The NF50 Wine Club

The NF50 Wine Club

The NF50 Wine Club is the brainchild of Louis Norval and Marc Kent. It’s an exclusive wine club, focused on unique and rare South African wine produced by five of the country’s very best winemakers annually and limited to just fifty members. The principal objective of the NF50 is supporting the Norval Foundation and its Education Programme.

Once in a lifetime opportunity to bid on this lot - all proceeds will be donated to the Norval Foundation Education Programme.

Sadie Family Wines Nabot Parcel Swartland Syrah 2022 (6 x 750ml)
Since the first release of Columella with the 2000 vintage, Eben Sadie has acquired a reputation as the most innovative and inspired winemaker in South Africa. The Nabot Parcel Swartland Syrah was from a tiny bush vineyard planted in a fantastic high pH site in the Paardeberg, an absolute unicorn. It was an old vineyard planted to the first of SH9 selection Syrah plantations on pure granite soils. The vineyard had become uneconomical and missing too many wines and was earmarked to be taken out. However, because of the age of the vines and the quality of the fruit in 2022, Eben Sadie and his team decided to make a once-off wine from the site. The vineyard has since been taken out and a fantastic, once-off, true collectors’ wine was made for the NF50.

Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines Single Barrel Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 (3 x 1500ml)
The team of Chris and Andrea Mullineux is one of South Africa’s most celebrated winemakers, both locally and internationally, having won the Platters Winery of the Year award an unprecedented 5 times. Leeu Passant is an adventure into Cape wine heritage by Chris and Andrea Mullineux and their partner Analjit Singh. The Leeu Passant Single Barrel Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon is a single bottling of Magnums of their tightly-allocated 2021 Leeu Passant Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon. With this wine they aim to express the sophistication and perfume of Cabernet Sauvignon, reminiscent of classical styles from Stellenbosch. Planted on the lower-mid slopes of the Helderberg, this cool site ripens slowly and evenly, enhancing the structure and fragrance. The hand harvested fruit used in this Cabernet Sauvignon was whole-bunch sorted before destemming to tank where it underwent natural fermentation and extended maceration for 4 weeks. The wine spent 11 months in 500L barrel and a second year in 5000L foudre to let the tannins develop and allow for natural polishing of the Cabernet Character over time.

Porseleinberg Foudre No.14 Syrah 2022 (3 x 1500ml)
Winemaker Callie Louw’s craft shows in the ratings of this Syrah, having achieved just the third 100-point wine ever awarded to a South African by Tim Atkin MW. The grapes used in this Porseleinberg Syrah are grown on a rugged outcrop just south-east of Riebeek-Kasteel. This extreme terroir combined with uncomplicated farming produces a truly unique Cape Syrah that shows tremendous character. The growing year had more than average rainfall which resulted in a very good berry set and slightly bigger bunches. After selection the grapes were gently whole bunch crushed into concrete tanks to naturally ferment. Maturation then took place over twelve months in a hundred percent foudre. During the blending process a barrel worth of wine was selected from the best looking foudre and bottled in 150 Magnums. The fruit and palate of this Syrah is quite restrained, largely due to the difficult ripening conditions and heat waves, yet very linear and pure with a dry fresh finish. The wine will flesh out with time in the bottle.

Alheit Vineyards Automatic Earth Chenin Blanc 2022 (6 x 750ml)
One of the most talked about new wineries in South Africa, Alheit Vineyards is a family business founded in 2010 by husband and wife team Chris and Suzaan Alheit. The Alheit Automatic Earth Chenin Blanc is made from two of Chris and Suzaan’s favourite vineyards. The first is their own site on the Paardeberg that makes wine called Fire by Night, while the second is on a site on the False Bay coast of Stellenbosch, situated on a hillside called Sinai, where Nautical Dawn is made. Automatic Earth is made from half of the two vineyards. Both vineyards were planted in the late 70s, and both are dry farmed bushvines on granite soils. The blended wine is a combination of two great granite soil sites, one BERG and one SEE. The grapes used in the Chenin are hand sorted and whole bunch pressed, and the juice is settled without sulphur, racked after 24 hours to neutral vessels and allowed to ferment without any additions. The Berg was fermented in cement eggs, while the See was fermented in foudre. After a year on primary lees, the wines were racked to tank for a further five month ageing on fine lees.

Storm Wines Vrede’s Finest Pinot Noir 2022 (6 x 750ml)
Hannes and Nathalia Storm are a husband and wife team who handcrafts their wines on two parcels of land, with particularly exceptional terroirs, in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. The Storm Vrede’s Finest Pinot Noir is from the Vrede single vineyard with low-vigour, clay rich, Bokkeveld shale-derived soil. The preceding winter was the wettest in 24 years and maximum temperatures for the 4 months leading up to and during harvest was higher than the long term average and 2021. While ripening was slow and extended, harvest was fortunately complete before the first rains in March. This vintage has floral perfumes, notes of strawberry and raspberry with underlying subtle wood spices which add up to form an attractive array of aromatics. A bright palate offers beautiful minerality, as pristine, pure red-fruit flavours are coupled with a saline burst on the mid-palate and through to the finish. Fine-grained tannins lend a subtle structure.

Cassi Namoda | The inaugural NF50 artist
“We are honoured to introduce Cassi Namoda as our inaugural NF50 artist with her art piece, “Heartbreak takes new forms”. Born in 1988 Cassi is a painter whose work transfigures the cultural mythologies and historical narratives of life in post-colonial Africa, particularly those of the artist’s native Mozambique. Namoda’s paintings are highly elusive, drawing upon literary, cinematic and architectural influences that capture the expansiveness of her specifically Luso-African vantage point. The idiosyncratic subjects who appear and reappear in Namoda’s paintings also convey this hybridity: emerging from African indigenous religions just as much as they spring from Western mythologies. Her work borrows from an art historical canon and arises from vernacular photography in equal measure.”