Beware my friend, your Neigbour's Wrath

The name "Neigbour's Wrath" stems from a very extreme event in the vineyard's history.

I was getting the grapes from my friend Martin, who had a beautiful piece of land in the Helderberg. There was a narrow piece of vineyard on "Koffieklip", an orange type of soil rich in iron, that I vinified separately, and made two kick arse barrels from.

I was extremely happy with the wine, but shortly after harvest the neighbour came and told us that this piece of the vineyard was actually on his land. We were suprised, but after looking on the map we realised he was right. We offered to swop some other piece of land with him, or give him some grapes, but he would have none of it. Eventually he just came one morning, put a fence right through the vineyard, cutting the fence wires and irrigation pipes in the process. My friend Martin was a bit taken aback by this behaviour, but there was very little he could do.

The neighbour then went ahead and neglected the vineyard totally, not irrigating it, not pruning or spraying the vineyard. Martin was afraid that diseases from the vines would spread to his side of the fence and decided to do some extreme pruning with a chainsaw. The neighbour upon seeing this, attacked poor Martin. It is not common in these civilised times to have your neighbour attacking you so is was quite a traumatic event for Martin.

So it came to pass that this wine that I eventually entered into the CWG auction, turned out to be the vineyard's swan song, and all due to the neighbour's wrath.