Maze has a point of difference that is simple to state and hard to copy. Two winemakers, Emile Gentis and Petre Morkel, working the blend together as a genuine team, rather than one winemaker’s singular vision.
They studied and graduated together, worked at several estates, and have been friends across decades. When they came together on Maze, they brought different opinions and were willing to voice them. That friction is where the best progress happened.
Emile Gentis: Winemaker and co-founder
Petre Morkel: Winemaker and co-founder
Emile has been making wine since 1998. By his own account, the first decade was not good. He made mistakes. Wines did not turn out the way he intended. Then something shifted.
He began to understand blending the way a chef understands seasoning. He describes wine the way other people describe food: balance, texture, the moment when too much spice tips into something that burns without purpose. He loves foods like North-Indian curries or a Boeuf Bourguignon and uses it as a metaphor, and the open, fresh markets of Europe, where you buy fresh mussels and herbs and figure out the rest on the way home. The ingredients set the direction. The skill is in the balance.
His turning point came during Covid. He cleared his old stock, took time to restructure his wine story, and started again. In that quiet, the clarity he had been reaching for came into focus. He stopped trying to express someone else’s land and started asking what the drinker actually wanted.
He calls himself a wine sculptor. He starts with what is in front of him, looks at it clearly, and works towards what it should be rather than what it already is. In Maze, that instinct shows up everywhere: the high-pH smoothness from the Swartland, the structure of the Cabernet Franc from Alto, the raspberry brightness of Grenache and Cinsaut, and the carbonic Carignan he keeps close as the blend’s own intellectual property.
Polishing the rough diamond into something beautiful. That is the job.
“I like to take a wine and sculpt something into what it should be, not what it is and not what it is perceived to be.” – Emile Gentis
Petre holds the tension between romance and realism better than most. He knows that making wine is romantic, and that the romance is part of why it matters. He also knows that falling in love with your own product is a trap.
He moved from the creative side of winemaking into a commercial role as an international wine broker. That shift taught him something many winemakers learn too late: what people actually like, and how much it matters to make something they will choose again, of their own free will. The longing for the creative work stayed with him through the commercial years. Single Barrel Wine Co. offered a way back into the craft on better terms.
The style direction for Maze came into focus over a shared tasting of Italian wines. The partners found the quality they were all looking for: freshness, full body, red fruit, lightness of style. A Mediterranean feeling. They set out to translate that into a Cape wine, using South African grapes and South African soil, but with the approachability and food-friendliness of the wines they were drinking.
Petre draws a direct line between the blending and the partnership. Just as you take the best qualities of different varietals and build on them, you take the best qualities of different people and build on them.
“If you have a glass of wine with a friend, savour the wine and the experience the same and fully.” – Petre Morkel
Emile is expansive and technical. Petre is measured and quietly philosophical. Between them they built a blend by argument and agreement, in equal measure. The friction is the method. The friendship is the reason.
