Moya Meaker was a beauty queen. Miss South Africa 1959. That was her claim to fame, for a moment in time. But her legacy… well…that’s timeless. Because Moya was also a mother, a wife, a friend, and a servant of the community, wherever she went. She was a force of nature, who sought beauty in the overlooked, and found joy amidst trial. Her spirit lives on through the people she strengthened. Every wine produced in the Moya Meaker range seeks to honour that spirit.

Elgin is a valley in the sky; a lofty plateau hemmed in by mountains, covered by a blanket of clouds, cooled by ocean breezes, and couched in soils of shale over clay. This wine haven is South Africa’s coolest wine region, and home to some of its most celebrated Pinot Noirs, Rieslings, and Chardonnays.

You won’t find a stainless steel tank anywhere in the Moya Meaker cellar. For fermentation, the winemaking team uses only a combination of conical concrete tanks (constructed from sand and pebbles sourced from the Brenta River in the foothills of the Alps) as well as Stockinger foudres, crafted from a mix of tight-grained Austrian and German oak. The cellar also holds a range of 300-litre French and Austrian oak barrels, strictly for maturation purposes.

Winemaker Jean Smit is a storyteller. For the nigh-on-20-years that he’s spent as a winemaker, his belief has always been that wine should communicate the history of its home. During this time, he worked alongside South African winemaking legends like Adi Badenhorst at Rustenberg, and spent almost a decade at Boekenhoutskloof as Chief Winemaker.

Jean has also gone on pilgrimages to New World Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Riesling sanctuaries like Marlborough, and Russian River Valley, while also spending time with the famed Burgundian-trained winemaker Stéphane Ogier (Domaine M&S Ogier) in Côte Rotie. This tapestry of life experiences makes him distinctly qualified for the task of painting the Elgin story, using these cool climate cultivars as his palette.

Description: A gentle south-southeast-facing slope of Bokkeveld shale, running right through the valley’s famous cooling cloud belt.
Elevation: 320m ASL
Soil: Bokkeveld shale over a base of moisture-retentive clay