Some contend that Sauvignon Blanc is not age-worthy in the sense that with time in bottle, all that is achieved is harmony of aroma and flavour that was there from the beginning rather than extra complexity and interest. It’s a basic point of wine appreciation to debate: Is a wine’s survival over time rather than its demise not worth celebrating?
A bottle of the 2004 of Suider Terras from Durbanville property Bloemendal was compelling. The nose showed peach, apricot and honey with notes of rocket, fennel and fig in the background. Great palate weight (alcohol: 13.5%) and well-integrated acidity – rich and round but equally no shortage of freshness. Mellow and entirely pleasing, this certainly had rewarded the patience of keeping it for two decades.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
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David and Jeannette Clarke of wine distribution company Ex Animo have released the maiden vintage of a Ceres Plateau Grenache under their own label. It’s a compelling project with some of the leading industry personalities involved: the vineyard is on Jeannette’s family farm, where apples and pears are cultivated; Chris Alheit first alerted them to the potential of the site; Rosa Kruger advised regarding all things viticultural; and Lukas van Loggerenberg is the winemaker.
The vineyard, just under 3ha in size, is planted to four clones, 50% being the traditional GN70 that provides the perfume that so many local examples of the variety show and the other 50% to new 513, 516 and 1064 which give darker colour and more fruit concentration.
The 2022 is the fifth leaf but only the first harvest. Grapes were destemmed with 20% of stalks added back while maturation lasted nine months in old 300-litre barrels. Cranberry, rose, herbs and white pepper on the nose while the palate shows good fruit concentration (alcohol is 13.85%) with zesty acidity and fine, densely packed tannins. Nice weight and smoothness of texture, a slight earthy quality to the finish. An immensely promising debut. Price: R245 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 91/100.
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Did the Reserve Chenin Blanc from Stellenbosch Kloof property DeMorgenzon change the landscape concerning the renaissance that the category has enjoyed in the last two decades? Sitting in the grand home of owners Wendy and Hilton Appelbaum high above the vineyards with a line-up of this wine stretching from the maiden 2005 to the current 2022 recently, it was difficult not to succumb to this idea.
The 2005, as made by Teddy Hall, was rated 5 Stars in the 2007 edition of Platter’s as was the 2022, as made by the outgoing Alastair Rimmer, in the 2024 edition and there have been one or two other vintages to achieve the same besides.
Tasting through the line-up, critic Michael Fridjhon commented that the exercise was akin to an “archaeology of modern SA wine” which I thought was apt. If archaeology is defined as “the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture”, what does 18 years of this wine tell us?
First, some context. The Wine magazine Chenin Blanc Challenge was begun in 1996, the thinking behind to encourage producers to aim for new benchmark wines from this variety at a time when it wasn’t considered to carry a premium. This competition would run until 2011 and the list of winners is insightful:
| Year | Wine | Winemaker |
| 1996 | Boschendal Jean Le Long 1993 | Hilko Hegewisch |
| 1997 | Morgenhof Private Bin 210 1996 | Jean Daneel |
| 1998 | L’Avenir 1997 | Francois Naude |
| 1999 | Villiera 1996 | Jeff Grier |
| 2000 | De Trafford 1999 | David Trafford |
| 2001 | Kanu Wooded 1999 | Teddy Hall |
| 2002 | De Trafford Keermont 2001 and Kanu Wooded 2001 (joint winners) | David Trafford, Teddy Hall |
| 2003 | Jean Daneel 2001 | Jean Daneel |
| 2004 | Kanu Wooded 2002 | Teddy Hall |
| 2005 | Rudera Robusto 2004 | Teddy Hall |
| 2006 | Spier Private Collection 2004 | Eleonor Visser |
| 2007 | KWV Val du Chêne 2004 | Tania Joubert |
| 2008 | Jean Daneel Directors Reserve 2008 | Jean Daneel |
| 2009 | Mooiplaas Bush Vine 2008 | Louis Roos |
| 2010 | Perdeberg Rex Equus 2008 | Albertus Louw |
| 2011 | Kleine Zalze Vineyard Selection 2008 | Johan Joubert |
Some observations. In the case of the inaugural winner, the wine rated best overall was Glen Carlou Devereux 1995, a blend of 85% Chenin Blanc and 15% Chardonnay, but it didn’t take the honours because its sugar level (17.5g/l) was above the maximum laid down in the entry criteria (13g/l).
