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On 27 February 1975, advertising executive Tim Hamilton Russell paid ZAR 58,000 for a 170-hectare farm called Braemar in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, a remote coastal valley behind the fishing village of Hermanus. No wine had ever been made there. The prevailing wisdom held that the area was too cool, too maritime, too far from the established Cape wine regions to amount to anything. Hamilton Russell disagreed. He planted Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and in doing so he did not just establish a vineyard -- he created an appellation.

The first Pinot Noir vines went into the ground in the late 1970s, with the maiden commercial vintage following in 1981. It was among the first Pinot Noir plantings in South Africa, and the gamble was enormous. But the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley -- 'heaven and earth' in Afrikaans -- proved to be exactly what Hamilton Russell believed: a cool-climate pocket uniquely suited to Burgundian varieties, with clay-rich soils, cold ocean breezes from Walker Bay, and a long, slow growing season that allowed complex flavour development.

In 1991, Tim's son Anthony Hamilton Russell took over the estate at the age of 29, just as South Africa was emerging from the isolation of apartheid. Anthony brought a Burgundian discipline to the operation: he narrowed the wine range to just two wines -- Pinot Noir and Chardonnay -- from the estate's own vineyards. No second labels, no volume plays, no distraction. This singular focus has been maintained for over three decades and is central to the estate's identity.

Today, Hamilton Russell Vineyards is one of the most southerly wine estates in Africa. The 52 hectares of vineyard sit at elevations between 80 and 300 metres, planted on stony, clay-rich soils derived from Bokkeveld shale. The maritime influence is profound: cold Antarctic-origin currents in Walker Bay moderate temperatures year-round, and morning fog rolls up the valley through much of the growing season. The result is wines of Burgundian restraint and purity that have earned the estate's Pinot Noir the status of South Africa's benchmark -- the standard against which all others are measured.

The Hamilton Russell family also owns two additional labels produced from separate vineyards. Southern Right, launched in 1994, produces Pinotage and Sauvignon Blanc from the Hemel-en-Aarde, named after the Southern Right whales that calve in Walker Bay each spring. Ashbourne, from a neighbouring 113-hectare property, produces a Sauvignon Blanc-Chardonnay blend and a Pinotage-based red from higher-elevation sites.

The estate welcomes visitors to its tasting room in the valley, where the two Hamilton Russell Vineyards wines can be experienced alongside the Southern Right and Ashbourne ranges. The setting is understated -- no grand restaurant or hotel -- reflecting the estate's philosophy that the wine is the destination. Hamilton Russell has been described as 'budget Burgundy for the world,' a phrase Anthony embraces: world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at a fraction of the price of their French equivalents, from a valley that Tim Hamilton Russell had the vision to believe in fifty years ago.