Marc Kent has found a new lease of life in Portugal, but he remains a guiding force at Boekenhoutskloof, the Franschhoek estate he helped build into one of the Cape’s finest producers, says Tim James.
Continuity can be compelling and reassuring. I’ve known Marc Kent a long time, first as the producer of interesting wine-journalistic objects and then also as a close friend (that’s getting in a declaration of interest early). Two long-remembered quotes remain relevant to this profile, and I might not manage much better than expanding on them. The first is from him, to the effect that “if a winemaker can’t produce a first-rate wine when there are just a few barrels of the stuff, then it’s a poor show; the real challenge is to make a few dozen barrels—or a few hundred or more—of good wine.” The second was a comment from his mentor and friend Tim Rands (the businessman behind the origins of Boekenhoutskloof Winery in Franschhoek and founder of wine company Vinimark, both in South Africa). I asked him once what Marc had most significantly brought to Boekenhoutskloof, and he immediately replied, “Two things: vision and a great skill at blending wines.” He might well have added “hard work” but perhaps took that for granted.
First, quick responses to those quotes before the elaboration. Regarding the ambition about quantity: The latest, 2023, release of The Chocolate Block declares on its label that 4,000 barrels were made; it’s certainly unique in South Africa for a serious, internationally highly regarded, and comparatively expensive wine to be made in such quantities. And this is just one wine (though financially and quantitatively the most important) among Boekenhoutskloof’s extensive ranges: Boekenhoutskloof as a brand has grown from nothing, over one generation, to be perhaps the largest and most successful privately owned wine business in the country, and indeed the motivating vision was always primarily Marc Kent’s.
As for the (self-)deprecating remark about the ease of making a few barrels of fine wine, this can be justified by the high reputation he rapidly achieved as a winemaker from his earliest years at the farm, with smallish volumes of ambitious Cabernet Sauvignon, Semillon, and Syrah. The vision that Rands referred to is amply proven by what followed—and the blending skill, too. Marc is clearly proud that, while not directly very involved in the cellars anymore, he is still fully involved in the final blending of all Boekenhoutskloof’s wines, signing off on every one.
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Boekenhoutskloof was founded in 1994 by Rands and a handful of fairly moneyed friends—the partners represented by the row of chairs (putatively made from Cape beech, which is what the property’s name alludes to in Afrikaans) on the label. It was a momentous year for South Africa as a whole, holding its first democratic elections.
Also in 1994, two men who would go on to be among the most significant figures in 21st-century South African wine graduated from Elsenburg Agricultural College. One was Marc; the other was Eben Sadie. Marc tells a good story about the two friends preparing for an exploratory tour of the classic European winelands with their graduand colleagues—a revelatory tour, given South African wine’s isolation from the wider world under Apartheid sanctions. Shortly before leaving, a drunken celebratory evening involved the two of them on the beach, a pickup truck, a motorbike, and a tow rope. It ended with Marc having a badly damaged leg in plaster but insisting on boarding the plane, in pain and on crutches, against his doctor’s advice: “I wasn’t going to miss my first trip abroad!” Carrying his baggage for him around Europe was a somewhat guilt-stricken Sadie. It sounds like they had a wonderful few weeks.
Two aspects of the tale of this trip are worth noting for their typical Kentness. Marc’s energy was at the forefront of raising money to fund the students’ tour, organizing auctions and approaching wine industry businesses for donations. A supplier of stainless steel to wineries responded generously; to this day, that concern supplies all of Boekenhotskloof’s substantial requirements. Marc’s loyalty and generosity to those who have helped him, or have served his winery well, is unswerving. The opposite perhaps also applies.
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He was appointed as the project’s first winemaker at the end of that multiply auspicious year, on the recommendation of La Motte’s Jacques Borman, for whom he had worked some seasons while a student. The farm initially had little to offer beyond its wonderful location, with towering mountains on three sides and a tumbledown old Cape Dutch cottage that you could call a manor house if you had a grandiose imagination. Some vineyards were planted and a winery built, and Marc was buying in grapes from both Franschhoek and Stellenbosch for the maiden 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon and 1997 Semillon (a more original choice). There seems to have been no grand ambition among the owners—they just thought it would be nice to have a wine farm, Marc suggests now.
