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Struggle to find “whiffs of capsicum” on your Sauvignon Blanc? Or “cassis” on your Cab? You might find wine tasting notes intimidating or just pompous but the less fanciful can offer at least a general idea of the wine which will help you make an informed purchase decision.

In the lead-up to harvest, grapes move from green to ripe and depending on the moment the winemaker decides to pick, the relative state of ripeness will be reflected in the end-product. On a red wine, getting the grapes into the cellar early typically results in herbaceous flavours while slightly later means red fruit, later still black fruit and very much delayed holds the danger of dead fruit or raisins. For a white wine, the sequence is herbaceous, white fruit, yellow fruit, tropical fruit…

That’s a very general explanation but should serve you pretty well. Remember also as the grape ripens, the sugar level is increasing. Fermentation is the process by which sugar is converted by yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The earlier the grapes are picked, the more moderate the alcohol level in the final wine will tend to be, this typically corresponding to a more elegant style of wine; the later the grapes are picked, the higher the alcohol and the more rich and powerful what ends up in your glass.

Then of course there is another important set of aromas and flavours which are derived from the use of oak during fermentation and maturation such as vanilla, chocolate and coffee. How much wood-derived character is desirable on a wine is a matter of personal preference but purists prefer less rather than more, fruit intensity being considered the primary determinant of wine quality.

Obviously your tasting note for a particular wine is going to be different to your partner’s but having some kind of take beyond “nice” or “not nice” is helpful as it facilitates the conversation you’re going to have and that’s at least half the fun.

The Signature C 2015 is the maiden release of a Cape Bordeaux Red Blend as part of the top-end His Master’s Choice range from Paarl winery Ridgeback. Consisting of 64% Cabernet Franc, 23% Merlot, 9% Cabernet Sauvignon and 4% Petit Verdot, maturation lasted 18 months in French oak barrels, 45% new.

The nose shows red and black berries, hints of floral fragrance and fynbos plus some pencil shavings. The palate has a succulence about it with plenty of juicy, sweet fruit and soft, smooth tannins – likeable but arguably not that complex (alcohol: 14%). Approximate retail price: R370 a bottle.

Editor’s rating: 90/100.

Find our South African wine ratings database here.

Louis Nel, Cape Winemakers Guild member since 2006, advises various small wineries while also making wines under his own label. Latest release is the small-batch, top-end Reserve Blend 2016, consisting of 90% Cabernet Franc (sourced from Cordoba in Stellenbosch) and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, maturation in French oak lasting 24 months.

The nose shows red and black berries, fresh herbs plus hints of chocolate and earth. The palate displays dense fruit and fine, mouthcoating tannins – it’s luxuriously styled but not over-elaborate, that fruit more and more to the fore as the wine breathes (alcohol: 14.75%). Price: R450 a bottle.

Editor’s rating: 92/100.

Find our South African wine ratings database here.

Vergelegen in Somerset West should arguably be South Africa’s most revered property or at least running Kanonkop close. However, while wine quality remains high, it does not seem to elicit the same excitement among wine enthusiasts as it did some 10 or 15 years ago.

Whatever the reason for Vergelegen’s low profile now, a bottle of the top-end V 2006 was a timely reminder of just what these vineyards are capable of. A blend of 90% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc and 5% Merlot, it spent 24 months in French oak, 100% new. On the nose red berries, some floral perfume, fresh herbs and graphite. The palate appeared remarkably youthfully with plenty of pure fruit, bright acidity and fine yet not completely resolved tannins. Medium bodied and savoury but hardly under-ripe or vegetal, a pleasure to drink now while also set to mature with benefit for a good while yet. Read review on release here.

Editor’s rating: 96/100.

Find our South African wine ratings database here.

Though the wines of Donkiesbaai have been most accomplished just about since inception in 2011, I’m not sure this side project belonging to Jean Engelbrecht of Rust en Vrede gets enough acclaim (Tim James’s recent positive article aside).

The Steen 2018 is again excellent. Grapes from Piekenierskloof and vinification involving barrel, concrete egg and clay amophora, the nose shows hay and dried herbs before citrus, peach and the merest hint of leesy complexity. The palate is marked by fruit that is pure and dense, lovely fresh acidity and a salty finish (alcohol: 14%). It drinks very well now but equally should mature with benefit. Approximate retail price: R280 a bottle.

