you can only really get if you get from the estate or a couple of fancy restaurants or wine shops. In terms of the style, I mentioned back to the basics. So when I first started off making Sauvignon Blanc, I used to make Sauvignon Blanc like I was taught in university. And that's purely, add lots of salt but protect it. Follow all the tricks in the textbook and make it in that very aromatic tutti frutti style. That's not really, the problem with that is everyone's doing that and your wine starts to taste like your neighbor's wine. So we're trying to make something a little bit more unique. And yes, working in Sancerre has helped quite a lot in that. We have thought out of the box and we've gone back to the way that we think it should be made. So we purposely oxidize the juice crush. We don't protect the flavors. And by doing that, you're able to focus on very stable flavors instead of the ones that break down anywhere six months after bottling. So you can make a more stable, robust salmoneal blight by oxidizing them for everyone before they oxidize in the bottle. So we oxidize before fermentation. Fermentation then brings it back into a revitalized phase, so it's more sour. It's also almost 100% wild fermentation at the moment on our lungs. And then we play around with a whole lot of other cool things. So we don't add anything except for sulfur, bentonites, and nutrients. But then the other way that we can get complexity and play around with the style or learn what our terroir is, is fermentation, temperature, turbidity, so the soluble content of the wine, and a little bit of oak. So we do a little bit of oak in Sous Savoy as well. All that said is you have to go out and try to take essential sorghum, and likely we can find it.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, absolutely. Well, what's the, since it is different and because, as you mentioned, you oxidize it, are these wines that can age?

Matt Day: Yes, so traditionally our wines regardless of age, well, that's purely because of the pH balance. So, the 1986 Frank Essentials Sylvanian Blanca still regardless the greatest Sylvanian Blanca ever made in South Africa, which is fantastic to know that. And that we were drinking up until a couple of years ago. You had about half an hour after pulling the cork, the wine was fantastic, and they would kind of oxidize and fall to pieces. So the worst thing that you can do with Sauvignon Blanc is drink it within the first six months of bottling. The problem is at the moment, people are, they want to drink 2024 Sauvignon Blanc already, because that's what they've been taught. Ideally for us, after about three years, the wine only starts to show up Sauvignon Blanc characteristics. It starts to lose that fermentation aromatics and starts to focus on what the pure aromatics are of that piece of terroir. So it should age, it should have some time. I discovered the 2005, no the 1995 Sauvignon Blanc about a year ago, and it is a fantastic wine. It's still beautiful, super aromatic. It had lasted that tested time. The problem is it didn't last very long because I drank every single bottle of the Cetaliz. So that's how good it was, and that's how well it aged.

Yule Georgieva: Have you noticed anything through your learnings with trying these different plots? Have you noticed anything in particular about the different terroirs? Are there some that are quite unique? Are there some that you would maybe equate to a Sancerre or a Prifumé? Or what have you learned in that experimentation?

Matt Day: The most important thing that I've learned is just don't overcomplicate things, don't overthink them. As soon as you start doing that, you make a generic style of wine. So let the wines do the talking. But no, the main thing that I've learned is in South Africa, and I think in a lot of the new world, we don't talk about our soil or our geology well enough or often enough. So it is vitally important to start talking about soil a lot more. The issue that a lot of people have is they don't have one single property or one single vineyard. They buy grapes from all over the wine growing regions. So they don't have that identity of soil. So they don't have the ability to talk about it like that. So in terms of what we have table mount and sandstone on tank and sandshed and we've got decomposed granites. And if I can equate it to the way that we used to do in Sancerre's, it's all about mouth feel and texture and all the rest. So Sancerre you've got select flint, which has that clean, spicy character. You've got chalk, which has that richness and roundness on the palate. So for us, granite is pure salinity, it's salty, it's savory, it's umami on our Sauvignon Blanc. For me, it's kind of like a dirty blend, so it is not as polished and refined, but it still gives you that rough rawness to the wine, which is fantastic. So if you pick up any Tanks and Savvies, you'll always get this lovely bitterness. It's almost like your gin and tonic kind of bitterness, which is really refreshing, which I absolutely love. And then the sandstone, we've got very small pockets of sandstone on the higher line when it's a kind of a session. And sandstone for me is just that round the side kind of palette that almost like a donut, so it fills your mouth, but doesn't have the texture in the middle. You put the two together and you can have that full effect of granites and sandstone put together on a savvy. So we do have site-specific wines that are made on either of those, so those go into our single vineyard series, but the Canker Sanctuary Estates of Rimmelblut is made from 42 different vineyard blocks and ideally they're either south-facing, you've got east-facing with low altitude, you've got high altitude and sandstone and granite and then you're kind of painting a picture with one color and expressing a hell of a lot of different definition and context and the rest to that one line, which is fantastic.

