HISTORY

Willie and Tania De Waal are the fifth generation of the De Waal Family to own the farm, Schoone Oord, which Willie’s great-great grandfather bought in 1877 with a diamond he discovered at Kimberley in the Northern Cape. He grew up in a vigneron family and continued this tradition on Schoone Oord, where it was passed on to the generations that followed him.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Through our name, we wanted to express the close interaction between our family, our farm’s name “Schoone Oord” and the vine and soil that gives life to everything around us. We married part of the name “Schoone Oord” to part of the name of our dominant soil type, Shale (“Skalie” in Afrikaans) and it gave birth to SCALI.

OUR CELLAR

Our cellar was built in 1912 with conglomerate rock which, when decomposed, forms the gravel in many of our vineyard sites. It was originally equipped with concrete fermentation vats and tanks. This was removed and we installed 10 x 2500 liter French oak open top fermentation vats, insulation, and cooling to regulate the ambient temperature in the winery and barrique cellar, and cooling plates to control fermentation temperature

WHERE DID IT ALL START?

We also decided to make some wine from the grapes we so passionately nurture.  We started by making 50 liters of wine in 1993 and each year made a little bit more until we made our first barrique of Pinotage in 1997.  The quality was exceptional and we soon finished the whole barrique with the help of our wine loving friends.  That was the sign to go it “big” and in 1999 we made 20 barriques of our local variety, Pinotage

OUR WINES

The grapes from Scali are hand harvested from selected low yielding vines after which bunches are personally sorted by hand according to the centuries old tradition. Only ripe fruit is crushed, fermented in open "kuipe" and gently pressed in a basket press. Our carefully made wines are then matured in 225 liter French and American oak barrels and are left unfiltered.

THE WINEMAKERS – PASSION, ART, TRADITION

The wines are all handcrafted by a husband and wife team, ourselves, Willie & Tania de Waal, fifth generation vignerons on our family farm, Schoone Oord. We give meticulous attention to detail that symbolises our passion for, and respect of tradition in the art of winemaking. Our philosophy is that we work closely with nature and we do this with a whole hearted passion, while striving towards creating the ultimate wine.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT SCALI WINES ARE ONLY AVAILABLE FROM THEIR FARM, AND NOT AT THE VOOR PAARDEBERG VISITORS CENTRE.

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