Ambition, determination, vision
It was no great thing to be put in charge of it all, as he was, for there wasn’t all that much to be in charge of. Ambition was already seething in that small cellar, however, and a commensurate vision developing. Marc soon suggested the need for a second-tier label, and a 1977 Sauvignon Blanc became the first in what would become the substantial Porcupine Ridge industry, characteristically overdelivering at its price point. It was quickly followed by other varietal wines and then the Wolftrap range for a pair of blended wines.
Within a few years, Marc had emphatically proved his abilities as both a winemaker and a manager. He’s never fancied himself as a viticulturist, incidentally, but claims an instinct for entrepreneurship. From his childhood—a modest one with a clearly much-loved and respected father—“I grew vegetables to sell and established the first paper round in my area.” Now the Boekenhoutskloof shareholders realized—with some astonishment, it seems—that they were onto a good thing and were happy to tie him down with a small share in the ownership. By 2004, Marc wanted more, and the owners could not afford to have him take his skills and vision elsewhere. It was agreed that there would be a split between the ownership of Boekenhoutskloof the farm and Boekenhoutskloof the expanding brand owner. Kent and Rands, already close, could see the huge potential of what was still a fairly small business, and they would evenly split half of the brand ownership between them, with the other shareholders taking the rest. Marc says he had to “borrow all over” to make up his stake.
Once he had it, his dynamism and energy served his vision to accelerate remarkable growth. The first 15 barrels of The Chocolate Block had been made in 2002, its makeup inspired by a visit to Roussillon, where he’d been impressed by the use of Cabernet in blends with Syrah and Grenache. Porseleinberg in the Swartland was acquired by Boekenhoutskloof, and a major planting program started in 2009. The vineyards expanded greatly, alongside the fame of the Syrah that was made from a small part of them by viticulturist-winemaker Callie Louw, later supplemented by other Swartland farms to provide grapes mainly for The Chocolate Block, making it an all-Swartland wine.
Also in 2009, a substantial winemaking facility (a former co-op) was acquired in Stellenbosch as an HQ and center for The Chocolate Block—right now it is in the process of a major rebuilding program. The huge cellar, like the semi-underground maturation cellar at the home farm in Franschhoek, has an OXOline system for the barrels, stacking them high but allowing each to be moved independently. Marc has always been keen on the best, often innovative, winery technology and equipment in pursuit of wine quality—he was a pioneer in the country of sorting tables and automated basket presses, for example. Boekenhoutskloof’s chief winemaker since 2015, Gottfried Mocke told me that he’s never had a request refused (which is partly a reflection of Marc’s respect for the man he headhunted to take the estate-named wines to a higher level).
More recently, Marc drove through the development of another major Boekenhoutskloof project, a new estate for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Hemel-en-Aarde area of the cool Cape south coast. Vineyards for Cap Maritime have been planted under the watchful direction of him and Mocke, and a cellar will soon follow. Boekenhoutskloof’s stretch and repertoire in South Africa will be notable and extensive.
And there is no stinting on details at any level. A recent purchase, at substantial expense, is 16 large Italian clay pots (amphorae)—surely the largest collection in the Cape, just as Boekenhoutskloof’s purchases of new oak barrels and corks and much else dwarfs most others. (Again, Marc does not shop around but sticks to trusted suppliers.) These pots will be used for another project that is likely to have a gratifying effect on Boekenhoutskloof’s bottom line: a white blend called Goldmine, as a counterpart to The Chocolate Block. It would be a foolish shareholder, or observer, to underestimate this development (though not all the Kent brand innovations and developments have been successful; a few have been pretty quickly abandoned when they did not meet expectations).
There is no doubt who makes all the fundamental decisions at Boekenhoutskloof—and many of the minor ones. There is no job title on Marc’s business card, but if necessary he calls himself the technical director, a description harking back to a long-ago visit to the Cape by Paul Pontallier of Château Margaux who gloried in that title, which pleased Marc. (It conveys risibly little to me.) His apparently casual approach extends to dress. I asked him if he owned a suit and tie, and he considered, then remembered that he’d bought one for a wedding not long ago. His employees all call him by his first name, from bottom to top.