Editor’s rating: 93/100.

Find our South African wine ratings database here.

A perennial question that gets put to me comes from proud first-time parents: What wine can they buy of their child’s birth-year to serve with confidence at his or her coming of age? Nothing like the b to make those not usually sentimental about wine suddenly care about maturation potential.

Wine is one of the few foodstuffs that can improve with age, but it has to be said upfront, only a small subgroup of wines benefit from extended bottle maturation. As world-renowned wine critic Jancis Robinson MW notes, “Perhaps the top 10 per cent of all reds and five per cent of all whites (and those are generous estimates) will be more pleasurable and more interesting to drink when they are five years old than at one year old.”

How wine ages is a complex and inexact science – real wine geek stuff. Essentially, though, the more fruit, acid and phenolics that go into a bottle of red wine at the beginning, the more complex interactions there can be between all these compounds and the more rewarding it can be to age that bottle. The most obvious phenolics are tannins (responsible for the dry sensation that red wine leaves in your mouth) and colouring matter known as anthocyanins and these polymerise over time, eventually becoming too heavy to be held in solution and dropping out as sediment. In the most basic terms, older red wines are softer and gentler, having lost the astringent character they had in their youth. There will also be a change in colour from black or deep purple to light brick-red. Even less is known about how white wine ages, although acidity is thought to be the preservative white counterpart to tannin.

So which wines will reward keeping? As a general rule, the more inky in colour and more mouth puckering in tannin a red wine is the better its ageing potential. In a local context therefore wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon or Cab-blends should be aged longer than those based on Pinot Noir with Merlot, Pinotage and Shiraz somewhere in between.

Different wines mature at different rates according to individual vintage conditions and the particular winemaking techniques used so predicting how long a wine will mature with benefit is difficult. Top South African reds from the modern era can typically be kept for around 10 years before reaching their peak of maturity and then tend to stay on sort of plateau of good drinking for a few years after that. Wines from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are often sublime for those lucky enough to taste them but winemaking was very different then…

In the case of white wine, local Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc should gain in complexity for about five years. It might surprise those who think the only appeal of Sauvignon Blanc is its upfront fruitiness that this variety can also take on more interest with time in bottle – because SA’s best examples of this variety typically have high acidities and low pHs (which goes towards wine stability), these can make 10 years in the bottle quite easily.

Consideration must also be given to those made in the style of Vintage Port, these fortified wines expressly designed for many years of bottle ageing: the Cape Vintage Reserves from the likes of Boplaas and De Krans are local examples which should conceivably go for two decades.

Bear in mind that as a wine ages it will lose its primary fruitiness and take on a more savoury character and deciding on when a wine is drinking at its best becomes a matter of your individual tolerance for more evolved aromas and flavours.

For more on the age-worthiness of SA wines, see the 10 Year Old Wine Awards 2017 and 2018.

The Reserve Red 2017 from Leeuwenkuil is uncomplicated yet tasty and isn’t that what you want from a blend with an approximate retail price of R120 a bottle? Shiraz driven but also including Cinsault, Grenache and Mourvèdre, the nose shows red fruit, scrub and spice while the palate is light bodied with lemon-like acidity and fine tannins (alcohol: 13.5%). Not necessarily profound but goes down like the proverbial homesick mole.

Editor’s rating: 89/100.

Find our South African wine ratings database here.

The Sauvignon Blanc, labelled as Blanc Fumé, from Stellenbosch property Le Bonheur was much celebrated in the 1980s and new owner Advini is keen to re-establish the reputation of this variety from the property.

The 2018 is nicely put together. Including grapes from a 1977 block planted to the famed “weerstasie” clone, some 20% of the wine spent time in new oak. The nose shows lime, green melon, Granny Smith apple and grapefruit. The palate has a pleasing weight about it, not too lean and not too fat, the barrel maturation playing a constructive role tempering the variety’s usual greenness and adding texture but not influencing the aromatic or flavour profile too much. It’s a Sauvignon you want more than one glass of. Pick n Pay price: R100.

Editor’s rating: 90/100.

Find our South African wine ratings database here.

