Winemakers On Fire, Issue #121

Greetings from Cape Town, South Africa!

Meet Nadia Barnard-Langenegger, who learned she'd become Waterkloof's head winemaker while recovering from jaw surgery in ICU. At 30, she inherited one of the Cape's most ambitious estates and promptly refused to be paralysed by the responsibility. Her secret? Calculated naivety and an obsessive focus on what's directly in front of her.

Today, she's crafting wines that change vintage to vintage, managing 1.5 million bottles annually, and championing a collaborative vision for South African wine's future. This isn't your typical winemaker profile. This is about someone who discovered that ignoring conventional wisdom might be the smartest strategy of all.

Find out why…

The Winemaker Who Refuses to Play It Safe

Nadia Barnard-Langenegger learned she'd become Waterkloof's head winemaker while lying in ICU, her jaw freshly reconstructed after major surgery. Congratulatory messages flooded her phone as the anaesthesia wore off. She was 30 years old, about to steer one of the Cape's most ambitious wine estates, and her first thought? "Sometimes ignorance is bliss."

That calculated naivety has become her superpower. While most winemakers in her position would have crumbled under the weight of expectation, Nadia simply refused to acknowledge it. "I just take it bit by bit," she says in Afrikaans-inflected English, describing how she manages a winery producing 1.5 million bottles annually. "Next week we're bottling. I'm focusing on that. My boss arrives. I'm focusing on that. During harvest, I give it my all and focus on that."

It's a philosophy that shouldn't work when you're shipping 83% of your wines to international markets. Yet here's the revelation: her refusal to be paralysed by the enormity of her role has freed her to make the most honest wines of her career.

When "Minimal Intervention" Actually Means More Work

Ask most winemakers about minimal intervention, and you'll get predictable answers about "letting the grapes speak." Nadia cuts through that romanticism with surgical precision. "When you make natural wine, you have a lot more risk of microbial spoilage than if you add a packet of yeast. You have to be more technical when it comes to cellar hygiene."

This is where theory meets reality beautifully. Waterkloof's regenerative approach isn't a marketing flourish—it's a daily commitment that transforms 4.5 tonnes of food waste from a local supplier into fungi-rich compost over 12 months, reaching temperatures of 146 degrees. The estate's 16 Nguni cows (which replaced the romantic but ultimately impractical Percheron horses) provide manure that's mixed with plant cuttings and vegetable offcuts, creating a living soil system that feeds the vines without chemicals.

But here's where it gets genuinely fascinating: during winter, they take cow manure and bury it inside a cow womb beneath the soil, extracting it the following season when it's transformed into something that smells like earth itself, rich with mycorrhizal fungi. This gets mixed in a vortex of water and spread among young vines, extending their root systems' absorption capacity.

"Nothing in life comes easily," Nadia observes. "You need to sometimes put a bit of effort in."

That effort manifests in wines that express vintage variation rather than consistency—a stance that runs counter to conventional wisdom about building a brand. "I don't have to make a wine every year that tastes like last year's wine," she explains. "I make a wine that represents the vintage, as well as the terroir."

The Burgundian Thread Through a South African Tapestry

When Nadia emptied that wooden fermentor filled with Charmes-Chambertin grapes in Burgundy, something fundamental shifted. "If I could drink Burgundy for the rest of my life, I'd be very happy," she admits. But she didn't return to Somerset West, attempting to mimic Côte d'Or. Instead, she absorbed Burgundy's essence: elegance through restraint.

Her Sauvignon Blanc undergoes malolactic fermentation to balance Schapenberg's naturally high acidity. The wines spend an extended time on lees. She whole-bunch presses and allows spontaneous fermentation from vineyard yeasts. The estate's white wines aren't bottled until late in the year, sometimes after the next harvest—a decision that kills cash flow but preserves integrity.

"Some wineries released their 2025 white wines in March," she notes without judgment. "That's how they like to do it. Each to their own. I know what I enjoy and how I like to make my wines."

It's a perfect demonstration of how exceptional fruit from balanced, regenerative vineyards creates wines that offer something genuinely different, vintage to vintage—authentic experiences you can't replicate with formulas. The new Chardonnay, "Unborrowed Time," leans toward Chablis—mineral-driven, higher acid, restrained oak. It's a wine that reveals more about Nadia's palate than any tasting note could.

