There lurks a beautiful mind behind the big, burly, gruff Charles Hopkins. The man himself reckons: 'Who else can say that four of his closest friends are clinical psychologists? And I'm their best patient!'
Vintage 25
Jurie and Narina, Johan and Adele immediately count with great relish and much humour a trip they did with Charles and his wife Annaline to Bordeaux in 2001. Charles Hopkins, then winemaker at Graham Beck's Franschhoek winery, had been to biennial international trade fair Vinexpo in Bordeaux in 1999.
'He'd been raving about it and saying how we would have enjoyed it. So from then on, every time we saw him, we’d tell him we wanted to go to Bordeaux. He thought we were joking, but we'd been quietly saving our pennies until, one day, he realised we were actually serious. Then he had to hustle with the bookings!'
The three couples - the women met at Stellenbosch University and celebrated 30 years of friendship in 2012 - rented a car and spent two weeks with Charles as their guide, giving them rare introductions to winemakers and châteaux not normally open to the public. The memorable wines were matched only by the fun they had, mostly due to their guide’s trademark joviality.
At dinner at a very fine establishment in Saint-Émilion one evening, one of them wondered aloud about the provenance of beautiful crockery. Without a thought, the irrepressible, thoroughly unpretentious Charles raised a plate above his head to check the manufacturer's mark. At which point their waiter said: 'I know you!' and reminded him of his visit to the same restaurant three years previously.
'We should never take for granted how special times spent with close friends are.'
From humble, small-town beginnings - he grew up in the Boland fanning community of Bredasdorp before the family moved to the Strand, where he matriculated - Charles Hopkins became one of the most widely travelled Cape winemakers, undertaking study tours to France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.
He has worked a harvest in the heart of classic French winemaking territory: at Grand Cru Classe Chateau Fonplegade in Saint-Émilion, where merlot and cabernet franc hold sway, still two of his favourite varieties. He also spent harvest time in the United States at Dry Creek Vineyard in Sonoma, California, with a focus on sauvignon blanc and chardonnay.
The latter was straight after graduating from Elsenburg Agricultural College with a diploma in viticulture and cellar technology in 1986. He had intended on studying animal husbandry, merely taking viticulture as a subject out of interest.
A keen rugby player, he was a member of the Stellenbosch University club Maties at a time when Jan 'Boland' Coetzee, then winemaker at Kanonkop, was coaching. 'He gave us a wine tasting one day and I just fell in love with it.' Ironically, it was a red Burgundy that grabbed his attention, yet he was only to try his hand at it himself some 20 years later.
Before that, Charles Hopkins was to become particularly renowned for his work with Bordeaux red varieties and shiraz and pinotage, as well as sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. As a young but undeniably talented winemaker, he burnished the reputation of Bellingham in Franschhoek in the 1990s. So much so that he was asked to join the Guild in 1999.
When Bellingham became part of coal magnate Graham Beck's new wine empire, Charles was a cellarmaster of the new state-of-the-art winery, working in tandem with Beck's Robertson-based cellarmaster Pieter Ferreira. Besides turning out champion wines, primarily reds from fruit grown on other premium Beck-owned farms in the Helderberg foothills between Stellenbosch and Somerset West, he was also sourcing grapes from growers. One such was Sir David Graaff, on an exciting new cool-climate site on the Tygerberg hills near Durbanville called De Grendel.
Alikreukel (giant periwinkles) risotto with Bulgarian yoghurt recipe by Charles Hopkins....
Barbecued curried pork neck recipe by Charles Hopkins served with a crouton salad and paired with De Grendel Merlot....