Protea Nitida
Nitidus means bright, shiny, healthy, refined and cultured.
Nitida wines are named after the protea nitida which grow unexpectedly amongst our naturally occurring, though now endangered, West Coast Renosterveld flora.
Nitida sounds wonderfully romantic and directly translated from the Latin means shiny and neat. In reality the flower shimmers beautifully - as an opening bud – but, within a few days, each flower develops its own “less than tidy” visual personality.
In Afrikaans, the nitida is rather unglamorously called – “die waboom” or wagon tree.
The early South African “Voortrekkers” (frontier explorers) used the “waboom” for many things including constructing wagon wheels, healing various ailments and making ink.....which incidently was the inspiration behind naming our flagship red blend “Calligraphy”.
Coronata, the name of our flagship white blend, is derived from the regal, golden coloured Protea Coronata. It seems that the nectar from this protea is as irresistible to birds and insects as this beautiful blend is to everyone who tries it.
Our Nitida hill wabooms have slightly different leaves to others found is South Africa and are significantly smaller - apparently because are growing in a “botanical island”. When replanted to their more usual fynbos environment they soon grow to full height.
Likewise Nitida might appear little, but its “giant heart” shows itself in its magnificent wines and in its special brand of hospitality.
Our Beautiful Ink
We in fact boiled up some nitida leaves, together with old farm implements, rusty nails and sugar for lots of hours to make the beautiful black/brown ink used to draw the illustrations for this website.
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