Winemakers On Fire, Issue #123

Greetings from Cape Town, South Africa!

At 32, Matthew Andersen leads a 300-year-old estate known for Bordeaux—yet he's fallen hard for Italian varietals. "Bordeaux is the high school sweetheart," he tells me at Morgenster Estate. "Italian varietals? That's the woman you want to marry."

This isn't rebellion—it's recognition that perfect positioning means honouring legacy while creating space for creative expression. From building vineyards at Wynberg Boys High to learning "listen with your ears, steal with your eyes" across three continents, Andersen's journey reveals what it takes to be a custodian of history while writing your own chapter.

Welcome to a winemaker's Italian love affair.

The High School Sweetheart vs. The Woman You Marry: Matthew Andersen's Italian Love Affair

Matthew Andersen sits across from me at Morgenster Estate, backlit by the Helderberg Mountains, and drops a confession that stops me mid-sip: "Bordeaux is like the high school sweetheart—your first love. But Italian varietals? That's the woman you want to marry. Powerful, strong, temperamental sometimes, but you work with it and love it for all its quirks."

This isn't your typical winemaker romance. At 32, Andersen leads a 300-year-old estate known for its Bordeaux pedigree. While the focus remains firmly on those celebrated Bordeaux-style wines, he's found creative freedom in Morgenster's Italian varietals—Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, and Vermentino. It's the kind of dual identity that demands both respect for tradition and courage to explore.

When Wynberg Boys Built a Vineyard Behind the Rugby Field

Andersen's wine journey began not in tasting rooms but on a half-hectare of overgrown swamp next to the Cabbage Patch—Wynberg Boys High School's multi-purpose sports field. In his Grade 11 year, old boys from Constantia Uitsig and Buitenverwachting approached the headmaster with an unlikely proposal: plant vines, start a viticulture society, teach the boys something beyond balance sheets.

"The goal was always accounting," Andersen admits, his father a chartered accountant, his brother now a CFA in America. "I didn't know any better. I enjoyed the numbers." But clearing that swampy patch, planting poles, stringing wires—something shifted. By year's end, he'd applied to Stellenbosch University for viticulture and oenology, trading spreadsheets for soil.

This origin story matters because it reveals Andersen's foundation: collaboration and creating authentic experiences through high-quality fruit. The boys didn't taste wine that year—they built the infrastructure for it. They learned the unglamorous truth that great wine begins with good people making hard decisions in vineyards, not cellars.

Listen With Your Ears, Steal With Your Eyes

Andersen's formative years read like a winemaking apprenticeship spanning three continents. Thelema, with Duncan Clarke and Rudi Schultz, taught him flexibility—that winemaking isn't black and white, that low pH doesn't always demand acid additions, that natural ferments can work if the fruit permits. Château Angelus in Saint-Émilion handed him responsibility: interns given more freedom over managing the smaller châteaux, calculating yeast additions, and executing pump-overs relatively unsupervised.

Then came Stonestreet in Sonoma, where a fellow South African offered advice that changed his philosophy on teaching: "Listen with your ears and steal with your eyes." The cellar was large and busy; the winemakers stretched thin across many responsibilities. "It wasn't as personalised," Andersen reflects diplomatically. "Not as rich or fulfilling as France." Yet the experience taught him something valuable about scale and mentorship.

Here's the revelation buried in that contrast: Andersen learned that scale without intimacy produces wine, but not winemakers. When he returned to Thelema for a third harvest, then spent five years between Stellenzicht and Ernie Els under L'Re Hughes and Louis Strydom, he absorbed what truly mattered—two mentors, different philosophies, teaching him to wear different hats without losing his head.

The Calculated Risk That Wasn't Really a Gamble

When Morgenster called in 2023, Andersen had been Louis Strydom's assistant at Ernie Els for barely ten months. The opportunity was obvious—head winemaker at a prestigious estate.

"If you want to make a name for yourself, you need to get out there and take some risks," Andersen says. But when pressed, he reframes it: "Calculated risk. I knew what I was walking into." What kept him awake wasn't impostor syndrome or fear of failure—it was losing the relationships he'd built over years of 16-hour days, six days a week. "Those people become your family."

The move reveals Andersen's positioning philosophy: quality demands stability, but growth requires disruption. Morgenster offered the right opportunity at the right time—a woman-led team (owner Federica Bertrand and her daughter Vittoria), a young farm manager, and the autonomy to carry on and grow the legacy. His first reserve blend won't be released for six or seven years. He's playing the long game, serving as custodian of a brand built over decades while adding his own chapter to the story.