Yule Georgieva: How many plots do you have now? Because you've mapped the estate in quite a lot of detail.

Matt Day: There's a lot. I mean, I think we have about 65 to 67 different plots. We are only 65 hectares. So that means there's a lot of very small blocks. And each one we've... So this formed part of our new Klang & Stancho regime. The first thing that we did is we replanted all the vineyards to what made sense and to make quality wine. So in the old days it was more about making more wine. Now we're trying to make better wine. It's the only way to supply today's market. So we replanted everything. We made the blocks a lot smaller and we planted them in the right spot for what works. So there's a hell of a lot of different blocks to play around with. And the lovely thing is I now understand the personality of every single block. So you're now a priest in the cellar to harness the potential of what that block actually is. And you put that all together and you can create something that is a representation of this beautiful sense of place.

Yule Georgieva: Well what other varietals would you, or are you also growing right now? Because maybe the Vandekostnaus is your flagship, the Sauvignon Blancs are obviously also very definitive of clank and stanchard, but you have a range of other wines. So what are the others?

Matt Day: Yeah, so we have a couple of niche wines. So we're doing a little bit of Riesling. So we're one of the last, I think, nine producers in South Africa. Which I love.

Yule Georgieva: I love your Riesling.

Matt Day: But it needs some age. I mean, I'll make sure you've got a Riesling tasting tomorrow. We're going to taste Riesling from 1987 until current vintage. So, we're pretty fast. So we do Riesling, we're doing Chardonnay for both bubbles and bubbles of still wine Chardonnay. But we do tiny little volumes of that. That's more just to enjoy at the estate and salt through the wine club. We do do a little bit of rated Cain Cassancha, so we make one rate wine called the Estate Rate, which is made up of Cabernet, Malbec, Pétuy, and Juraiste. And what am I missing? I think that's about it. We've got a lot of experimental blocks, so the experimental blocks to try and see how we can improve the wine constants. We've planted Hoch-Lévalu, we've just planted Betsy Marsang, we're planting Thurman soon, we've planted Shannon, all this with the idea of improving by the constants. And I feel like I've missed a couple of other colors for us, I think I make way too many wines. We make a Rosé, we make this, Matt's the next thing. The focus on Clarence Sancho is white wine and by the constants. In terms of making a big, bold red wine that can compete with other red wines in the rest of the world, we have our Statenbosch properly pulled in Wilka, and that is a properly focused cellar and vineyard for making the highest level res that you can possibly make. So there we've got Cabernet and Syrah, and that's where Hervé Dubois and Bruno Krass come into play quite heavily because we use their expertise in terms of blending and concepts and barrels and equipments and all the rest to make a very smart red wine. I am going to London next month to present a tasting with Robert de Bois, where we will be having some of his wines next to Ann Wilker for this tasting and a little bit of Vanda Constance, I guess, which is pretty cool. I can present with a legend himself.

Yule Georgieva: Well, you're becoming a bit of a legend yourself, too, so I wouldn't discount what you're going to bring to that table. That sounds like a really fun tasting.

Matt Day: It's going to be a fun tasting, yeah.

Yule Georgieva: Well, let's just talk a little bit about how this, how Constantia wines and plain Constantia wines fit into the world of collecting. When you travel around, because I know you do travel quite a bit to bring these wines to different markets. Do you find that at this stage, people are quite familiar with what you do and what Constantia represents? I mean, maybe, probably not, I would assume at the same level of Bordeaux or Burgundy in that sense, but given that the history is not there, but do you find that there's more of a recognition of the quality that you're able to produce?

