Page 223 – winemag

Simon Back, CEO and the fourth generation of his family to be involved in the running of Backsberg in Paarl, confirms that the main farm has been sold.

“At Backsberg, we have a portfolio of farms and interests. We believe that for a family wine business to succeed over the long term, that it needs to evolve in keeping with a change in generations, roles, ambitions and skills. In gearing for the future, Backsberg has sold its main farm. The Backsberg wine business and brand is very important to us and we are excited to re-envision the business model in line with this change. Covid has taught us all the necessity of rethinking and reimagining, and we are using the opportunity to do just that. We remain committed to our mission of making fine wines an everyday pleasure.”

Introduction

Winemag.co.za reviewed a total of 927 wines across 20 wine categories in its various reports sponsored by multinational financial services company Prescient over the course of the year. Each report was based on the outcome of a blind tasting of wines entered within the specific category.

A Top 10 was then announced with the release of each successive report. Now the individual best wine per category plus ratings on the 100-point quality scale for all the Top 10 wines can be revealed.

Winery of the Year: Tokara

Acquired by businessman and banker GT Ferreira in 1994, Tokara in Stellenbosch (with vineyards in Elgin as well) is now firmly entrenched as one of South Africa’s top wineries. Aidan Morton is the long-serving viticulturist here while Stuart Botha, previously of Eagles’ Nest, took over from the accomplished Miles Mossop mid-2017.

The property earned a Top 10 spot in every Prescient Report it entered this year, the wines to feature being: Director’s Reserve White 2017, Reserve Collection Chardonnay 2019, Director’s Reserve Red 2017, Reserve Collection Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 and Reserve Collection Syrah 2017. Moreover, three of these – the white blend, the Chardonnay and the Cabernet Sauvignon – were judged best in category.

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Johannesburg boutique wine retailer Dry Dock Liquor is offering a selection of the best in category wines for sale – buy now.

The 100 Flavours exhibition at Makers Landing, V & A Waterfront, is just that – a presentation of 100 South African flavours. There are flavours that reflect the country’s past and its present. There are flavours that depict our regional and ethnic diversity. There are flavours derived from indigenous ingredients and there are others that originally came from somewhere else but have been made new in the South African space. There is posh nosh and poverty food. Healthy offerings and junk food. Our epicurean interactions with happiness, sadness, comfort and sex are all evaluated. The South African obsession with cooking over fire and the ways in which we dine with our deities are offered up in delicious detail. The exhibition opens on 10 December.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I was the person that the curators, Studio H, tasked with drawing up the list of 100 Flavours. I consulted widely but I am fully aware that there are no right or wrong answers in the quest to define a country’s core tastes. At best a list like this can be a tool to stimulate debate and thereafter to add/ subtract suggestions. At the end of the exhibition there is space for visitors to propose additional items for inclusion.

The brief was absurdly over-ambitious. I was to consider everything ever consciously consumed by people living on the land that we currently call South Africa. Seeing as how the first catching and controlling of fire for making food may well have happened in Gauteng’s Cradle of Humankind that meant a possible time frame of over a million years. Clearly 100 is an insufficient number for such a task. Space and time considerations resulted in a decision to predominantly focus on solid foods. While this helped lighten the load a little it wasn’t all that effective as an elimination tool because in many Southern African culinary cultures the point at which a fermented porridge becomes a beer is blurred. So, umqombothi, mageu made the culinary cut. And there were other liquids I felt could not be left out. Some of the teas and tisanes snuck in as herbs. Brandy was included only in so far as it occurred in infused with buchu or as a preserving agent for apricots (boeremeisies). Pinotage was included because, well, it simply seemed absurd not to. There is clearly a case for adding more wines and other alcohols going forward.

