Thorne & Daughters Snake’s & Ladders Sauvignon Blanc 2023

John Seccombe and co-owner and wife Tasha founded Thorne & Daughters winery just over ten years ago. They chose ‘Thorne’ to label the winery because it is John’s middle name, linked to the family for some four centuries, and the theme of childhood play for the names of the wines, suggestive of the sense of purity in their flavours and the lack of artifice in their making. This happens in the Gabriëlskloof cellar in the Overberg, using grapes from sites across the winelands and a ‘simple, honest and gentle’ approach, the goal being ‘putting together old vineyard parcels with new grape varieties, and making wines with old-school simplicity and a modern edge, that tell a story of the Cape of Good Hope’.

Snakes and Ladders’ name takes its inspiration from the wild nature of these elevated bushvine vineyards high up in the mountains, along with the highs and lows of farming these incredible parcels in such a challenging climate. It is this heat and water scarcity that keeps the roots of these vines searching for every ounce of nutrients they can extract from their deep soils.