Herding cattle to make better wine
This is the goal of winemakers at Hartenberg wine estate near Stellenbosch in South Africa
The historic estate has recently decided to let cattle, sheep and ducks roam free in its vineyards to improve its soil health
We are actually regenerating our soil by using less input from outside
and using nature as a tool to get the most benefits out of that
but in that same way with nature, then improve our soil biology, our soil health
our plant health, and at the end of the day the health of the fruit. The animal's dung fertilizes the ground
which leads to better soil quality and more biodiversity, and in turn, better wine
So with the study that we saw from last year that we did on the Shiraz block is that the control berries were larger than that of the grazed berries
So normally that will lead to higher quality wines with the smaller berries The practice is called regenerative farming As the impact of using livestock on a vineyard is little studied
Hartenberg Wine Estate has become the object of a three years long research project
by Stellenbosch University. So we had a very interesting trial with comparing a regenerative vineyard
with a regenerative vineyard with livestock in it. And what we found that the vineyard with livestock had a much lower alcohol
When I say much, it's almost 0.5% alcohol lower. And that in a sensory or perception of the wine point of view we found was showing much more elegant
We had a wine that had higher anthocyanins and tannins. so there was more structure to the wine but at the same time there was finesse
With positive results for the quality of the wine, the cattle at the estate will likely continue grazing their way through the vineyard