ABRIE BEESLAAR
“The world is big out there and what we do on Kanonkop is towards a journey of global greatness” – Abrie Beeslaar
Abrie Beeslaar is one of the great winemakers in the Cape’s modern history
Abrie still agrees that to be offered the task of winemaker at Kanonkop before the age of 30 was a monumental opportunity, and one he certainly grabbed with both hands.
He is a firm believer that the soils, the climate and the topography will have the ultimate say in how the wine from a specific vintage will taste.
Three times – in 2008, 2015 and 2017 – Abrie received the International Wine and Spirit Competition’s award for International Winemaker of the Year.
In 2019, at the same competition, he was also the first ever recipient of the Outstanding Wine Producer Trophy, awarded to the winery achieving consistently over the competition’s illustrious 50-year history.
Under Abrie’s watch, Kanonkop has won enough trophies, gold medals and certificates of merit to fill one of those big concrete fermenters he uses during harvest season.
Being the humble person that he is, he’ll be the first to acknowledge that by the time he arrived at Kanonkop, some pretty solid groundwork had been done by his two legendary predecessors.
In 2018, Abrie also became the first South African winemaker to see one of his wines – the Kanonkop Paul Sauer 2015 – receive a perfect 100-point score from British Master of Wine Tim Atkin.