No specific mention is made of where the Boschendal grapes came from, so presumably these were from the Franschhoek property itself. For the next 10 years of the competition, that is from 1997 to 2006, grapes for the top wines all came from Stellenbosch vineyards.
In 2007, the KWV Val du Chêne 2004 incorporated grapes mainly from Malmesbury but also Stellenbosch and Wellington. The result of that year’s challenge caused a stir because there were two wines rated 5 Stars, one being the unheralded KWV selling for R45 a bottle and the other being the well-established Ken Forrester The FMC 2004 selling for R230 a bottle.
Jean Daneel Directors Reserve 2006 was again a multi-site wine, grapes from Durbanville, Paardeberg, Stellenbosch and Wellington (whereas Daneel’s 2001 was from Remhoogte). In the case of Mooiplaas, we start to see the potential of Bottelary as a great Chenin area while the Perdeberg win in 2010 demonstrated how well suited Agter-Paarl is to the variety. With Kleine Zalze in 2011, we return to Stellenbosch and of course, this cellar has subsequently gained many accolades for its various takes on Chenin.
What is telling about the above is just how new the “New Wave” is. Many who’ve come to be seen as great champions of Chenin Blanc had yet to work with 20 years ago. Eben Sadie bottled his first vintage of Mev. Kirsten in 2006 and that of Skurfberg in 2009; David and Nadia Sadie put something under their own label for the first time in 2010, Alheit in 2011, and Lukas van Loggerenberg in 2016…
Also remarkable about the Challenge roll of honour from 1996 to 2011 is that the Swartland does not feature at all. Of course, this has subsequently changed dramatically, the Paardeberg now widely acknowledged for the excellence of its wines from Chenin Blanc.
Teddy Hall has subsequently left the industry but no wonder the Appelbaums contracted him to make their wine at the outset of the DeMorgenzon undertaking. He was hot property! How is the 2005 drinking now? I fear it’s past it’s best – amber in colour and very nutty. I also didn’t care much for the 2006 while the 2007 and 2008 are just about hanging on; the 2009 has a RS of 8.1g/l and it shows; 2010 would be Halls’s last vintage and it’s in good shape – it has an alcohol of 13.6%, one of only five vintages between 2005 and 2022 to be under 14%.
The Appelbaums got Carl van der Merwe across from Quoin Rock (they’d been interested in acquiring this Simonsberg property before deciding on DeMorgenzon) to take over from Hall and he would be incumbent from 2011 to 2020.
Van der Merwe is nothing if not technically minded and the question about the Reserve under his tenure is does “house style” trump site – there is no gainsaying that definitive feature of the wine is power. “Our soils are granite and the wines can be quite tightly wound – they need to be coaxed out through winemaking technique,” he says.
There’s the old adage about horses and jockeys when it comes to successful wine brands – a great property needs a great winemaker to guide it in the right direction. Since Van der Merwe’s departure to Canada, there has been uncertainty around the position of winemaker at DeMorgenzon, Adam Mason seeing out just the 2021 vintage and now Alastair Rimmer handing over to Anthony Sanvido after being responsible for 2022 and 2023.
As has been discussed often, Chenin Blanc is capable of many legitimate but divergent styles. DeMorgenzon Reserve Chenin has traditionally sat at the “sweet, rich and full” end of the spectrum. Will it always be so or can we look forward to slightly drier, more elegant iterations? My sense is that what is fashionable right now is wines of more finesse, and it will be interesting to see if DeMorgenzon can move in this direction without losing its many fans.
Read a review of the DeMorgenzon Reserve Chenin Blanc 2022 here.
Enter the Prescient Chenin Blanc Report 2024 here.
Olindo Verdelho 2022 is an own-label wine from Jasper Raats of Longridge, the grapes from a Helderberg vineyard planted on decomposed granite and farming involving biodynamic practices.