Why Italian Varietals Offer Creative Expression

Morgenster stretches across 200 hectares with three distinct valleys: the Bordeaux Valley behind the cellar (Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot), Pioneer Valley near the manor house (older Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, olive orchards), and the Italian Valley—pure Nebbiolo and Sangiovese territory.

"Each valley, each block has its own personality," Andersen explains. "Nebbiolo is so terroir-expressive. What we're getting in the younger block compared to the older block—chalk and cheese, both in good ways. The older block has structure and depth; the younger block has vibrant fruit."

When I ask the dangerous question—if forced to choose between Bordeaux or Italian—Andersen pauses, then commits: "I might get myself in hot water, but the Italian varietals do very well. If we want to be more unique, I'd focus there. It's quite a niche market in South Africa, and people enjoy it."

This isn't trend-chasing. It's recognition that authenticity drives differentiation in a saturated market. Bordeaux blends are South Africa's lingua franca—excellent, competitive, but crowded. Italian varietals speak with a distinct accent, especially when filtered through Helderberg terroir. While Bordeaux remains Morgenster's focus in terms of volumes and export markets, the Italian varietals give Andersen the creative space to express himself and explore what's possible when tradition meets experimentation.

The Vintage That Taught Through Smoke

Every winemaker remembers their vintage from hell. For Andersen, 2016 at Thelema delivered a masterclass in adaptation. Massive fires swept through Simonsberg just as harvest began, with smoke taint threatening entire blocks. "Once it's there, it's very difficult to get rid of it or to try and mask it."

The real lesson wasn't technical—it was philosophical. "As long as you know about the problem, you can fix it," he tells his interns now. Blending became salvation, not compromise. The 2017 Sonoma fires reinforced it: winemaking rewards those who see obstacles as invitations to experiment with different products, different approaches, different outcomes.

This resilience defines Andersen's sustainability approach at Morgenster—not organic certification's bureaucratic rigidity, but pragmatic intervention. Hybrid pruning systems combat wind damage in rocky Sauvignon Blanc blocks. Compost from cellar waste feeds vineyards and olive orchards. Beneficial insects control mealybug populations. To encourage biodiversity, the estate uses cover crops throughout the vineyards. "Sustainability and quality aren't mutually exclusive," he insists. "Usually, sustainability brings quality."

Whom Do You Fear When You're Selling 15,000 Bottles?

I pose my final question about legacy and judgment—whose opinion matters most when blending wines? Andersen deflects gracefully: "If I'm sitting here on a Sunday afternoon and hear people raving about the Vermentino or Sangiovese Rosé—for me, that's what I enjoy most. If you're selling 15,000 bottles of Cabernet Franc a year, as long as people enjoy it, that's what matters."

The estate's Giulio range tells another story about honouring legacy while making it accessible. Named for Giulio Bertrand, Morgenster's founder and opera devotee, each varietal carries an opera name—Vespri, Caruso, Nabucco, and Tosca. Graft Design captured something clever in the labels: Giulio's enlarged handwritten signature becomes the focal point, as if he's personally signing off on wines he inspired decades ago.

Paired with refined typography and a minimalist layout, the Italian-leaning palette of red, green, and blue creates labels that feel at home in both an opera house and on an everyday table. It's the visual embodiment of what Andersen does in the cellar—respect the legacy, but make it approachable.

This philosophy—volume as validation, enjoyment as the metric—reframes what success means for a young winemaker at a historic estate. Critics matter, owners matter, but the Sunday afternoon raver is the cherry on top. That's brand identity meeting authentic experience: wine that prompts conversation, not just consumption.

"If you want to be in those conversations, you need to get yourself there," Andersen reflects. "But I just trust my gut, back myself, and surround myself with good people—Carl Schultz, Louis Strydom, Duncan Clarke, and Gavin Slabbert. People who give sound advice and support when you need it."

When I suggest he's far from an impostor, he pauses: "I don't really doubt myself. But it's good to have a soundboard, because if you're just in a cellar tasting your own wine, you become polarised. You need to know what's happening in the industry."

Perfect positioning isn't about predicting the future—it's about building relationships that anchor you when trends shift, embracing quality fruit that demands less intervention, crafting stories that resonate beyond the bottle, and creating experiences worth discussing long after the wine's gone.

Matthew Andersen married his Italian love affair at 30. The high school sweetheart still gets pride of place at Morgenster, as it should—Bordeaux is the legacy he's custodian of. But those Italian varietals? They're where he gets to play, experiment, and explore what happens when tradition makes room for creative expression. And that balance is worth celebrating.

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.