Description

Wilderer Distilleries was established in January 1995 by Helmut Wilderer as South Africa’s first private grappa distillery. Having acclaimed around 100 international medals including gold and double gold from some of the World’s most prestigious spirits competitions, Wilderer has truly become the spirits connoisseurs’ choice.

Grappa, Eaux de Vie and authentic German styled fruit schnaps has been the forte of Wilderer but, after being dubbed the father of craft distillation in SA, Helmut tried his hand at producing a Gin ahead of SA’s craft gin boom.

Today, Wilderer Distilleries keeps its roots as a traditional Grappa distillery producing signature barrel matured Grappas: Grappa Muscato, Grappa Pinotage and Grappa Shiraz. Only the best grape skins are accepted and a few select wine farms provide pomace to for the production of Grappa.

Wilderer also enjoys the distinction of producing one of South Africa’s most premium Gins using traditional Fynbos species in the same philosophy. Key botanicals are sustainably hand-harvested from the estate grounds and are carefully distilled to bring the natural Fynbos biome to life in every single bottle.

Always staying on the front-line of innovation, Wilderer Distilleries often has new and exciting small-batch products if nothing-but-the-best quality fruit presents itself.
What’s the secret? Fruit are stored in our cold room to monitor optimal ripeness before being hand sorted and pressed. Natural fruit juice is carefully fermented under specific conditions and hand mixed multiple times per day in order to develop the purest aroma and complexity.

In December, 2016, Helmut unfortunately passed away and have left big shoes to fill for his son, Christian Wilderer and head distiller, Johan Monnig.

Distillation is key and Helmut personally selected Ulrich Kothe to custom make the legendary 700L copper distillery named ‘Big H’ in the honour of our former Master Distiller. Every minute of the distillation is meticulously controlled under the watchful eye and keen nose of the production team to ensure that every drop is worthy enough of being called Wilderer’.