You’ll often hear that wines are a snapshot – a picture of a particular place and a particular year. The liquid in the bottle tells the story of the land, the climate and the winemaker behind them.
So, when South African winemaker Bruce Jack announced a vertical tasting of his estate wine, Moveable Feast, spanning a decade, it’s no surprise that the trade showed up eager to try it, crowding around tiny tables in Courtyard Wine Cellars.
The wine, made up primarily of Shiraz and Malbec – though with various new grapes included each year – is named after the Ernest Hemingway memoir of the same name. A way to express a constantly changing liquid, this project, according to Jack, is “basically the pinnacle” of what the team does at the winery.
Of course, it’s far from the only focus. Known for its strategically positioned portfolio, which hits an array of styles and price points, Bruce Jack has Lifestyle, Reserve and Heritage collections in its core range, alongside the more esoteric The Drift Estate, Ghost in the Machine, Off the Charts and Secret Safari labels.
Yet, it is Moveable Feast that Jack seems most proud of, largely because of what it expresses about being a winemaker.
Reflecting on the process, Jack explains: “When you put your life into a farm you make a contract with nature that you can never get out of. Your ego gets completely trampled underfoot because you never know if you’re right or wrong.”
However, if lucky, “You slowly learn as you age to engage gracefully and with less ego, learning that you are a slave to the land, and that’s been an amazing experience”, he says.
There is no greater evidence of this, notes the winemaker, than tasting ten years of wines next to each other. Starting with the most recent and working to the oldest, 2022 for example was a “great year” for Moveable Feast, while 2021 was “a very hard vintage”.
Acting as a historical record, Jack continues, the 2020 vintage captures the lockdown year, when the vineyard couldn’t source new wood, so all the wine went into second fills – something the winemaker says added unexpected balance and elegance. In the same way, 2018 acts as an archive of the year South Africa almost ran out of water, with severe droughts resulting in a loss of crops.
Going back further, Jack says 2015 represents the best red wine vintage in South Africa, with perfect heat and winds that year. And, returning all the way to 2013, Jack concedes that you can taste his amateur hand, as it was his first year “still learning”.
In comparison to supermarket wines, which are all about “consistency and pleasing the general palate”, it’s this varied expression of Moveable Feast that makes it so special, Jack tells the crowd. Half joking, he adds: “We don’t care if anyone likes the wine or not. It’s all about being true to that year and that site.”
An honourable passion project, it’s a pleasure to try all the vintages lined up and it’s no surprise that Jack is proud of the wine, which, to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway in his memoir, will persist “wherever you go for the rest of your life”, offering a snapshot of a time that’s now gone but remembered in the drink.
