THE STORY ABOUT HOGAN WINES
Jocelyn Hogan Wilson - Winemaker, Hogan Wines.
Each bottle of wine should contain the unique story of its vintage.
For us, making wine right now in South Africa is about being part of a revolution that is changing the ideals of winemaking. It is shifting the emphasis back to the farmers and the small-scale wine producers, who in their separation of laudable vineyards and attention to small batches of wine, are able to showcase the best South Africa has to offer.
We feel wine should be a history lesson of what the vine has experienced over the year, whether good or bad. No year is ever the same. Our wines are never going to be consistent. We don’t want to make wine to a recipe; we want to make natural, site-specific, vintage driven wines.
We’ve selected vineyards suited in terms of climate and soil to the varietals we make. We’ve looked for older vines which tell the story of the vintage through their well-established root systems, gnarled trunks and lower yields.
Through our close relationships with the farmers, we’ve tried to gain an understanding of the nuances of each vineyard, an understanding pivotal to making good wine.
Hogan Wines is a small, family-run business. After seven years of working with various wineries in the Cape and overseas, I now have the privilege of teaming up with my parents, Dunstan and Trish Hogan. We produce our wines in a cellar in the Banhoek Valley.
The grapes of our first vintage were harvested in 2014. Luckily for us, this was a great year for our decades’ old bush-vines grown in the hot, asperous Swartland.
It is an exciting time and place to be a winemaker. I hope you will experience it with us, in each bottle of our wine.
