At 24 Albie Koch, our wine maker may be young, but already he boasts an impressive curriculum vitae which includes practical experience at cellars like Perdeberg Co-op in Paarl, South Africa; Quail Ridge Wine Cellar in California, USA; Bellingham in Franschhoek, South Africa; and 2 years with Chateau Capion in Montpellier, France.

In the small boutique red wine cellar at De Toren Private Cellar, Albie Koch pours out his heart and soul. He is passionate about his work. Producing a red wine of exceptional quality -- a Bordeaux-styled blend to be precise! -- is what Koch's after. And if his energetic enthusiasm is anything to go by, Fusion V will take the world by storm.

"A close working relationship between winemaker and vineyard manager is of paramount importance," says Albie. "Whatever goes wrong in the vineyard cannot be corrected in the cellar. To make good wine, a winemaker needs good grapes. Long gone are the days when winemakers stayed in the cellar and hardly ever set foot in the vineyards. Whatever happens out there constitutes 85 percent of the winemaker's success."

For this reason together with viticulture consultant Johan Pienaar, Albie manages and keeps a close watch on the vineyard. Soil and grape samples are regularly tested in laboratories to ensure that everything that is humanly possible is done to produce good quality grapes.

It was at Quail Ridge, a small but respected cellar in the Napa Valley, where Albie got an insider's view of the benefits derived from a close working relationship between winemaker and vineyard manager.

Says Albie, "At Quail Ridge my passion for red wine was fanned into flame. I loved that cellar. Being so small (they process between 400 and 500 tons of grapes each season), I felt that I could genuinely connect, as it were. There my passion for the trade was ignited."

It was, however, at Bellingham where the young winemaker admits to have gained the most valuable experience under the expert leadership of Charles Hopkins, maker of the world’s best Pinotage.

At Chateau Capion in France, Albie worked for two years, shoulder to shoulder with another top South African winemaker, the highly esteemed Nico van der Merwe of Saxenburg -- yet another experience that proved invaluable.  During a visit to Chateau Ausone, Albie got a most compelling glimpse of the kind of cellar that he was going to run at De Toren Private Cellar.