Matt Day: Yeah, so what we find is everyone knows Vendor Constance. So Vendor Constance, no matter where you are in the world, people know the brand and the wine. Very few people realize that Vendor Constance is made by Klenken Stantra. So it is quite tough. We have certain markets that we're doing really well in. So if we go to the UK, we're selling everywhere and we're doing a great job there. We went to, I actually did a trip to New Zealand a couple of years ago to try and sell something on blank to the Kiwis. It was more of a fact-finding mission to figure out what's going on in New Zealand and taste blinds and all the rest. But in order to do that, we had to have it as a marketing trip, so we had to go and try soul wines. I'll never forget, we did a tasting, a couple of tastings, benchmark tastings, with their who's who of wine writers and wine geeks and all the rest. And I got up and I said, I'm Matt Day from Cancun Statuary. Today we've got 10 different Sauvignon Blancs in front of you and they were all like, oh, not happy about it. And they tasted it and they all absolutely loved the style of Sauvignon Blanc and what Tank & Stancher actually represented. So we are unknown across a lot of the world in terms of Tank & Stancher. But if we do our job well and we get the reputation of vendor customers, the point that it should be, it will pull the Tank & Stancher brand with us. We also don't make enough wines, it's all over the world. So we have to pick our markets nicely and we can't visit everywhere. We like to have that nice personal touch when it comes to all of our wines. So we like to actually visit the markets and spare some time in order to sell wines and then rather than just randomly sending containers over to places and hoping for the best.

Yule Georgieva: Are there any producers or winemakers or even regions that you really look to as benchmarks that help you evolve your style or, because I know you're probably used by others, especially for the sweet wine, but in either the sweet wines or the Sauvignon Blanc, are there any benchmarks that you would point to?

Matt Day: So in terms of Sauvignon Blanc at Sancerre, that's where I'm, I head out there quite often. So I mean, we work very closely with Pasteur Jolivet and that has helped a lot. And I'm crazy about producers like Didier Duggano or Francois Coteau, whoever it is out there. So that's really nice to see. And it's also nice to get out of the South African palette because, you know, South African palettes, you only taste South African wines, you think South African wines are fantastic. We don't get exposed to the rest of the wines all over the world. So Sanse is very important. Who else? I guess Chateau de Caymanas, we have a very close relationship. So it's quite nice that when I was very young, I went out to go visit Sandrine in the Cayman. I mean, she's not there anymore, but she spent a lot of time with me. She explained a lot of things to me. She helped me out a lot in terms of my journey. She didn't have any secrets. She basically asked me, she said, Matt, what are you struggling with? How can I help you? And she was always there. She would phone all the way to opera assistants. The nice thing was, I went out there and I learned from her. And then a couple of years later, she sent her assistant violin maker out to come and learn from us at Clank and Stanchard. So we've got that nice relationship. I've worked in Tokai and Hungary. And we had quite good relationships there as well. We learn a lot from them and likewise then from us. Bordeaux is quite influential and that's purely because of our Bordeaux relationship. I think that's about it. There's so many good wines in the world. Yeah. So many great benchmarks and wines to aspire to and look up to. So especially with Ben Wilker, I mean, there's so many great brands that we are looking at and benchmarking with to see how we can get to a point that we're established like them, we have equal quality to them.

Yule Georgieva: Well, let's talk a little bit about Anahuilco. So in terms of style, is it more steering towards Bordeaux, which would make sense given the proprietors, or are you, given the climate, looking for more of a California richer style, or is it somewhere in the middle?

