Processus - Maria Gomes - Western Cape, ZA - 2024

Notes from the Winery/Importer

Wine Background 100% Women-Owned. 100% Fernão Pires Grape Variety. The duality of being known as Fernão Pires as well as Maria Gomes, allowed for personification of this label, opening a new door of understanding for a wine that has lived many lives. Due to Portuguese influence during the days of colonization, one of Portugal's most planted grapes found an unlikely home in South Africa. The vineyard that Processus sources this wine from is nearly 40 years old and tended by a farmer with four generations of heart, knowledge, and care. Like Colombar, Fernão Pires is too-often blended into a choir of ‘other-white’. Therefore, Processus believes it is time this unassuming grape has its shining moment. Grapes are destemmed and crushed into an open-top fermenter. Cold soaked 48 hours, then brought outside to warm under the warm African sun and initiate spontaneous fermentation. 2/3 way through fermentation, juice is drawn from skin and transferred to oak. Skins, pressed and a small amount of press wine added to the same barrel. Tasting Note This lovely wine displays aromas of sweet-flowers, golden apple, just-ripe pineapple, Meyer lemon, and white plum. On the palate, there’s all those wonderful fruit and floral components layered on top of one another, yet finishes bone-dry and with a touch of toasty, biscuity notes. Food Pairing This Fernão Pires pairs beautifully with grilled prawns, lightly spiced Thai salads, or roasted lemon-herb chicken.

Notes on the Producer

Processus is more than a wine label, it’s the journey of becoming. It was founded in 2020 by curator, Beata America and winemaker, Megan van der Merwe with the aim to bring a greater respect to the fundamental means for our existence (the environment), and the ecosystems that exist within each space. The life and business partners bring a holistic and intentional approach to all that they touch with wine being their artistic medium for sharing these concepts with the world. Processus currently produces two white wines which aim to encapsulate the place, people, and culture of South Africa, while paying homage to the stories of minority grape varieties that have buried narratives. Beata is, along with running Processus, a full-time curator at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. Although an artist since birth, before joining the professional art world, she graduated with a diploma in Classical Music. Beata shared how she discovered an intersection between wine and art that guides her in all thought towards Processus: “It was only when I started working in a contemporary art museum, that my understanding of art was stretched in completely different ways. Thinking about art as process making- as abstract and elastic. This pushed a new way of thinking with Processus, I’m forced to think of wine as an object, and I was never challenged with that before. I’ve always thought, how can we consume and understand wine in an exhibition space? Imagine a Processus tasting room as different exhibitions for each variety and at the end of it taste the wine. Culminating all senses.” Clearly, her taste and vision for art in all forms runs deep and translates into the most thoughtful approach to Processus. Every detail has meaning and if we can learn to look for this in all that we do, we can appreciate so much more about our experience in this world. Beata sees storied intersections in all objects and believes wine is no exception. Her goal is to acknowledge the artistic value of winemaking and to help consumers shift their thinking from it purely being a product of consumption to an art object that is, at its core, ephemeral. Megan is an artist with a scientific mind. She’s currently the winemaker and viticulturist at Beau Constantia, one of South Africa’s top producers. She has also produced wine in Paso Robles (Saxum), and in Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the Rhône Valley. Because of this dual hemisphere approach of winemaking, she has produced 7 vintages in just 4 years. This type of experience, while ridiculously tiring, is invaluable to learning A LOT and fast. She’s now firmly in the category as one of South Africa’s rising star winemakers due to such hard work and dedication. To Megan, wine is, like art, a vehicle for expression and preservation, and that both come with a tremendous amount of responsibility. Overwhelmed by the abundance of her environment and humbled by the opportunity to preserve small parcels of historic vines within South Africa, she aims for her wines to possess an authentic identity and to emphasize the place and its people.