I realised I should say a little more about “natural wine” than I did in my last piece, in which I was mostly concerned to draw attention to the “unnaturalness” of complex blending of wines (always  acceptable and often greatly welcomed though the practice might be). Wine distributor David Clarke (with an E), for example, worried that I might be suggesting that some natural winemakers might really think that they are making wine “as it would be without human interference”. I wasn’t intending to imply that any sane person would think that; rather, merely indicating one end of a non-natural continuum on which all wine is produced – with fully industrialised vineyard and cellar practices at the other extreme.

There certainly are extremists/fundamentalists in the natural wine movement who don’t like shades of grey. David Clarke had suggested I look for definitions at, amongst others, a website called morethanorganic.com, which is “dedicated to promoting French natural wine in the English-speaking world”. While all natural wines must be organic, it says, they must also be “made in the most natural possible way”. The website’s author, one Pierre Jancou, “passionately believe[s] that non-interventionist winemaking produces the healthiest, best tasting, and most distinctive wine” (move over most of the recognised great wines of the world). He does at one point suggest that there is a scale, with natural wine at one end and “mass produced and chemically manipulated” wine at the other. But he also, as the previous quote intimates, seems convinced of a radical divide between natural wines, which “taste of the grapes from which they are made and the place where they have grown”, and “conventional wines [which] taste of the same few manufactured flavours”. Nothing in between, it seems.

On the other hand, Isabelle Legeron, something of a goddess in the movement and author of an important book called Natural Wine: An introduction to organic and biodynamic wines made naturally, seems a little less fundamentalist – though still pretty rigorous about what is and isn’t natural wine. She writes (quoted on Raw Wine, the important natural wines website):

“Natural wine is a continuum, like ripples on a pond. At the epicentre of these ripples, are growers who produce wines absolutely naturally – nothing added and nothing removed. As you move away from this centre, the additions and manipulations begin, making the wine less and less natural, the further out you go. Eventually, the ripples disappear entirely, blending into the waters of the rest of the pond. At this point the term ‘natural wine’ no longer applies. You have moved into the realm of the conventional.”

I’d certainly question that phrase “absolutely naturally”, but still; ripples are nice.

According to the more-or-less accepted definitions, there are few “natural” wines in the Cape. The first reason for this is the small scale of organic viticulture here – an absolute requirement, and surely justifiably so. Testalonga, JH Meyer, Mother Rock, Intellego, Scions of Sinai, perhaps Reyneke, would be among them (I’m unsure of a few other producers, as I’ll explain below); and there are a few individual wines, like Radford Dale Nudity, which appear to qualify in all respects. (By the way, I did a search on Raw Wine for South African natural growers/makers, and came up with zero.)

But if one accepts the continuum idea, there are many new-wave Cape wines that are far closer to the natural extreme than the industrial one (the Swartland being home to many of the most prominent). They are seldom made from organically grown grapes (though frequently from grapes grown with fairly low levels of chemical intervention), but the wines are made without any additions (yeast, acid, enzymes, etc) or deletions (no fining or fine filtration, for example – coarse filtration seems to be an acceptable practice; probably only the most devoted natural wine-bibbers want floaters in their wines, even if they rather enjoy some haziness).

Without any additions, that is, except for low levels of sulphur. Sulphur additions to wine are a contentious issue in natural winemaking; there are no legal definitions, but various producer organisations have their own regulations. Some of these organisations, and ideologues like Pierre Jancou, demand no sulphur; others are content to accept levels of 30–50 milligrams per litre. (Interestingly to me, as far as I know no-one at all prohibits the use of sulphur in the vineyards, in the form of copper sulphate, generally regarded as vital.)

This sulphur issue is where it becomes particularly difficult to speak with confidence (my not having at this stage done the research) about the extent to which local organic, including biodynamic, producers would qualify as natural ones. At least some of Reyneke would, for example, but I’m not sure with regard to the few other organic estates, even those that are rigorous about avoiding other additives. Waterkloof, for example, speaks of adding “minimal levels of sulphur” (as do many – but “minimal” is not at all a useful word), but doesn’t declare the levels of sulphur in Waterkloof wines. Plenty of room for further research, then.  Personally, as someone who does appreciate a tendency towards naturalness, I’m also delighted to have sulphur additions in my wine, and drink mostly what are presumably unnatural wines. But then, I save my few moments of ideological rectitude for other things.

• 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.