A.A. Badenhorst

Here at Good Pair Days, we don’t advocate mixing wine with children - after all, it’s one of the few positive things in life we adults get all to ourselves.

However, we can all be grateful that Andre Adriaan Badenhorst’s parents didn’t share our opinion on this, and let him start tasting and exploring the world of wine at the tender age of 13. Those early sips set him off on a lifelong passion, that led him to head one of South Africa’s most memorable and successful wineries today.

Of course, it was fairly inevitable that Badenhorst would end up heralding his own winery - he’s the fourth generation of vintner in his family, and as soon as he was old enough, he was out discovering the treasures of the Rhone Valley, helping the emerging wineries of New Zealand, and finding out just how good his native South Africa’s produce could be.

In 2008, he decided he’d had enough working in other people’s vineyards, and decided to do things his own way. He set up Badenhorst winery with a cousin, and made the bold decision to do things in as traditional a manner as possible, using biological, low intervention farming methods, and vinifying his wines in cement vats to allow their true nature to come forward in the glass.

All of this has considerably helped put the Swartland region on the map, and Andre Adriaan Badenhorst’s wines have been consistently lauded for their character, intensely aromatic qualities, and their distinctly South African personalities.

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