Damascene Winery

The story

Two Hours on the Phone

In July 2017 David Curl rang Jean Smit with a plan to make wine in Elgin. The call ran for roughly two hours. It started as a proposal for one valley. By the end, the geography had expanded to cover all of South Africa. Smit had spent years at Boekenhoutskloof watching how granite, shale, and altitude changed the same grape across different sites, and a single-valley address felt like drawing a map with one point on it. The decision made in that phone call became the founding plan for the range: Stellenbosch and Swartland Syrah bottled separately, Chenin Blanc from two different soil registers, a high-altitude parcel on Bokkeveld shale above 1000 metres on the Witzenberg range, each site contributing something the others cannot replicate. The conversation that began about Elgin is why the bottles carry five different Western Cape addresses.

From the atlas

Damascene Winery

At A Glance

The Producer

Jean Smit spent nearly a decade as head winemaker at Boekenhoutskloof, one of South Africa's most internationally distributed houses, before building something with a different logic. Rather than inheriting an estate address and working within it, he set out to argue a case through contrast: the same grape from soils that behave in fundamentally different ways, bottled separately so the difference is audible.

Damascene Winery was founded in 2017 as a collaboration between Smit and entrepreneur David Curl. The project operates from a base in Elgin and sources fruit from contracted growers and parcels across Stellenbosch, Swartland, Franschhoek, the Ceres Plateau, and Cederberg. No vineyards are owned. The range is organised by grape and region of origin, so each bottle carries a specific address rather than blended Western Cape fruit.

Before Boekenhoutskloof, Smit trained at Rustenberg. His international work took him to DuMOL in Russian River Valley, to Wither Hills in Marlborough, and to the northern Rhône, where he studied Syrah in Côte Rôtie. That formation explains why the Damascene range reaches for a calibre of grape and a level of cellar care that the négociant model does not always deliver.

Place

The Western Cape is large and internally varied enough that a single address does not describe the range of climates and soils represented in the wine. Damascene makes that variation the point of the range.

Stellenbosch, the closest of the source regions to Cape Town, sits on ancient granite and contributes a polished, lifted register to Syrah. The Swartland, to the north-west, is warmer and drier, its soils a mix of granite, schist, and Malmesbury shale; Syrah from three parcels there at differing altitudes produces a denser, more muscular fruit profile. The Ceres Plateau, reached by climbing the Witzenberg mountain range into the Bokkeveld, sits above 1000 metres on a completely different soil parent material: shale from the Bokkeveld geological formation, cold, high, and slow-ripening in a way that neither Stellenbosch nor the Swartland can replicate.

Franschhoek and Cederberg extend the sourcing further still. The practical consequence for the label is that Damascene does not offer a house style so much as a set of regional readings from the same winemaking hand.

Soil And Site

The Stellenbosch Syrah parcels span three distinct sub-areas: the Polkadraai hill, a granite outcrop in Bottelary, and Devon Valley. Granite as a soil parent tends toward lifted aromatics and finer tannins in Syrah; the three-parcel blend from these sites builds complexity without sacrificing that lighter-footed character.

The Swartland sourcing draws from vineyards at differing altitudes, on granite, schist, and Malmesbury shale. Schist drains fast and retains heat poorly through the night, which tends to produce grapes with more colour and a denser, darker fruit register. Malmesbury shale adds mineral salinity. The combination pushes Swartland Syrah toward the brooding end of the spectrum.

The Ceres Plateau vineyard is the most extreme site in the range. Planted into Bokkeveld shale soils on the Witzenberg mountain range at over 1000 metres, it is among the highest-altitude growing locations in South Africa. The altitude slows ripening and lengthens the growing season, preserving acidity in fruit that would otherwise soften at sea-level temperatures.

Story

Smit's formation at Boekenhoutskloof gave him a reference point for what South African wine could achieve internationally, and years watching how different soils and altitudes changed the same grape left him with a clear ambition: to make a project that could not be explained by a single estate or a single valley.

The founding conversation happened in July 2017. David Curl rang Smit with an idea for a wine project based in Elgin. Within two hours the geography of the proposal had expanded to cover all of South Africa. The expansion was not opportunism; it was the founding plan for the range. Every bottle Damascene makes is an argument that place is audible in wine, and that the argument is clearest when the contrast is direct.

The first wines were produced in 2019, with the cellar operation moving to Elgin thereafter. From the beginning, Smit applied the same set of cellar protocols across all wines: no crushing of berries for reds, gentle pneumatic pressing for whites, and maturation in large Austrian vessels that would not impose wood character over the fruit.

Vineyards And Cellar

Damascene does not own vineyards. Smit selects specific parcels from contracted growers across multiple regions and farms them to a sustainable standard. The sourcing model means each grape and region combination can be assessed and adjusted over time without being fixed by the geography of owned land.