But any casualness is a thin veneer for a management practice that expresses an implacable will to succeed. One thing all his internal team and his suppliers agree on: He gets things done. Preferably immediately. He doesn’t play safe, members of his senior team told me; he doesn’t like no for an answer; and he expects them to work as hard as he does. They must be available at all times and in all circumstances. Sales and marketing manager Lynton Kaiser told me of a favorite Kent expression when doubts are raised about the reasonableness of some urgent request with only a slim chance of success: “They put a man on the moon, guys—this can be done!” Hamish Young of New Generation Wines, longtime UK importer of Boekenhoutskloof, told another evocative story of Marc having decided he needed a particular new design of hand-dryer for the washroom in the new Helderberg facility (again, typical of the depth of his involvement). The dryer wasn’t yet available in South Africa, so Marc asked Hamish to source it in London and bring it over in his luggage on his forthcoming visit. That happened, of course, but Marc was disgruntled to hear that the customs officer had rejected Hamish’s attempts to get the thing through as a personal gift. Had he tried hard enough?
On the other hand, under the Kent regime, Boekenhoutskloof has become a model employer (quite beyond the desire to have the best hand-dryer available); I’ve been told that wages are the highest in the industry, and benefits are generous. At least most of the employees are given a proper lunch every day: I ate in the (as yet unrebuilt) dining room at Helderberg with Marc a while back and had a very decent meal. There is, in fact, a depth of ethics here and a commitment to what Marc calls a Boekenhoutskloof mantra: having “a generous spirit.” Marc is “proud that we’ve never charged for tastings,” for example. I know that Boekenhoutskloof estate is farmed organically not for marketing reasons (it tends not to be mentioned) but because “it’s the right thing to do.” It’s part of the vision—which encompasses more than a reputation for fine wine and good value, more than growth and financial success.
There’s another side to Marc’s life, of course, which is quite personal, and he has always liked keeping it that way. There’s watching important football matches, for example. And it should be noted that if Boekenhoutskloof is central to his existence, so are his family. Although he now lives in Portugal and his twins, Drew and Carter, born in 2007, still live in Franschhoek with their mother, Brigitte, he talks to them by phone virtually every day, I gather. He also sees them on his frequent visits on winery business and for longer, more leisurely periods in both countries.
Doing one’s best—and Invincible
It’s many years since Marc has been involved in the smaller details and duties of winemaking at Boekenhoutskloof (apart from his assiduous control of the final blends), but more recently he has been doing just that in Portugal, in his own project with business and personal partner Rita Marques. The Portuguese adventure has its origins in a visit in 2014—with an itinerary and introductions provided by Dirk Niepoort of the great Douro winemaking family—and developed seemingly ineluctably from that point.
Marc met Rita on that first visit, when she was making wine and Port for her small family concern, Conceito, and achieving a fine reputation. She had already worked a few harvests in South Africa and came again in 2015 and 2016 to do seasons at the Boekenhoutskloof cellar with Gottfried Mocke. Marc returned a few times to Portugal (specifically the Douro, which had worked its magic on him) and, in 2017, worked with Rita in her cellar. It was the first time, he says, that he’d ever worked in any other winery since coming to Boekenhoutskloof. By now he was looking around to buy a property there. He loved the generosity and warmth he found in the Portuguese, quite apart from his growing connection with Rita, and he was also interested in the Golden Visa offered by Portugal to substantial investors. Irritatingly, he was bilked in a purchase he had been close to concluding, but he continued to explore the Douro with Rita—by now his partner—with a view to establishing a joint winery (while family issues were rendering her Conceito involvement problematic).
In 2020, on Marc’s 50th birthday, they took ownership of a small property near the village of Casais on the winding road from Pinhão to Spain, in the spectacular Torta Valley. It had a small primitive winery and some vineyards, and shortly afterward they managed to buy the neighboring property. Further expansion is possible but not by much and certainly not urgently—great-quality grapes are available, and they prefer to buy in. (White grapes are anyway not well suited to this part of the Douro.) They will, however, establish a tasting room once they’ve negotiated the difficulties associated with converting old buildings in the Douro region (recognized as a UNESCO Cultural Landscape World Heritage site). They also hope to acquire a house in the area, though they’ll probably continue living in the rather smart modern flat they own in Coimbra, some two hours away by road. That’s uncomfortably far during an anyway-exhausting harvest, and Marc has been renting somewhere to rest his weary head for the duration, while Rita returns to Coimbra each night to be with their young son, Santiago.
