Nitida Cellars - Top Weingut in Durbanville, Südafrika

With award-winning wines such as the single-variety Nitida Cabernet Sauvignon, Nitida Sauvignon Blanc and Nitida Semillon, as well as the Nitida Calligraphy, a cuvée in the classic Bordeaux style made from the Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot varieties, the winery - Nitida Cellars - was awarded the title of "Top Producer" at the Michelangelo International Wine Awards 2009 and John Platter made a veritable shower of stars rain down on Nitida's wines. A success that is worthy of note and testifies to the first-class quality of Nitidas wines. Owner and cellar master Bernhard Veller emphasizes that the reason for the success of his Nitida wines is simply the fact that people are passionate and have a lot of know-how to create real, honest and wonderful wines - a style of wine that you can enjoy on Nitida itself. And it is precisely this taste that has many followers at national and international level. In order to achieve this, Nitida works with utmost care, with tradition in winemaking and a very personal approach. Handcraft is taken seriously at Nitida. Almost everything is done by hand, from the harvesting of the grapes to the sorting of the berries and the production processes in the cellar. The Durbanville terroir is famous for the quality of its grapes. Nitida's wines are elegant, without appearing characterless or insipid. They are bold and powerful without appearing aggressive - they offer first-class quality without having an overly woody character. The beautiful protea flower "protea nitida", which unexpectedly grows in the naturally occurring Renosterveld flora on the farmland, gives the Nitida wine its name. The name Nitida has its origins in Latin and means "bright, luminous, healthy, fine and cultivated". The modest beginnings of the farm in no way suggested the success of this small boutique winery today. When owner Bernhard Veller (chemical engineer) and his wife Peta fell in love with this beautiful piece of farmland, it soon became clear that they had found their life's work here. With the support of Peta's mother, the couple bought the farm in 1990, found an old Ford tractor from 1971 in the barn and Klaas, a farmhand who had been working on the farm for years, quickly taught the new owners how to milk a cow and catch sheep, for example. Two years later Bernhard took up the project to produce his own wine. They had a few barrels in mind and so he took a week off from work to plant a few vines together with farm worker Klaas. Nobody suspected at that time that their wine would be awarded double gold only three years later for their first-class superb Sauvignon Blanc. Today, 20 years later, this family-run winery has developed into one of South Africa's most consistent and respected boutique wineries.