When one of the world’s most talented and ambitious winemakers decides to lay out what sounds like a grand unified field theory for making great wine, you shut your mouth and listen. Last autumn, I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon with Eben Sadie at his estate in the Swartland region of South Africa. We were joined by a small group of buyers from Madagascar, who were meeting Sadie for the first time.
Perhaps because these were new acquaintances, and perhaps because of these visitors’ unfamiliarity with his wines and with the region, Sadie offered them an unusually in-depth introduction.
Sitting in the lounge of his new winery, along with his elder son Markus, he launched into a narrative that was by far the most comprehensive articulation of his personal history and winemaking philosophy that I’ve ever heard. I managed to record it, and have decided to offer the transcript of it here in its entirety, only lightly edited for readability.
What he had to say seemed to hang together as a single, relatively linear narrative, and it felt to me as though it was worthy of an extended read. I hope you will feel the same way.
In a recent interview with Jancis Robinson, Sadie announced that 2027 will be his last as the winemaker for his family estate, The Sadie Family Wines. He is handing the reins to his son Markus and his daughter-in-law Jessica. Sadie says he plans to continue his research and work in the vineyards, but will leave the work in the cellar to the kids.
From left to right: Markus Sadie, Jessica Neal, and Eben Sadie
Those who want to just skip to my thoughts on the spectacular wines of Sadie’s most recent vintage can jump to the reviews here.
Otherwise, here’s Eben Sadie explaining, well, everything.
I did not grow up in a family of wine. I grew up on the coast here in the Swartland, completely disconnected from wine and food. We ate food because we wanted to stay alive, but we didn’t know that food could be something else. I grew up in a pretty small village. Nobody was rich, nobody was really very poor. It was just balanced—everybody living in each other’s houses—that kind of life.
I grew up loving the ocean a lot. I mean, you love living in a beautiful place where the ocean is very much a part of your life. I was always windsurfing, kitesurfing, surfing, diving. There was a point in my life when I thought I would study Marine Biology.
So for me, ultimately, it was between Marine Biology and Agriculture. In 1990, at that time, you still had to go to the military in South Africa; it was compulsory. So I went to the military in 1990. And by the time I had almost finished with the military, I decided I would study agriculture.
I went to go study in Stellenbosch. And when you study agriculture in Stellenbosch, you are almost never disconnected from wine. Stellenbosch is such a genius town, you know. In Stellenbosch, everything is wine. And from living there and studying there, my contact with wine grew more and more.
As a young student, I joined a tasting group, and I started tasting the great wines. There was a very important restaurant there at the time, run by Mark Kent, that today is Boekenhoutskloof. Mark introduced me to a lot of the great wines of the world at that early stage. I was 20 years old when I tasted Latour, Mouton, Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc, Ausone—all those wines. And for me, it changed my world.
Studying, we didn’t always have the money to taste wines, but we found ways. I chose to work in restaurants. It was one way to finance my drinking. My life was work in restaurants, get money, buy wine, drink wine. So by the time I was going into my third year at Stellenbosch, I decided to study oenology. But I came into wine through drinking, not studying.
I was drinking wine and saying to myself, I want to do this.
It’s important to know that when I qualified [from university] it was 1994. That’s a very important date,…
Source : https://www.vinography.com/2026/09/the-road-to-great-wine-with-eben-sadie
