The Berrio Philosophy

Grapes that Love it here as much as we do

From the rugged Fynbos hill above the Elim vineyards you can watch the belligerent ocean’s restless storming of the continents limestone edge. It’s a wild tough part of the world. The soil is as unyielding as the clouds and the icy wind will blow you flat on your back if it wants to. This is not a place you will grow grapes easily, perhaps not even profitably. But it is a magical, mysterious place and you know in your bones it is where you have to be. The hand-crafted  wine produced from these vineyards is an attempt to translate the essence of this place through grapes that loves it here as much as we do.

Spiritual Snapshots

What we do is carry into sunlight the spirit of this place, Elim, by growing grapes here. We ask the vine roots to find it for us in the cold, dark remembrance of soil, shale, limestone and clay. We coax the leaves into pulling up the silently vibrating energy from there. This energy is not only the result of organisms living in the soil, but also all the millions of chemical reactions that occur in the rootzone.

But there is more. There is the energy of memory. Mapped in the strata of our ancient soil is the memory of millions of years of life. This energy, this spirit of place, is transported into the grapes by the vine. We harvest these handfuls of time, these bunches of grapes with complete respect.


Each berry is a spiritual snapshot of swirling climate, a sweet memory of the sun, a spinning impression of earth, a quenching recall of moisture, a reminiscence of breathing, a reminder of cycles. This imprint is concentrated and powerful when the grapes are resonant and delicious with ripeness.

Taste the wonder of Geography and Time

In this way we clutch at the secrets, successes and failures of our interaction with nature. Through the miracles of natural, soft and sympathetic fermentation we channel nature’s spontaneous narrative into wine. And so we can taste our enveloping corner of the universe – the co-incidence of geography and time.

We can drink in the wonder of it and share out the majesty of it all. We want to learn to accept the sadness of it and revel in the mystery of it. And perhaps through making wine this way, from this special place, we can begin to understand something of our relationship to the confusing, tumultuous craziness of it all.

This is what we do and why we do it.