The list is far too short to do justice to the topic but far too long to be described in its entirety here. Suffice it to say that there is something to suit every palate. Those seeking sweet tastes are invited to consider, amongst many others, entries on Afrikaner soetkoekies, Xhosa IQhilika, Tsonga xigugu, Cape Malay Tameletjies and Soweto-style ‘skull sweet’ (it’s a kind of honeycomb). Seeking sour? There are amatungulu berries and baobabs and Rex Union orange marmalade but also Cape ingelegde vis (with hot cross buns), amasi and ting soured sorghum porridge. Salty sees mebos meet Baleni sacred salt but also bokkoms and biltong. Bitter is represented by items such as Pedi diya tea, Tswana lerotho (spider flower wild leaf) and voortrekker mugs of moerkoffie. Umami is in everything from jugo beans to droëwors, denningvleis and thongolifha (edible stink bugs). South Africans adoration of a little bit of sweet and spice in their savoury is well catered for with Durban’s masala spice pineapples, ikhala aloe sap and a selection of sosaties. Snoek with apricot jam sits (literally) cheek by jowl with smileys and inhloko beef head stews with pelepele seasoning. Speaking of pelepele, mother-in-law-masalas, chakalaka and Mrs Balls are in there too. Obviously, there are mielies galore.

Food is a form of material culture which reflects the broader context from whence it comes. While the exhibition is full of joy it also engages with our painful past. Indigenous ingredients are recognized for the role they can play in restoring and empowering the ancestral memories of peoples and places too long dismissed and displaced. The ways in which South African food culture has been profoundly influenced by slavery, colonialism and apartheid are presented and the foods formed by such situations are celebrated as an indication of the survival and triumph of the human spirit over extremes of adversity. Most of all there is an acknowledgement that the physical space used by the exhibition is part of land that pre-colonial Khoi people called ‘Camissa’ – //ammi i ssa and that, from the late 15th century, there was a permanent Khoi trading station supplying food and fresh water to passing Dutch, British and Portuguese ships. There is a direct connection between past and present. Clearly, making that connection is only the first step.

In every bite of jaffel and every spread of suurvy konfyt South Africans are explaining their edible identity. It is there in every sip of cane juice and crunch of majenjhe edible termites. It is in each 7 colours Sunday lunch and every Mogodu Monday. From bunny chow and moatwana to jodetert, gemmerbier to ZCC tee ya thaba these are eloquent offerings. From umngqusho and umphokoqo to kifyaat kos and kip kip we are what we eat and drink.

100 Flavours Exhibition: Makers Landing, Cape Town Cruise Terminal, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town

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There are certain brands that really do transport you back to your childhood. Within a wine context, these brands will be different depending on where you grew up around the world. My English colleagues fondly recall long hot summers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with their parents roasting on sun loungers on the back garden lawn astride large ice buckets stacked with plenty of cold beer together with porcelain bottles of Black Tower from Germany or Lancers Vin Rose from Portugal. Admittedly, wine in this outdoor setting would have mostly been to cater for the lady folk, with men drinking warm bottles of ale, trendy bottles of chilled European lager or else dark spirits. This is perhaps one of the reasons so many people have such vivid memories of their first encounters with wine in their earthy youth as it tended to be quite a rarity even for affluent middle-class families.

Admittedly, the Iberian, Italian or Greek experience of wine in these early days will be vastly different from those of us who grew up in northwestern Europe. For the Mediterranean cultures, wine was and still is generally regarded as “alimentaria” or part of the food chain, where every meal is preferably accompanied by a hearty bottle of white or red wine and thus quality is sometimes less of a consideration compared to the wine’s “freshness”. Within the more Anglo-Saxon context, wine remained an alcoholic beverage for the landed gentry and upper classes right up until the late 1980s which is exactly when the New World brands started to assert their mass-market presence in the more traditional markets of Europe. With South Africa’s wine offering still justifiably hamstrung by its own personal winter of political and social discontent in the apartheid years of the 1970s and 1980s, room for wine brands to make headway internationally was greatly restricted to the likes of Nederburg and KWV.

For many international consumers as well as nostalgic South Africans, the KWV Roodeberg brand played a mythical part in the South African wine industry’s history. Often used in those early days as a spearhead for the broader “brand South Africa” message in international markets during the height of apartheid meant that it was not readily available in the home market and accordingly, became a bit of a rarefied unicorn red wine. Indeed, for the first 55 years, KWV Roodeberg was exclusively made for export after the Canadian market demand paved the way in the 1950s. Although not readily available locally in South Africa until 2004 without an acquaintance with a KWV quota, Roodeberg always enjoyed iconic status in the hearts and minds of most South Africans. So with the brand primarily focused on export markets, it did somehow seem to lose some of its mystique and allure when KWV finally chose to launch it as a brand in the local South African market. With resulting changes to its style and inevitably, its quality level, it faded slightly to become yet another historical brand of times gone by.

