At the end of 1994, a young graduate of the Elsenburg Agricultural College arrived at a farm in the remotest corner of the Franschhoek Valley. He brought a refrigerator, a stereo system and a car. Much more, nothing. That is how Marc Kent tells it today, and you can tell he likes the story. Boekenhoutskloof began with 6,000 bottles. Today, the house's brands bottle over six million bottles a year, and more than half the business depends on a single wine: The Chocolate Block. Kent didn't want the name at first.
Waiter, student, cast
Before he made wine, Kent served it. He worked as a waiter at the Black Marlin restaurant at Cape Point, and the owner Gerald Ludwinski, a generous wine connoisseur, shared many a bottle of the very biggest names with him. Then came Elsenburg. Kent graduated in 1994, in the same year as Eben Sadie, who would later also become one of the defining figures of South African wine.
The graduates were scheduled to go on a study trip through Europe's classic wine regions. Just before departure, a boisterous evening on the beach ended with a badly injured leg. Kent still got on the plane, on crutches and against his doctor's advice. Sadie carried his luggage behind him for weeks.
A farm, but hardly any vines
The Boekenhoutskloof farm was founded in 1776. In 1993, a group of partners bought the property and had it restored, and at the end of 1994 they hired Kent as their first winemaker. He had been recommended by Jacques Borman of La Motte, where he had worked several vintages as a student.
The first wine was a 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon. A year later came a Semillon and a Syrah, for which Kent had just eight tons of grapes available. This 1997 made South African Syrah a talking point and the small winery the go-to address for the variety. We still carry the Boekenhoutskloof Syrah today.
Not everything went well. The vines that Kent had planted himself in the 1990s were later ripped out and replanted. His explanation is remarkably blunt: he had simply done a miserable job back then. He never saw himself as a farmer.
The chocolate business
Lord's Cricket Ground in London, in 2000. At a South African event, Tony Allen, then a buyer for the British wine retailer Oddbins, proposed a deal to the young winemaker. Kent was to make a Shiraz for Oddbins under their own brand. Name: The Chocolate Block. Kent turned it down. Wines for other labels, that was not his thing.
The following year he drove through Roussillon to the Costa Brava. There he noticed that some winemakers were planting Cabernet with their Syrah and Grenache to give the wines more structure. Kent took the idea home.
Then came 2002. A weak vintage. Kent used it to experiment and put together a blend based on Syrah, complemented by Grenache and Cabernet, plus Cinsault and a touch of Viognier for the aroma. 15 barrels of it went into bottles in 2003, and still, a name was missing.
So Kent went back to Tony Allen and asked if he remembered the proposal from back then. Allen agreed, the name could stay. Only condition: Oddbins got the first vintage exclusively. At least, that is how Kent tells it. Jancis Robinson had a more sober explanation noted in 2005, according to which the wine was called that because it was meant to seem rich and sweet. How the 15 barrels became a wine with thousands of barrels per vintage, we show in the article Chocolate Block through the vintages.
Borrowed money
The partners soon realized that their winemaker could do more than make wine. In 2004 the business was split: the farm here, the growing brand company there. Kent wanted a real stake in the company. To pay him, in his own words, he had to borrow money everywhere.
The bet paid off. In 2007 he was Diners Club Winemaker of the Year. In 2009 Boekenhoutskloof bought the Helderberg Winery in Stellenbosch, since then the home of the Chocolate Block. In 2015 Kent hired Gottfried Mocke as Chief Winemaker, who has been running the cellar ever since.
Kent has many admirers, and critics too. South African wine journalist Michael Fridjhon called him the Steve Jobs of Cape wine in 2026, but added in the same text that the house's Cabernets seemed more like Samsung to him. And not every new brand Kent launched survived. Some were quickly discontinued according to World of Fine Wine when they failed to meet expectations.
The label remains a mystery. It shows seven chairs. Fridjhon sees in this the seven partners from the early days, Decanter sees an allusion to the furniture made of Cape buckthorn, the wood after which the farm is named. It is quite possible that both are true.
From the Douro
Since 2020 Kent has lived in Portugal. On his 50th birthday he took over a small winery in the Douro together with Rita Marques. He hardly ever gets his hands into the Boekenhoutskloof cellar in everyday life. But there is one thing he never gave up: every assemblage of the house goes over his table before it is bottled.
His latest project in South Africa is white. The Goldmine White is intended as a partner wine to the Chocolate Block, we dedicated a separate article to it in May. If you want to taste the story from the beginning, you still reach for the red. We have the Chocolate Block in stock in eleven vintages, from the current 2024 back to 2008.
Text: KAPWEINE Editorial Team
Sources:
- Decanter: Sweet like chocolate, Boekenhoutskloof and the creation of a South African icon (2025)
- World of Fine Wine: Marc Kent, Generous spirit (2026)
- Business Day: Michael Fridjhon, Boekenhoutskloof's Marc Kent is the Steve Jobs of Cape wine (2026)
- Decanter: Boekenhoutskloof, reflecting on 30 years
- Decanter: Boekenhoutskloof, tasting the new releases
- Wine Spectator: Winemaker Talk, Marc Kent
- Jancis Robinson: The Chocolate Block 2003 Western Cape
- Strauss & Co: Boekenhoutskloof
