Goedverwacht Family Wines

Goedverwacht Estate is a family owned estate, beautifully situated in the Robertson Valley on the banks of the Breede River. The farm has been owned by the Du Toit family for three generations dating back to 1950.

At present the farm constitutes 180 ha under vineyards and spans a diverse range of terroirs, soil types and micro climates. This enables us to produce wines of distinctive character with an inherent fruit purity and elegance. The best sites and vineyards have been identified for each varietal and only grapes from these vineyards, are deemed good enough to be bottled under our Great Expectations label.

The Great Expectations label, perfectly encapsulates the essence of the wines and our philosophy in crafting them. Each new vintage brings with it an expectation of even further improvement and new possibilities.

Meticulous attention to detail in the vineyards and sustainable farming practices, combined with a minimalistic hands off approach in the cellar, to yield wines which are enjoyed, shared and discussed by wine aficionados both locally and abroad.

In the 1960’s, Gabriël Hendrik du Toit, a civil engineer, followed his dream of becoming a wine farmer by buying two neighbouring farms, totalling 70 ha, in the beautiful Breede River Valley, between Robertson and Bonnievale. He added a third property to start a dairy farm and called it Soek Die Geluk, since he firmly believed that he would find happiness in this enterprise. Today Soek die Geluk is a well-known export label to the Netherlands.

Between 1989 and 2015, Jan and Gawie du Toit, the current owners, added five more farms to the original properties and at present the farms cover a total of 380 ha. Of this, 280 ha is under irrigation and 180 ha under vineyards.

Gawie, the third generation, joined Goedverwacht in 2013 after receiving his degree at University of Stellenbosch.

Jan du Toit was born in April 1961 and grew up at Goedverwacht. He matriculated at Bonnievale High School in 1979 after which he completed two years of National service. During 1982 – 83 he studied Cellar Technology at Elsenburg Agricultural College and in 1984 had his maiden vintage at Goedverwacht. His father, Gabriël Hendrik passed away in 1987, with the result that Jan was never able to winemaking elsewhere, either locally or abroad.

In 1988 Jan married Marian and they have three children, Gawie, Marisa and Robert. Jan and Gawie are the sole owners of Goedverwacht Wine Estate consisting of 180 ha vineyards.

The original cellar was built in the early 1950’s, but has since been expanded and modernized to allow the production of high quality wines.

The white wine cellar is set up in such a way, that it ensures the use of only freerun juice for the production of our fruit driven white and rose wines. It does however allow us to add a fraction of press juice, should this be needed. White wines are fermented in stainless steel tanks with temperature control.

Red wines are produced in three pumpover tanks and the 4 drainers. This gives us quite a few possibilities regarding the style of red wine we produce, from early release, easy drinking reds, to extracted full bodied wines requiring oak maturation. Barrels are filled by gravity and are stored in a temperature controlled environment.

Two water cooling plants ensure that we can adequately control our fermentation temperatures on our white wines while a Glycol plant keeps our red wine fermentation’s in check.

Various sizes of storage and fermentation tanks gives us the option of keeping selected vineyards or parcels of vineyard separate, thus enabling us to produce wines which reflects it’s site and terroir.