Within my own personal context, growing up around the world, I was exposed to some exceptional South African wines on a daily basis. Sadly, in these early days it was more in the labouring sense while serving the wines as a party waiter or barman whilst at university, and not as one of the privileged consumers. Nevertheless, I grew up around South Africa’s top wine brands produced and formed a strong association with some of the quality labels. KWV Roodeberg 1974, Nederburg Auction Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 1974 or 1978 and of course, the wine that watered the proverbial diplomatic corps, the ubiquitous KWV Chenin Blanc. Being able to drink all of South Africa’s greatest treasures did make KWV’s commercial decline all the more disappointing for me during the noughties, with the brand’s equity most certainly being taken for granted along with the local and international markets’ consumer allegiance and loyalty to these iconic brands.

Fast forward to the dastardly COVID-19 era of 2020 and I was more than pleasantly surprised to be asked to review both a range of KWV The Mentors current releases (mostly 2017 vintages), but also participate in a separate Zoom tasting reviewing the new 2020/21 releases produced by KWV winemaker Izele Kwaaitjie van Blerk (including mostly 2018 reds and 2019 whites). Look, I am not going to lie to you. I had very low expectations in general as I had not tasted more than the odd back vintage of KWV fleetingly over the past 3 to 5 years and the decline of the iconic KWV brand still stuck somewhat in the back of my throat. But that is perhaps where COVID-19 and Zoom have changed the world in more ways than we initially expected. I have been both impressed and pleasantly surprised by the modern, forward looking, polished expressions produced by Izele and also the incredible consistency of not only quality but also winemaking style across the range and across the latest vintages. Tasting most of the 2017 and 2018 releases over one or two days, I found myself really falling for the seductive sweet fruited purity of the wines, however reluctantly. These were wines I wanted not to like, wines I wanted to be disappointed in, wines that I though would never reach the quality heights of the old greats of the icons from the 1970s and 1980s. But with all modesty, and in all truth, I am happy to admit I was wrong and also most pleasantly surprised by the blatant ambition, quality, vigour and intensity in the new KWV The Mentors range of wines.

Admittedly, these are wines that will retail in the UK in the £15 to £20+ per bottle price point (R300 to R400) so it could be argued that they are merely meeting their expected quality level. Or else perhaps it is just me that has allowed myself to cast off preconceived expectations and disappointments of years gone by. Much is written about the need for South Africa’s greater wine industry to step up to the plate and come up with a premium quality international range of wine brands produced with consistency, accessibility and at affordable price points in volume. If this is what KWV is capable of with their Mentors range, I see no reason why their wines can’t carry the wine industry flag forward once again for South Africa in the International market place, this time without the hamstring of political dogma or the baggage of apartheid hanging over the brands potential development and promotion.

Introduction

winemag.co.za reviewed a total of 927 wines across 20 wine categories in its various reports sponsored by multinational financial services company Prescient over the course of the year. Each report was based on the outcome of a blind tasting of wines entered within the specific category.

A Top 10 was then announced with the release of each successive report. Now the individual best wine per category plus ratings on the 100-point quality scale for all the Top 10 wines can be revealed. Next up, the best red wines.

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Johannesburg boutique wine retailer Dry Dock Liquor is offering all the best in category wines for sale – buy now.

Samantha Suddons, previously involved in Terracura Wines, has launched her own label called Vinevenom, her first release being a Cap Classique from the 2015 vintage called Serenade, a blend of 68% Chardonnay, 18% Pinot Noir and 14% Pinot Meunier that spent five years on the lees and received zero dosage – Suddons is a Champagne enthusiast and this was originally undertaken as a side project but she has now decided to make it commercially available.

The nose shows a top note of flinty reduction before lemon, Granny Smith apple and a hint of raspberry plus the merest hint of yeasty complexity. The palate is lean and fresh with a very fine mousse and a bone-dry finish. This a very focused offering with lovely fruit definition – wonderfully energizing to drink. Price: R460 a bottle.

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Introduction

Find out more

Shop online

Johannesburg boutique wine retailer Dry Dock Liquor is offering all the best in category wines for sale – buy now.

