Alex Dale
Edouard & Alex doing viticultural research in Burgundy
PEOPLE AND BACKGROUND
Founded in 1998 by drinking-buddies and (then!) youthful idealists Ben Radford and Alex Dale, Radford Dale set-out to partake in the exciting emergence from obscurity of the Cape wine industry, after the historic Mandela-miracle and the opportunities which that unleashed, for all.
Some years later, Barossa-born Ben Radford returned to his homeland, while Alex Dale let his Cape roots deepen further, setting-about developing Radford Dale into one of the very best wine names in the country. To the point where in 2008, the South-African wine bible, The John Platter Guide, proclaimed the flagship Radford Dale Gravity to be one of only seven red wines in the country (out of 6000 wine tasted) to achieve 5 Star status, calling it “Superlative, a Cape Classic” .
Alex was born into a family and entourage of wine merchants, importers and distributors in Great Britain. Escaping in his mid-teens to read French literature at Dijon University, he became overwhelmed whilst studying (or drinking, as might be more accurately remarked) by the culture and tradition of the great wines of Burgundy. Literature became history, and wine a way of life. Galvanized 11 years later by a highly successful career in marketing wines for some of the most revered names in Burgundy (not least Domaine Jacques Prieur and the Drouhin family), Alex sought new horizons and a real challenge.
Edouard Labeye
Having worked harvests in numerous cellars in Burgundy earlier on in his career (the first in 1982, at the age of 15), Alex had been lured to South Africa by vineyard owning friends during the late eighties, and subsequently worked a harvest there in 1990. Over the course of six successive years' visits, he discovered the beauty and the potential of the Cape, fully realising that a new wine frontier had to emerge, once democracy was realised.
Another great friend of Alex’s, Edouard Labeye, was making some fabulous, innovative wines from the Rhone Valley and the Languedoc, where climatic conditions are quite similar to those we enjoy in the Cape. Alex approached Edouard in the late Eighties to join him in South Africa, during harvest time, with a view to helping combine some time-tested, traditional methods to the more progressive New World approach. A decade later, you couldn’t get rid of Edouard if you tried and he has a huge impact in the production of our wines, from the vineyard right through to the bottle. In fact, Radford Dale wines are truly the fruit of the labour of an entire team. Motivated, dedicated and completely passionate.