But already, there on the hillside above the renovated winery, among their vines, is the large sign proclaiming invincible to the passing traffic. It’s the brand name that has for a good few years now been on their entry- and middle-level white and red Douro table wines and is now also on the top-level pair, as well as a range of Ports: 10- and 20-year-old Tawnies, Late Bottled Vintage, Ruby, and Vintage. Already the wines are doing well: There’s no doubt that Marc’s established contacts among distributors and buyers are proving useful, but the quality (as I learned for myself earlier this year) is impressive. The Invincible Branco 2024, the first to be made in the renovated cellar, necessarily from bought-in grapes, is perhaps particularly fine among the current releases. The English–French brand name (Invincible with a pun on vin in French) was borrowed (with permission) from a friend with a fine-wine restaurant of that name in Belgium, and it’s also the name of Boekenhoutskloof’s wine-bar outlet in Franschhoek town. The full name of the company, however, is properly Portuguese: Companhia de Vinhos Invencível.
Those top two wines, simply called The Invincible (with distinguishing red and white wax capsules), have rather beautiful labels based on a 2000 lithograph called La Cosecha (“The Vintage” in Spanish), by South African artist William Kentridge. It features a minimal landscape and an old-style grape picker; each of the 55 prints in the edition is on a different page from Mrs Beeton’s famous cookbook, and Marc is seeking to buy as many copies as possible, in order—for as long as possible—to have a different version for each vintage. Kentridge is, incidentally, a major artistic interest for Marc; he has built up a collection of his prints and drawings, which hang in his house in Llandudno, just outside Cape Town.
Marc’s workload, aways heavy, has increased greatly since establishing the Portuguese company, though Rita has taken much of the load, including dealing with local and European bureaucracies. “As a foreigner, I could never have done this,” he says. “Rita puts her head down and ticks all the boxes.” Especially impossible as an impatient foreigner, I point out to him, wanting immediate results; further, he hasn’t managed yet to pick up much of the language.
“I’m exhausted at the moment,” he told me during harvest; “I’ve never worked harder in my life.” But he adds, “This Duoro work satisfies the emotional side of things. This is relaxation.” And his continuous excitement and pleasure was obvious to me when I spent a few days with him in a hot August. “Having a property near Pinhão, the great center of the Duoro: How did this happen? It’s cool, eh? Every time I come around that bend and see the invincible sign stuck on the hillside among the vines, it’s unbelievable. I can’t believe it as I look around at the famous quintas nearby.”
He’s been “so lucky,” he insists, and “lucky that my shareholders in Boekenhoutskloof gave me the latitude to do this.” I have no doubt that those shareholders are extremely well aware of how well they’ve done out of Marc’s energy and commitment, and in a real sense, Boekenhoutskloof remains at the center of it. My visit to him—which he treated as a holiday, I think—was timed to fit in between his innumerable marketing trips around the world, though I realized that he had to deal with pressure from his Brazilian importers, who’d wanted him at the same time. Each day before we got together, he would put in a good few hours of work, and while driving he was both making and receiving phone calls connected with Boekenhoutskloof business—whether arranging a trip to New Zealand to buy a Sauvignon Blanc to give a boost to the Porcupine Ridge brand, or discussing some forthcoming meeting of his team with a British supermarket buyer, or resolving a small detail of the major building work going on at the Stellenbosch HQ of The Chocolate Block. What I found most notable in observing all this was how he’d move from one conversation to the other with no references to notes: a large array of dates, facts, requirements, problems, and needs was all in his head, and I couldn’t see him missing a beat as he gave instructions and received updates.
“Boekenhoutskloof is my life,” Marc remarked once. It’s not, of course, except insofar as it seems to occupy the larger part of his activity and his waking thoughts. He’s proud of what he’s achieved and seems especially pleased when he refers to the increasingly good benefits for the large number of people employed by Boekenhoutkloof. “It makes me think we’ve done a great job that we can do all of that.” In time, he says, what he would like recognized is that “I did my best. It sounds corny, but I really did.”
