Tim James: Old hands, new labels – when winemakers go it alone
Wine Mag | 03.02.2026 18:46
Pieter Ferreira and Abrie Beeslaar have quite a bit in common. Primarily, they’re two of this century’s finest Cape winemakers, best known for their work for two important wineries – Pieter making bubbles (and more, in the past) for Graham Beck and Abrie making Kanonkop’s great reds. Abrie left Kanonkop a few years ago, and Pieter finally retired just last Friday as CEO of Graham Back (having previously been chief winemaker for decades). Best known for those positions, I say, but that’s for now, and it’s likely that as the decade marches on they’ll both be better known for their own labels: Beeslaar Wines and Pieter Ferreira Cap Classique. A nice coincidence is that the maiden vintage for both of these eponymous labels was 2012, many years before their makers left their day jobs – an important delay, I’ll come back to that.