Matt Day: Yeah, I think it's somewhere in the middle. So what happened was they came up with the idea of making Bordeaux wine in South Africa and they realized very quickly that we're a lot hotter than water is, the conditions are completely different, the soils are different, and the other thing they realized is Merlot just does not work in South Africa. There's certain spots that it works at, but the Merlot in South Africa, I think our growing season is too short and we're too hot, so it never gets that phenological right flavor that you kind of need in order for Merlot to be elegant and refined. So Merlot is quite aggressive, it's very leafy, it's very green, if not done well. So they planted Merlot and they pulled it out within a couple of years because they didn't like it enough. But the main component at Wilka is Cabernet. And Cabernet for us, and Cabernet and Stellenbosch is actually king. I thought going in there, the churros is gonna be much better and the churros will give us more juicy, more elegant, more refined flavors. And I think that was my Barossa Valley hat on saying that, you know, you can make a big churros, big jam churros and everything. After starting to work there, I tried blends and various blends and ideas and concepts and all the rest of the churros and I wanted to make a shuras-based blend. And in every single blind tasting that we did for blends, the blend with the majority of Cabernet always stood out as being the best blend. And that's purely because it's just got the backbone that holds it together, means that the wine's gonna last for a lot longer and, you know, be a bit more ageable than a shuras-based blend. But what we've done is we went from being looking for a very Bordeaux style, then we went, I think, for quite a Napa-driven style that was very rough, very extracted, very bold, very powerful, looking for the big scores from all the wine critics. And then my mandate when I started at Rilke's, we made fantastic wines in the old days that have done very well, but how can, in today's day, how can we find a more elegant kind of style of red wine and how can we produce it at Wilker. And I think today's wine drinkers are steering towards something that's a little bit lighter, a little bit more elegant, a little bit more perfumed. So we changed the style, and fortunately that was during kind of COVID times, so no one could come in and interfere with us. We just did whatever the hell we wanted to do at Wilker. And then afterwards, I had to present it and everyone kind of loved the style. So we picked nice and early, and we also took the Syrah and we harvested it a lot earlier. So we harvested it earlier, we did a whole bunch of fermentation on it and blended the two together as well as in perfecting the barrel aging and the type of barrels that we used. It's a lot more early than it was a lot more refined and obviously in everything.

Yule Georgieva: Question for you about scores. This might be a tricky question, but I know you're very connected to being terroir driven and how you produce wines and letting the wines express where they're from, but do you find that you have to think about that, the scores that you might be able to obtain and give credence to different critics' palettes, or do you just let the wine do what it needs to do and say, like it or leave it?

Matt Day: Scores are always helpful, provided they're the right scores. There's a lot of scores these days that mean nothing. We've done some research into that. I won't name the critics that you need to follow, but there's only about five critics in the world that actually have an influence in the wine industry. Other ones are just people trying to make money of the wine industry and put stickers on the bottles and stuff like that, which is irrelevant to what we're trying to do. So, scores are great, and I think if you're aiming for those five critics in the world, they're good enough to judge you for where you're coming from as opposed to the style they're looking for. So we do like to chase scores. It's always nice to get big scores. But it's also, once you, I'm taking Wendel Constance into consideration here, once you've created a track record and people know that your wine is always going to be a 96 to 98 point wine. The scores become less and less important in my opinion. So you can, I'm pretty sure that Chateau Kim and Romany Conti and all these guys don't send their wines into competitions anymore because it's irrelevant. You know that the wines are going to be fantastic. So you just need to get to that point so then you can start pre-sailing from there. Obviously, if you make a bad wine, you're never going to come back from it. I mean, people are not stupid these days, especially when it comes to high-end quality wines. They know what's a good quality wine and what's a bad quality wine. So I think the other thing is the consumer reviews. You know, the concepts of Berbino and all the rest is pretty cool. I mean, you've got your peers coming back or consumers coming back and real live people telling you what they think. And I think those are probably more important than what Mr. Big Score Giver out there gives you, I guess. I'm not naming any, because I've filled up the reviews.

Yule Georgieva: You know, it's a good point. And I think one thing, so at InVintory, we do allow customers to leave reviews on wines, but we don't allow them to leave scores. And the reason for this is that the scores can be quite arbitrary, right? Sometimes you can gravitate towards a 91 or a 4.3 and it loses its meaning a little bit, whereas actually describing the experience, I think is a lot more useful to other consumers and maybe even back to you. So I think the scores, the numbers are quite objective and wine is so subjective. So it can be a little tricky with the numbers.