The nose is subtle and intricate with notes of citrus, peach and even pineapple, as well as floral perfume, some waxiness, earth and spice while the palate is surprisingly rich and round given a moderate alcohol of 12.5%, although the wine also has a punchy acidity, a trademark character of this variety. Price: R290 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
When it comes to public double-acts in the great South African wine show, unexciting competence is the general rule. Exceptions include Paul Jordaan and Eben Sadie collaborating quite nicely in presenting their new releases each year, but it’s always clear who’s the front half of the horse. Married couples, however important their collaboration might be in vineyard and winery, tend to dissolve into talkative men and patiently smiling and supportive women when they’re (supposedly) jointly presenting their wines.
So what a good thing there’s the Mullineux performance. Andrea and Chris do it superbly – again last week at a Cape Town pre-release tasting of their latest “singature wines” – tossing the presentation ball from one to another, never letting it fall or do other than glitter. This somehow allows the two personalities to come through and keeps things lively – these earnest wine talks are occasionally quite tedious.
In fact, I think the Mullineux duo are pretty conscious of their performative skill: at this recent event there was even something of an apology at their being a little rustry, having just emerged from the non-public exigencies of a compressed harvest at the Mullineux and Leeu Passant cellars (on the Roundstone home farm in the Swartland and the Leeu Estate in Franschhoek, respectively). Any lack of recent practice didn’t evidence itself here, however. Incidentally, talking of their teamwork, it doesn’t happen much in the cellar during harvest (as opposed to during maturation and blending) – Chris says he’s not really allowed in, and is anyway probably too busy managing the complicated logistics involved in picking so many widely-spread vineyards.
Part of the Mulineux presentation success, apart from a lot of practice – I don’t think any private winery puts so much effort into this sort of thing – is the intelligence and expertise on offer, the inherent interest of what’s being said (beyond their telling us how lovely their wines are, which is a failing that very few winemakers ever manage to wean themselves off, and is almost forgiveable). I never come away from events like this without having learnt stuff, and without jotting down notes like “Andrea: The best way to get freshness in wine is by there being a lack of stress in the vines.”
If there was a theme in this year’s presentation, which included five- and ten-year old bottlings of each wine, it was continuity in the cellar and developments in the vineyards. No change in the winemaking regimes really, apart from more varieties coming into the White, and a move to larger maturation vessels. And in the vineyards, continuous hard work to take the farming to the next level. Roundstone is on the verge of organic certification – in fact, of regenerative organic certification, a category I must find out more about. With a lot of dubious claims swirling around the wine world, the Mullineux think it important to be able to unquestionably back up explanations of their farming.
It really helps appreciate the young wines having some older wines to give them context (obviously perfectly stored, which helps). We started with the older chenin-based Old Vines White. The 2014 has to be an exception to my “rule” that Cape whites are best before much more than five years have past. This was still fresh, the acidity fairly prominent (as it generally is in this wine), but plenty of developed flavour that reached beyond the floral, pretty fruitiness to be found on the 2023. And in fact in the drought-year 2019, which was my favourite of the three and perhaps gave support for my rule. There’s an element of dry austerity (with a phenolic edge to the wine) as well as some lovely sweet fruit – verdelho joining the party to give its limey acidity. The perfume is most beguiling. No hurry, but I don’t thing anyone would regret opening this bottle now or in a few years.
The new release 2023 now has semillon gris, clairette, grenache blanc, viognier and verdelho added to the 60% chenin base. Beautifully balanced and grippy, brightly fresh, with youthful charm that definitely deserves five year or more in bottle to develop the harmony and complexity. (BTW, see here for Christian Eedes’s notes from January on the younger vintages.)
With the Syrah, we started with the youngest wine, the 2021. How good it is to be able to release wines with a bit of maturity on them – I remember the Mullineux 15 years ago having to release the Syrah at scarcely a year, because they needed income to buy the next load of bottles and corks. As always, but perhaps even more finely than ever, the 2021 is ripe but elegant, very pure-fruited (some Swartland dried herbs and fynbos as well), with a tannic structure that is both firm and yielding and already integrated into the velvety suaveness. A really smart, polished wine that’s also vivacious and exciting.
Those tannins were also still very present on the forcefully structured 2017, which was drinking well. But in this case I much preferred the 10-year old. I would guess that this 2012 is pretty much where I would want it and might not gain from further keeping. It’s beautifully developed, perhaps more in structure than flavour though there’s some savoury depth of character as well as echoes of more primary red fruit, with well-resolved tannins. Really good stuff.
