A New Look for Lighthouse, and the Olive Oil You Won’t Find in Stores

The lighthouse on our estate has always done two jobs. It stands beside the winery, a small white tower on the lagoon-facing edge of Benguela Cove, just outside Hermanus and it appears on every bottle of our Lighthouse range. It’s a tribute to the marginal, sea-cooled climate that shapes everything we grow here.

This season, we’ve redrawn that label.

A New Look, the Same Wines

Lighthouse, our more approachable, earlier-drinking range has been given a cleaner, more contemporary identity. The wines inside are a Sauvignon Blanc, a Provence-style Rosé, a Shiraz, and the ever-popular, multi-award-winning Moody Lagoon red blend, all made from estate-grown grapes and shaped by a terroir we believe is among the most distinctive in South Africa.

Benguela Cove sits two metres above sea level in the Walker Bay wine region, with 70 hectares of vineyards that form the longest stretch of ocean-facing vines in the country. The Atlantic, chilled by the Benguela Current flowing up from Antarctica, sends a south-easterly breeze across the canopy through the growing season. The result is slow ripening, restrained alcohols, bright fruit aromas, fresh acidity, and a saline thread that runs through every wine we make.

Cellar Master Johann Fourie, who has led our winemaking since 2017, selects specific parcels of fruit across the estate, grown on slopes and soils that lend themselves to more fruit-forward, smoother wines. The result is a Lighthouse range that is soft but vibrant, made for earlier release and easy enjoyment. It is the estate’s introduction to itself, a first taste, in a friendlier register, of what this site can do.

The other harvest

The vineyards are the headline act, but they aren’t our only crop. Tucked between the vines and the water are our olive groves, planted to a trio of classic Tuscan cultivars chosen for their complexity and resilience: Coratina, Frantoio and Leccino. The olives are harvested at peak ripeness and cold-pressed on the estate, a deliberately small annual production.

We don’t put the oil into mainstream retail. It’s available at our cellar door near Hermanus, online, and at our UK cellar doors at Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens and Mannings Heath in West Sussex nowhere else. That choice is deliberate, and it’s worth explaining.

Why Provenance Matters More in Olive Oil than Almost Any Other Food

Olive oil is one of the most adulterated agricultural products in the world. Global testing regimes routinely find a significant proportion of supermarket “extra virgin” bottles falling short of the grade, either cut with cheaper refined oils, or simply too old by the time they reach the shelf. The European Union, the world’s biggest producer and consumer, has been chasing olive oil fraud for decades.

The truth most people don’t realise is this: real extra virgin olive oil is fresh fruit juice. It is perishable, seasonal, and at its best within months of pressing. The longer the supply chain grower, broker, blender, importer, distributor, retailer, the more time the polyphenols have to fade. A bottle that has spent eighteen months in transit, on a warehouse pallet and then under shop lighting, is a very different product from one harvested, pressed and bottled in a single season at a single farm.

A single-origin estate oil shortcut that chain. You know the grove, the vintage, the soil, the year. The polyphenol count on which most of the documented health benefits depend is far higher in a fresh, unblended oil than in a commodity blend.

How it Tastes

On the nose, our oil opens with rich fruit aromas, green olive, apple skin and hints of wild herbs. The palate is smooth yet vibrant, silky and well-rounded, layered with a distinctive spice and a lingering nutty character that evokes almonds and fresh artichoke. A gentle bitterness and peppery lift add complexity and balance.

It is wonderful with crusty sourdough and dukkah, poured generously over grilled calamari, seared scallops or fresh oysters, or finishing a salad of fennel, rocket, citrus or heirloom tomatoes.

The Case for the Daily Spoonful

Penny Streeter OBE, who relaunched the estate in 2013, is a quiet evangelist for the old Mediterranean habit of taking a daily spoonful of good olive oil, neat, first thing in the morning.

The clinical literature supports the practice. Extra virgin olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats, vitamin E and polyphenols, including oleocanthal, the compound responsible for the peppery catch at the back of the throat that quality producers treat as a marker of freshness. Sustained daily consumption has been linked to reduced LDL cholesterol, lower blood pressure, improved inflammatory markers, and a measurable role in cardiovascular and neurological protection.

The Cleveland Clinic recommends one and a half to three tablespoons a day for cardiovascular benefit. The European Food Safety Authority has approved a health claim linking olive oil polyphenols to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress.

The peppery sting of a real extra virgin olive oil is the chemistry doing its work and it is the first thing to disappear from a bottle that has travelled too far.

Visit the Estate

The new-look Lighthouse wines are available now at our tasting room, online and at selected stockists. Our olive oil is available only at the estate, online, and at our UK cellar doors at Leonardslee and Mannings Heath, while stocks last from this year’s harvest.

If you’re driving the Hermanus coastline this season, come and find the lighthouse.