Matt Day: Yeah, sure. The other problem with scores is they've all become inflated. So we almost need the 110 point scale. No wine is a 100 point wine. And I don't believe that anyone should be able to score 100 points because there's no such thing as a vibration when it comes to winemaking. Once, I mean, you can't, you can't get it. It's impossible. You can get a 99 points or a 98 point wine, but as soon as you got in that 100 point wine, it doesn't exist. It's a unicorn. People won't buy wine that's under 90 points. We get that quite often. And a 90 point wine is actually fantastic. An 88 point wine should be fantastic. It shouldn't be, you know, you need to have 95, 96 points in order for you to be great. We just need to go to the one out of 10 school kind of scale as opposed to the 100 point scale. Because it's a lot more, I don't know, just descriptive of what the line actually is.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, I think you're right that even the 100 point scale has sort of narrowed to maybe a 20 point scale. Because I don't think I've ever seen anything under 80.

Matt Day: Now, 80 is undrinkable. Did you ever see 80 was a pass? 80 was a distinction, was a very good pass.

Yule Georgieva: Above average, for sure.

Matt Day: I know. I was a center, so damn it, I wouldn't have done well in wine schools. No.

Yule Georgieva: Let's see, what's next for Clayton Constantia, what's next for you, what's the next evolution? Because you've already moved so much in your last 10 years, what do the next 10 years hold?

Matt Day: World domination, probably. I'm going to take over the world. No, my big goal is to focus on Anorilca. Anorilca is such a fun project. There's so much potential there, so that's where we're going to do a big push. Vendor Constance, we're aiming to get 100 points, not joking. So Vendor Constance has done very well in that it's now on the border exchange. It's being sold with some fantastic peers and a great environment. The goal there is just to get it to that level of being when people ask the question, what are the great sweet wines of the world? Or what is the greatest sweet wine in the world? Most people are gonna say Chateau de Quim, but a lot of people need to say, well, what about Vain de Constance? And then we've reached our goal. Okay, so that's the goal for Vain de Constance. And then the goal for Sauvignon Blanc is, you know, I think we should become the, well, I want to become the new world Sauvignon Blanc king and guru. I think New Zealand's done it for a long time and there's a big gap at the moment for us South African producers to put up their hands and actually do it properly.

Yule Georgieva: I think that's a great goal. You just need a bit more hair if you're going to reflect Didier D'Aguinal. Let's shift to your personal cellar and your personal drinking. So what are a few great wines that you've had personally recently? Maybe name three.

Matt Day: Cotta is my favorite. So Cotta, I love it. And so I have that on every special occasion I possibly can. And we've got a big cellar of that. What else have I had recently? A 1976 Niederberg Cabernet. And I've had a couple of those. I think it's one of South Africa's greatest Cabernets or greatest street wines ever made and it's still drinking very well today. So that's a fantastic wine to look at. A wine that brought a tear to my eyes is the 1987 Riesling from Frankensteincher, not to name one of ours. And the last one I had recently, Angelus 25th was very good. That's a very nice line actually. That's about it. I'm being spoiled.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, you do have a beautiful cellar. I mean, I can attest to that having seen it. The 2015, was that a touch young or was it in a great spot?

Matt Day: We had a very big fat stake off the fire, so it was perfect for that kind of situation. And we do have all that, but yeah, we have very few of those. But Dina is always a good show of wine.

Yule Georgieva: Well, thank you so much for this conversation, Matt. This was a really great overview of Clayne Constantia, a great introduction. I hope for all of our collectors out there who are not yet buying Vins de Constant and equating you with Chateau d'Yquem as the new best sweet wine in the world, or your Sauvignon Blanc as the new Sancerre, then I hope they go out and find it because it is fairly available for most people to add to their sellers and I hope they all do.

Matt Day: Awesome. Thanks for having me. It's been good fun.

Yule Georgieva: Absolutely. So to all of our listeners, make sure you click the little button below and subscribe whether on YouTube or on any of our podcast platforms. You can find Plain Constantia, I think if you want to find it, you have a website. You also have a social handle, don't you? Are you on Instagram?

Matt Day: I am, but I don't know what my handle is, I'm sorry.

Yule Georgieva: I would assume, well, the Claim Constantia, it's just a...

Matt Day: On any form of social media, but Claim Constantia would have it, I'll just say Claim Constantia.

Yule Georgieva: Search Claim Constantia and it shall be found. And if you want to follow Inventory or get started managing your collection, download the app on the App Store, sign up at Inventory.com or follow us on Instagram at Inventory and we will be back next week with another great episode. So thank you again, Matt. So thank you again, Matt. This was really fun.