As for the Straw Wine, it’s just so beguiling and delicious that it’s hard to take notes. The 2013 is still fresh and grippy, intense, vibrant and elegant. I thought it also younger-seeming than the 2018, where the marmaladey notes that come with bottle age were more prominent, and the whole was a touch more unctuous, thought still with some zestiness. Moving on to the 2023 (still from old-vine chenin grown on the grantic slopes of the Paardeberg), did reveal the usefulness, in fact, of keeping this wine a few year. The infant is undeniably gorgeous – I didn’t spit any of these three, with a more piercing freshness amd lashings of clean fruit (apricots, glacé pineapple, I thought, amongst others) – but there is a simplicity that will gain complexity and depth in a few years.
The Mullineux double-act, impressive as it is, would not be worth mentioning if the wines were not so splendid.
Grapes for the Groendruif 2023 under the Cape of Good Hope label and part of the Anthonij Rupert Wyne portfolio come from a Semillon planted in 1956 on the late Henk Laing’s Skurfberg farm. 55% of the wine was fermented in stainless steel tank and 45% in older 500-litre barrels, maturation lasting two months.
Delicate and enticing aromatics of hay, herbs, pear, peach, citrus and blackcurrant precede a palate that is pure and precise – clean fruit matched by fresh acidity. The wine contains 15% Sauvignon Blanc while alcohol is just 12.5% so don’t expect anything too weighty. On the contrary, it’s a rather charming drop and great quality relative to price at R210 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
The 2021 vintage was cooler and later than usual, the result being wines of remarkably high quality. Kaapzicht in Bottelary, for instance, has a single-variety Cabernet Franc from this season that’s just splendid.
Matured for 18 months in French and Hungarian oak, 50% of which was new, the nose is complex with notes of red and black berries, tea leaf, violets, earth, pencil shavings and oak spice. The palate is composed and beautifully delineated – concentrated fruit, bright acidity and powdery tannins, the finish bone-dry (alc: 13.91%). Worthy of maturation, it is however only available to the farm’s club members or from the tasting room at R300 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 96/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Let’s get one thing straight. I generally hate dwelling on the negative. Whether it’s politics, economics, globalisation, world conflict or thoroughly boring topics like Covid-19, I really don’t see the value in overloading one’s personal experiences with negativity, doom mongering, or more often than not, situations that will ultimately have little to no affect or influence on one’s own day to day life. But of course, we live in a global village, for better or worse, and business and political interactions are intimately interconnected and can potentially have repercussions far and wide, many thousands of miles away.
For all those working in the wine trade, it has been impossible to miss the endless flow of negative news headlines and data coming out of both the UK and EU industries of late. From empty stands and low attendances at Prowein recently, especially within the French producer halls, to negative export data for many of Europe’s largest wine brands, there simply seems little to be cheerful about at the moment. Closer to home in the UK, as the industry started to recover from the reverberations caused by the business troubles of the large wine and restaurant group Vinoteca, news recently broke that the large on and off-premise wine merchant Vagabond had also gone into administration after running out of money after several years of mind-boggling expansion.
I suppose all the economists must be sitting in their tower block offices in Canary Wharf saying, “I told you so”, but that certainly does not make the news any less negative or depressing for SA producers. And, to add fuel to the fire, the phenomenon that is Naked Wines, announced only this week that they would urgently be calling in “debt advisors” to explore refinancing options, which could include securing a new “similar sized (credit) facility.” Certainly, more cause for concern because in 2022, figures from data specialist Statista showed that Naked Wines was the UK’s largest online wine retailer, followed by Majestic Wines and Waitrose Cellar, in the top three. With subsequent data suggesting that Naked Wines had already lost £15m in 2023 as sales to new customers dried up, the desperation of the UK wine retail marketplace suddenly came into clear focus.
Much has changed since 2022, both in economic terms, the cost of financing, and also in terms of general business sentiment, but looking at the UK government’s own economic data on interest rates and inflation, 2023 could indeed signal cataclysmic failure of the wine trade. While I’m not implying Naked Wines is about to go bang, it certainly is, like many large, slightly bloated wine businesses, facing incredibly heavy head winds in 2024 and beyond as consumer spending remains depressed. On a more positive note, Majestic Wines, one of the UK wine industries more successful banner wavers, reported their biggest Christmas earnings in their 43-year history in December 2023, with sales clocking up +8.1% in the lead up to Christmas.