In the cellar, red wines undergo whole-berry fermentation. No berries are crushed before fermentation begins, which preserves aromatic compounds that crushing would release and oxidise. The wines mature primarily in 2000-litre Austrian foudres, with a small portion in 225-litre French oak barrels. The large foudre is a deliberate choice: at 2000 litres the ratio of wine to wood surface is low, which means the vessel contributes minimal oak character and allows slow oxidative development without adding timber flavour or drying tannins.

White wines are whole-bunch pressed using a pneumatic press on a champagne press programme, applying very light, graduated pressure to extract juice without breaking seeds or skins. They are then fermented and matured in 1000-litre oval Austrian oak foudres. The oval shape and the scale of the vessel produce a similar result for the whites: oak integration rather than oak imposition, with texture built through lees contact rather than wood extraction.

Wines

Syrah is the grape across which Damascene makes its clearest case. The Stellenbosch Syrah and Swartland Syrah are the central bottles: parallel expressions from contrasting soils and climates, made by the same hand in the same cellar, designed to be compared.

The Stellenbosch Syrah 2024 draws from the Polkadraai hill, a Bottelary granite outcrop, and Devon Valley. It is polished and tightly framed, with black fruit purity and aromatic lift over firm, clear-cut tannins. The Swartland Syrah 2024 is the denser wine: slower to open, darker in fruit, with suede-like tannins and a muscular mid-palate that evolves toward roasted black fruit with air.

Chenin Blanc runs as a second regional pair. The Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc 2024 is tightly wound, mineral-edged, and pithy on the palate, with white peach, white grapefruit, and a waxy textural core. A second Chenin Blanc from a softer register appears in the range alongside it.

Sémillon, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon complete the range. Sémillon shares the white wine cellar treatment: whole-bunch press, oval foudres, and lees maturation. Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon are sourced from the same network of multi-region parcels that supplies the Syrah and Chenin Blanc.

In The Glass

The Stellenbosch Syrah 2024 opens with bitter orange in the vermouth register, black cherry, and a dusting of aromatic cedar. On the palate it is savoury and tightly framed: grippy, clear-cut tannins hold a mulberry and blackberry fruit core, and clove and crushed black pepper arrive on the finish with taut fruit and savoury spice.

The Swartland Syrah 2024 is slower and denser. Black olive and rocket leaf come first, followed by tarragon, star anise, and wild blackberry. The palate is riper and more muscular: lush blackberry and mulberry lifted by red plum, framed by suede-like tannins. With air the wine darkens, black fruit taking a roasted edge.

The Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc 2024 is mineral-edged on the nose, with gravel, chalk, lemon peel, and gentle herbal notes. The palate is pithy and taut: white peach and white grapefruit around a waxy, textural core, with citrus zest and stony minerality on the finish. The oval foudre maturation adds weight and roundness without softening the acidity that keeps the wine fresh.

Across all three bottles, the large-vessel cellar work is audible: fruit is the primary register, oak is background architecture, and the wines carry the character of where the grapes grew rather than what the cellar imposed.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Stellenbosch Syrah. It draws from granite and clay soils across the Polkadraai hill, Bottelary, and Devon Valley, fermented whole-berry and matured in 2000-litre Austrian foudres. The nose is lifted and precise: bitter orange, black cherry, aromatic cedar. The palate is tightly framed, with clear-cut tannins, a blackberry and mulberry core, and a finish of clove and crushed black pepper that dries cleanly. No oak dominance, no flattened fruit. It is the most complete picture of what the Damascene cellar does at its most measured, and it sets up the Swartland Syrah as a useful contrast once the house register is established.

Anecdote

In July 2017 David Curl rang Jean Smit with a plan to make wine in Elgin. The call ran for roughly two hours. It started as a proposal for one valley. By the end, the geography had expanded to cover all of South Africa. Smit had spent years at Boekenhoutskloof watching how granite, shale, and altitude changed the same grape across different sites, and a single-valley address felt like drawing a map with one point on it. The decision made in that phone call became the founding plan for the range: Stellenbosch and Swartland Syrah bottled separately, Chenin Blanc from two different soil registers, a high-altitude parcel on Bokkeveld shale above 1000 metres on the Witzenberg range, each site contributing something the others cannot replicate. The conversation that began about Elgin is why the bottles carry five different Western Cape addresses.

Final Word

Damascene is a project built on a straightforward argument: that South African wine has enough variation in soil, altitude, and climate to make regional contrast the point of the range rather than a footnote to it. Jean Smit's cellar work is kept deliberately minimal so that argument has room to land in the glass. The Syrah regional pair makes it most directly: the same grape, the same winemaker, two bottles that taste like different places.

Sources

• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/
• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/winemaker/
• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/vineyards/
• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/cellar/
• https://www.bbr.com/producer-4868-damascene-vineyards
• https://www.skurnik.com/producer/damascene-vineyards/
• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/syrah-stellenbosch/
• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/syrah-swartland/
• https://www.damascenevineyards.com/chenin-blanc/