I have it on good authority (the urgings of every supermarket I enter, for instance) that a Festive Season is nigh. A modest suggestion, then, for enhancing the festive mood: buy a bottle of good brandy, and start sipping. And I don’t mean cognac. If ever there’s a reason to abandon cultural cringe and drink local, brandy offers it – except at the highest level of extremely old spirits, where the Cape can’t (and scarcely tries, as yet) to compete with the ethereal fire of the finest old cognacs. But that’s stuff for millionaires – who, if they deign to shop at Makro, can buy a decanter of Rémy Martin Louis XIII for one rand short of R60 000. I could say nothing to that except stutter my envy. Makro offers three other aged cognacs for R40K and more, with the priciest local being KWV Nexus 30 Year Old, at a mere R24K.

But that’s not the level I’m talking about here, where I’m pushing brandies costing about R300 upwards, many of which compare favourably with cognacs at three times the price. Not that that stops the appeal of the showiest cognac brands to cultural cringers with a greater sense of image than of value, or even, perhaps, taste.

I’ve been here before with this suggestion that we should buy more brandy (well, that you should – I already do my bit), but somehow it hasn’t hit home, judging by the shocking paucity of serious brandies in most liquor shops, implying a sad lack of demand. Lots of the likes of Wellington VO, Klipdrif Export and Parow, pretty good in their own way, destined for a mixer and lots of ice (and the Parow almost worth getting for its packaging alone). But very little of the older, grander brandies.

Coming out of the early Covid liquor lockdown, when I’d been rather deprived of spiritous stuff, I had a yen for some of the great Van Ryns – especially the magnificent 12-Year-Old, one of the Cape’s (and even the world’s) internationally most awarded brandies: three times best in the world at the International Wine and Spirit Competition, three times at the International Spirits Challenge. You’d think its absence from the shelves would be because of shortage, but no, it’s more likely because of a shocking lack of interest. As soon as permissible, I took a trip out to the Van Ryn Distillery on the outskirts of Stellenbosch and bought three bottles of one of the greatest products of the Cape wine and brandy industry, costing less than, for example, a single bottle of (estimable!) Vilafonté Series C. What sort of a bargain is that?

If serious brandies – from some estates, most notably Boplaas, and from KWV and Van Ryns, etc – are hard to find (though Makro does have quite a few available online), it is happily pretty easy to find one of the finest bargains around. KWV 10 Year Old is ridiculously underpriced, given the superb quality, usually at just under R300. In fact, look around, and you’ll find it at that price in a presentation box with two pretty decent glasses – effectively brandy snifters without stems. It’s almost enough to make me go some way to forgiving KWV for the harm they did to the South African wine industry in the 20^th century (along with a little good, I suppose). Not that I use the glasses for the contents of the bottle. I prefer something a bit smaller and more tulip-like in shape.

Interestingly, the KWV box pictures the stemless glasses with some hefty blocks of ice chilling the brandy. Again, not the way I choose to drink fine brandy like this after dinner, but one must tolerate the preferences of others, whatever one’s doubts. And, while I’m recommending brandy to make you more festive as this troubled year draws to a close, I have to admit that the reality of room temperature in midsummer is something of a problem…. It’s too high for volatile spirits, really, though I confess I tend to not often engineer enough coolness.

Winelands tourists – those that there are in this strange time – will find estate brandies here and there, often beautifully bottled and often expensive compared with the likes of the products of the big players. And often good, too, and interesting; but some inevitably suffer from, at least, the smaller scale on which they’re produced (less potential for blending) and perhaps the lack of specific expertise. This can become obvious as the brandies start entering their second and third decades in oak. Backsberg, for example, offers a tiny volume of a 1991 distillation called Sydney Back First Distillation, which is undoubtedly fascinating, but lacks the freshness of younger versions. Similarly, Kaapzicht now has a 20 Year version of its brandy, which has the refinement of age, but some will find that it shows rather too much in the way of oak-derived characters and too little fruit for balance.

Brandy is one of the glories of the Cape Winelands. Again let me plead that you give it a try, if you don’t already realise this. One great advantage of a bottle of spirits over a bottle of wine, of course, is that you don’t need to worry about rapid deterioration once opened. After enhancing the year-end celebrations, you can keep it till your birthday, if you have the willpower.

Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. He is a taster (and associate editor) for Platter’s. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013

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The Eden vineyards are two blocks established by Bruwer Raats just behind his Polkadraai house in the late 2000s with the aim of exploring what improvements in quality might be had when aiming for excellence from the outset rather than working with long-established vineyards that weren’t necessarily planted according to the very best practices.

There is 0.6ha of Chenin Blanc planted to the low-yielding Montpellier clone, Raats having obtained cuttings from the mother block in the Nuy Valley and 0.2ha of Cabernet Franc – resulting volumes are inevitably small.

Eden High-Density Single Vineyard Chenin Blanc 2019
Price: R850
Peach, yellow apple, oatmeal, a little waxy character plus hints of ginger and baking spice. The palate is relatively rich and broad with nicely integrated, seemingly quite moderate acidity – full of flavour with a gently savoury finish. Total production: 2 390 bottles.

Eden High-Density Single Vineyard Cabernet Franc 2018
Price: R2 200
15% whole-bunch fermentation. Aromatics of red berries, herbs, rose, a hint of earthiness and a little vanilla. The palate is light-bodied with fresh acidity and fine tannins, the finish long and dry. Elegant and energetic. Total production: 365 bottles.

Introduction

winemag.co.za reviewed a total of 927 wine across 20 wine categories in its various reports sponsored by multinational financial services company Prescient over the course of the year. Each report was based on the outcome of a blind tasting of wines entered within the specific category.

Category	Wine	Score
Best Cape White Blend	Cavalli Cremello 2017	95
Best Chardonnay	Tokara Reserve Collection 2019	95
Best Niche White Variety	Vergelegen Reserve Semillon 2018	93
Best Sauvignon Blanc – Unwooded	Lanzerac 2019	93
Best Sauvignon Blanc – Wooded	Mulderbosch 2019	94
Best Sauv-Sem Blend	Tokara Director’s Reserve White 2017	95
Best Cape Bordeaux Red Blend	Zorgvliet Richelle 2017	95
Best Merlot	Vergelegen Reserve 2015	93
Best Niche Red Variety	Raats Family Cabernet Franc 2017	94
Best Pinotage	B Vinters Liberté 2018	94
Best Pinot Noir	Flying Cloud Sovereign of the Seas 2018	94
Best Shiraz	Leeuwenkuil Heritage Syrah 2017	94
Best Signature Red Blend	Rust en Vrede Estate 2017	93
Best Muscadel	Nuy Rooi Muskadel 2010	94
Best Noble Late Harvest	Delheim Edelspatz 2019	93
Best Port-style	De Krans Cape Vintage Reserve 2016	94
Best Straw Wine	Villa Esposto Muscat d’Alexandrie 2017	92

Backsberg main farm sold

Introduction

Winery of the Year: Tokara

Best White Wine Overall

Best Chenin Blanc

Best Red Wine Overall

Best Cabernet Sauvignon

Best Cap Classique

Category

Wine

Score

Find out more

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Introduction

Best Cape Bordeaux Red Blend

Best Merlot

Best Niche Red Variety

Best Pinotage

Best Pinot Noir

Best Shiraz

Best Signature Red Blend

Find out more

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Introduction

Best Cape White Blend

Best Chardonnay

Best Niche White Variety

Best Sauvignon Blanc – Unwooded

Best Sauvignon Blanc – Wooded

Best Sauv-Sem Blend

Find out more

Shop online

Introduction

Best Muscadel

Best Noble Late Harvest

Best Port-style

Best Straw Wine

Backsberg main farm sold

Introduction

Winery of the Year: Tokara

Best White Wine Overall

Best Chenin Blanc

Best Red Wine Overall

Best Cabernet Sauvignon

Best Cap Classique

Category

Wine

Score

Find out more

Shop online

Introduction

Best Cape Bordeaux Red Blend

Best Merlot

Best Niche Red Variety

Best Pinotage

Best Pinot Noir

Best Shiraz

Best Signature Red Blend

Find out more

Shop online

Introduction

Best Cape White Blend

Best Chardonnay

Best Niche White Variety

Best Sauvignon Blanc – Unwooded

Best Sauvignon Blanc – Wooded

Best Sauv-Sem Blend

Find out more

Shop online

Introduction

Best Muscadel

Best Noble Late Harvest

Best Port-style

Best Straw Wine

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