On another more positive note, in a barren field of bad news, it should be noted that Majestic Wines, whom many South African producers sell a lot of wine to, is not just an e-commerce entity, having invested in 2023 alone in another six new bricks and mortar shop openings. They now claim to run over 200 wine specialist premises employing over 1,000 highly trained staff. So perhaps, with the right buying and pricing strategies, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Personally, I would like to put a lot of Majestic’s newfound success at the feet of their previous Master of Wine, Beth Pearce, who rejoined the company in 2013 and pushed the fine wine agenda after years of category ‘dumbing down’, before finally moving to another South African fine wine champion merchant Lay & Wheeler in 2021. Her refocused buying for Majestic Wines might just have saved them from familiar high street pitfalls at a time when large scale bottom-end branded wine sales have seen a significant drop within the cost-of-living crisis of the past few years.
All of the above is obviously brought more starkly into focus as I spend a fortnight in the Cape meeting and talking to producers, both those I am commercially involved with as well as many I am not. The atmosphere can definitely be described as nervous, possibly negative, but certainly confused. Once again, I try and preface any wine trade chatter with South African producers with the positive message that South Africa’s wines are still as popular as ever, but this time, it’s not just supermarket bulk shipped brands like in previous years, it’s more middle market and specifically, South Africa’s fine wine brands that are again capturing a lot of collector attention.
But for all the positivity, I have already gone on record recently as saying I had not seen the broader UK wine trade market place this slow and depressed since possibly 2011/2012 when the full effects of the Lehmans global banking crisis started to take effect on the country’s high streets, hitting businesses and consumers hard in their wallets. But one of the big differences now, compared to 2012, is that back then, money or bank borrowings for businesses were basically free with historically low interest rates. Everyone knew it would eventually come to an end, but they just didn’t expect record interest rate rises to coincide with record inflation at over 10%! A proverbial double whammy!
So we all soldier on in the wine trade, working twice as hard to sell half as much wine, all the while worrying about the lack of interest in wine (and alcohol in general) from Gen Z. I will say though, for most South African producers, their average day-to-day life and business experience is one within a perpetually challenging local environment. It is the nature of the beast whilst living in Africa. So I would like to believe that any challenges can and will be overcome in our normal dogged and determined fashion. With UK inflation dropping to 3.4% this past week, and 2025 (post UK elections) being billed as the year of the ‘proper’ economic recovery, I think there are some things to be positive about!
Earlier this week, DeMorgezon announced of Anthony Sanvido as winemaker – he joined the Stellenbosch property in December 2019 working as assistant to first Carl van der Merwe, then Adam Mason, and most recently Alastair Rimmer.
To mark the occasion, a vertical tasting from 2005 to 2023 of the Reserve Chenin Blanc and if it demonstrated anything, it was that this has always been a powerful wine. Grapes are predominantly derived from a block planted in 1972 but in time younger blocks also came to be utilised. The currently available 2022 (price: R475 a bottle) was matured for 10 months in barrel, 20% new and has that accessibility that characterises many wines from this vintage.
The nose shows pear, peach and yellow apple plus hay, dried herbs and spice while the palate has good fruit purity, bright acidity and a dry finish. It’s full of flavour and not too tightly wound, offering good drinking from the get-go. Alc: 14.29%.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first bottling of a wine under the Kaapzicht label, this Bottelary farm in the hands of the Steytler family for four generations. New to the portfolio is the third Chenin Blanc to come from a certified heritage block, grapes from a vineyard called Sonsteen planted in 1985, this joining The 1947 and Kliprug planted in 1982.
Sonsteen Chenin Blanc 2023
Price: R165
Three days of skin contact before maturation lasting 10 months in barrel and concrete. Peach, potpourri, honeysuckle and ginger on the nose while the palate is rich, full and creamy in texture, tangy acidity lending balance. Has that concentration that old vines so often provide. Alc: 13.47%.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Kliprug Chenin Blanc 2023
Price: R225
Matured for 10 months in barrel, 20% new. Citrus, peach, a brush of vanilla and some flinty reduction on the nose. The palate is clean and direct – pure fruit and punchy acidity before a dry finish. Elegant and tightly wound. Alc: 13.42%.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
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