Paarl Region, South Africa

This MAN thing began with three friends and an idea: to make a wine that we ourselves would love to buy. Good quality, excellent value, and cool packaging. Not exactly an epiphany, but enough to motivate us to action. What do we call it? Keeping peace in the family, we took the initials of our wives. (We each have one, that is.) So that is how we explained to Marie, Anette, and Nicky that we were going to be "busy" most weekends. It's for you! we told them. We are trying to do something different. It's the WINES we're excited about! Bold and gutsy, reflecting our extreme terroir.

"Value Brands of the Year: MAN Vintners: Top 3 South African Value Brands"

- Wine & Spirits Magazine USA, 2011

Tormentoso

When Portuguese explorers first saw the Southern tip of Africa in the late 1400s (1488 to be exact), they dubbed it “Cabo Tormentoso” or the “Cape of Storms”. There are multiple readings of the word Tormentoso: drama, torment, struggle. All of these descriptions seem apt when you consider where the grapes are grown. The rocky shale soils of the beautiful Perdeberg region in Paarl is a tough place to be a grape-vine, but fortunately a bit of torment on the vine makes for flavourful grapes. The sea creature on the label is based on the sea monsters that were used on ancient explorers' maps for decoration and to indicate danger and the unknown. The Tormentoso wines are all sourced from dry-farmed (un-irrigated) vineyards in the Perdeberg region of Paarl. We are blessed with tremendous vineyard resources in this emerging wine region. At MAN Vintners we seek to identify unique, interesting parcels of vines on our growers’ farms and find ways to showcase these special vineyards. In the Perdeberg region we have a fantastic resource in older vines: over 200 hectares of vines older than 25 years.