Ex Animo Wine Co.

The name Ex Animo means 'from the heart' in Latin, and it captures the spirit of this boutique wine merchant and distributor tucked into The Palms building on Sir Lowry Road in Woodstock. Founded in 2017 by David and Jeannette Clarke — both qualified sommeliers with decades of international wine experience — Ex Animo began life as a wholesale distribution business supplying high-end retail and fine dining restaurants across South Africa. In the second half of 2020, the Clarkes acquired a retail liquor licence, enabling them to open an online wine store and host tastings, dinners and seminars.

Ex Animo is best known as the South African home of Thorne & Daughters, one of the most celebrated wine projects to emerge from the Cape's New Wave movement. John Seccombe, born in Johannesburg, studied computer science at Stellenbosch before moving to Oxford and then Scotland, where a passion for wine led him to enrol at Plumpton College. After making wine in France and England, John and his wife Tasha returned to the Cape, where he worked vintages at Thelema and Iona before launching Thorne & Daughters in 2012. The wines — named after children's toys — are made at the Gabrielskloof cellar near Bot River from fruit sourced from fifteen growers across the Western Cape.

The portfolio is focused primarily on white wines, and John's touch with them has earned wide recognition. In 2024, he was inducted into the prestigious Cape Winemakers Guild, a distinction held by only around forty winemakers in South Africa. The Rocking Horse Cape White Blend draws on Roussanne, Semillon, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Clairette from multiple parcels. Paper Kite is a single-vineyard Semillon from old Paardeberg bush vines. Cat's Cradle is an expressive old-vine Chenin Blanc, also from Paardeberg. Tin Soldier, made from what is believed to be the only Semillon Gris vineyard in the country, undergoes partial skin fermentation and emerges deep amber with peppery, herbal complexity.

Beyond Thorne & Daughters, Ex Animo curates a rotating selection of South Africa's most exciting small producers — names like Craven, Van Loggerenberg and Saltare. The Woodstock shop operates Monday to Friday, offering tastings and a carefully edited selection of wines that reward curiosity. For those seeking the cutting edge of Cape winemaking in a single address — the kind of wines that sommeliers and collectors seek out before they reach export markets — Ex Animo is the place to start.