The Curveballs That Define a Winemaker

The 2014 vintage threw Nadia her first real test as head winemaker. November 2013's deluge—50 millimetres in 30 minutes—produced contracted vineyard blocks yielding 12 to 15 tonnes instead of the expected seven. Quality remained intact because Waterkloof's deep-rooted vines on windswept Schapenberg rarely exceed five to eight tonnes per hectare, well below the overcropping threshold. But managing the unexpected volume required quick thinking.

Then came 2020. COVID-19 arrived while grapes were still on the skins in the cellar. Six months pregnant, with her cellar team too terrified to work, Nadia and her husband finished the vintage alone.

And 2023 delivered late-March rains that caught most Stellenbosch producers mid-harvest. Nadia had picked everything except one Mourvèdre block that wasn't yet ripe. "That rain was fine for that block," she recalls. "We did work a little bit in the winery with tannins to control the mildew. But that was a massive curveball."

These weren't just technical challenges—they were tests of philosophy. When does minimal intervention become negligence? When does trusting the process become foolishness? Nadia's answer: You develop intimate knowledge of every critical control point, you tick your boxes obsessively, and you trust your team.

Empowerment as Winemaking Philosophy

"What's a happy cellar?" I ask.

"To empower people," Nadia responds instantly. "To involve people and to empower people."

Her cellar hand, Mervin, started the same day she did, over 15 years ago. Roelien began in the vineyards, progressed to the cellar, and eventually worked a harvest in Burgundy with Waterkloof's support. There's no hierarchy at the sorting table—Nadia stands alongside her team, checking every picking crate.

Here, relationships and collaboration aren't abstractions but the foundation of everything. When COVID threatened to shatter that foundation, the entire Waterkloof team held together. Nadia conducted tastings with American importers at 2 am, hosted numerous Facebook Live sessions, and created YouTube videos with Paul Boutinot to keep the Waterkloof message alive.

"We've had difficult times," Nadia acknowledges. "The wine industry at the moment is not doing exceptionally well. But we're pushing onwards, and we are all working together." 

The Future Belongs to Collaborators

Ask Nadia about South African wine's future, and she becomes animated. "The future of the South African wine industry is in our hands. We need to make sure that we go above and beyond to tell our story, to be relevant, and to educate non-wine consumers."

This is where storytelling becomes inseparable from industry survival. But Nadia's vision extends beyond individual estate narratives. "If South Africans, the South African wine industry, will collaborate more and stand together, which we are doing at the moment, we're just going to go from strength to strength."

She's witnessed this collaborative spirit across harvest stints in Chablis, Coonawarra, and Nelson. "I have worked in quite a few different regions in the world. We work together. And if we're going to keep that philosophy, we will go from strength to strength."

When I probe about whether South Africa does enough to promote itself overseas, she's pragmatic: "I don't think we're ever doing enough. We can always do more. But sometimes you also need to think outside of the box a little bit."

The Nadia Factor

"What is the Nadia factor?" I ask. "What do you bring unique to your craft?"

She doesn't hesitate: "I give it my all. Whatever I do, I always give it my all. I don't go halfway. I don't take the easier route. I always try to do everything that I do to the best of my ability."

It's 6 a.m. when she arrives at Waterkloof, and she stays until the last person leaves. During harvest, her family visits her in the cellar. This isn't martyrdom—it's love made visible through labour.

Her plans? "To just make better wines. To make sure that people see Waterkloof as a top destination. And that if people think about Waterkloof, they think of exceptional quality."

Standing on Schapenberg Hill, overlooking False Bay with the Atlantic breeze carrying salt and fynbos aromas, you understand what Paul Boutinot saw when he chose this site: the potential for truly fine wine with a defining sense of origin. What he couldn't have known was that the young woman recovering from jaw surgery in 2013 would become the perfect steward of that vision—not despite her refusal to be overwhelmed by responsibility, but because of it.

Nadia Barnard-Langenegger makes wines she loves, vintage by vintage, block by block, day by day. In an industry obsessed with consistency and playing it safe, that might be the most radical philosophy of all.

Mike Carter is a Wine Futurist based in Cape Town, South Africa, who believes the path to future success isn't found in perfect predictions but in perfect positioning. Want to dive deeper? Download his complimentary book Master Positioning, or connect on LinkedIn for more contrarian thinking about wine's future.