Chris Keet is the man who envisaged and brought about the legendary Cape Bordeaux red blend known as Cordoba Crescendo in the 1990s and early 2000s. His own take on a Cape Bordeaux known as First Verse has been around since the 2009 vintage and it has been fascinating to watch it evolve stylistically.
Initial releases had the elegance reminiscent of Crescendo but then the wine seemed to come more and more powerful, perhaps even overwrought – both the 2017 and 2018 vintages carried an alcohol of 15%.
The newly released 2020, however, is a triumph. A blend of 29% Cabernet Franc, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot, 16% Petit Verdot and 10% Malbec sourced from across Stellenbosch district, it was matured for 18 months in barrel, 15% new.
Complex aromatics of red and black berries, violets, some leafiness, oystershell, turned earth and pencil shavings precede a palate that’s medium bodied with fresh acidity and silky tannins. This is a wine that has both fruit purity and structure – it is hardly underdone given an alcohol of 14.5% but it has lovely composure and detail. It manages to be immediately appealing but simultaneously possessing the necessary to mature with benefit. Price: R700 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 96/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
The Shiraz/Syrah phenomenon in South Africa is relatively recent – total plantings in 1993 amounted to a mere 748ha compared to 8 897ha in 2022.
Who were the category leaders in the early 1990s? When Wine magazine tasted 23 examples of what was then currently available on the market for the February 1996 issue, Fleur du Cap 1989 was one of the three overall top wines with a rating of Four Stars, the other two being Bertrams 1989 and Lievland 1992.
The Fleur du Cap also received a rating of Four Stars in the 1995 edition Platter’s, although the tasting note wasn’t entirely enthusiastic, reading as follows: “Mostly friendly, sweet softish charm – and warmth (13.2% alc.). Some savoury reminders in finish, Without smokiness of most Cape Shiraz.”
Drinking it now, there’s quite a bit to recommend it, the 13.2% alcohol more indicative of proper phenolic ripeness than anything else. Red and black berries, fynbos, pepper and just a trace of leather on the nose while the palate displays generous fruit, bright acidity and mellow tannins. A round and juicy wine, perhaps not that complex, but still immensely pleasurable.
CE’s rating: 91/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
That 2021 facilitated wines of very high quality is again evidenced by Wade Metzer’s newly released duo of Chenin Blanc from that vintage while his Shiraz 2022 is also typical of that season in being open, accessible and dead sexy. Tasting notes and ratings as follows:
Montane Chenin Blanc 2021
Price: R380
Grapes from a Helderberg vineyard planted in 1964. Matured in older oak for nine months. Lemon, orange, ginger and other spice plus yeasty complexity on the nose while the palate is dense and thick-textured, tangy acidity lending balance, the finish gently savoury and lightly grippy. Broad and flavourful. Alc: 13.2%.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Maritime Chenin Blanc 2021
Price: R380
Grapes from a 1980 vineyard situated 4km from False Bay. Maturation as above. Complex aromatics with top notes of honeysuckle and fynbos before lime, lemon, flinty reduction and a slight waxy character. The palate is rich but equally defined and well-proportioned – concentrated fruit matched by a great line of acidity, the finish long and saline. Powerful without sacrificing detail. Alc: 13.9%.
CE’s rating: 96/100.
Shiraz 2022
Price: R380
Grapes from two parcels on the Helderberg. 30% whole-bunch fermentation. Matured for 11 months in barrel, 10% new. Expressive aromatics of red and black berries, lavender, earth, cinnamon and pepper. The palate is rich and full but not short of freshness, the tannins grippy but not coarse. Luscious upfront but nicely dry on the finish. Deeply satisfying to drink. Alc: 14.3%.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Win two tickets (worth R400 each) to the harvest festival at Stellenbosch property Vergenoegd Löw.
Date: 29 February
Time: 18:00 to 22:00
Place: Vergenoegd Löw, 1 Vergenoegd Road, Somerset West, off R310, Stellenbosch Wine Route
A ticket entitles you to a glass of Cap Classique on arrival, a three-course meal prepared by the Geuwels restaurant team, and live local music.
Wines will be on offer at exclusive harvest prices in celebration of the occasion. #SAHarvest2024.
Contact the farm on 021 843 3248 or info@vergenoegd.co.za for more information.
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Competition is now closed. Winner to be announced shortly. Travel not included. The winner will be chosen by lucky draw and notified by email. Existing subscribers are also eligible.
Ann Ferreira refers to husband, Graham Beck chief operating officer and chairman of the Cap Classique Producers Association as “her winemaker” – although her range of top-end, small-batch bubblies under the Pieter Ferreira label is made at the Graham Beck cellar, Pieter is contractually obliged to remain unaffiliated when it comes to sales and marketing.
Even so, Ann gets to work with the pick of the fruit coming into the Graham Beck cellar and the resulting wines are among the very best in the country.
Soon to be released is the Rosé 2017 (approximate retail price: R425 a bottle). Consisting entirely of Pinot Noir, 52% was sourced from Darling and 48% from Durbanville, the wine spending some six years on lees. The nose is still remarkably primary with notes of Turkish Delight, rose, cranberry, raspberry and cherry while the palate shows pure fruit, racy acidity and a fine mousse, the finish super-dry and slightly salty. It’s a little more tight and nervy than 2016 and should mature beautifully. Alc: 12%. Dosage: 2.6 g/l.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
It’s kind of hard not to approach 2024 with just a little trepidation. On an international level, things are not looking rosy. Many strategic analysts – not necessarily the scaremongering types – are suggesting that we may be moving towards a worldwide war with the same inexorability that characterised the second half of the 1930s. Here in South Africa an election year looms with nothing suggesting a clear route out of the cul-de-sac of the past few decades. As long as the ANC clings to power, the economy will continue to serve as carrion for a corrupt kakistocracy.
Failing ports and infrastructure, no reasonable prospect of regulations easing, and foreign markets constrained by their own crises – how much worse can things really get? Well – if there is a global conflagration, we still have an unimaginably long way to fall. If there isn’t, it’s easier to see that however badly things turn out, there will be winners as well as losers. In an epic Darwinian battle, it’s crucial to ensure that you have what it takes to emerge victorious.
In this fight for survival we have a mountain to climb: the 2023 export figures blanketed the winelands in stygian darkness. While it’s easy to blame WoSA for the decline, much of what has gone wrong lies beyond the capacity of any producer organisation. The comparable figures for Australia – while are still vastly better than South Africa’s – reflect a similar trend. Their wine exports declined by 2% in value and 3% in volume (compared with South Africa’s 11% and 17% respectively) in the 12 months to December 2023. At least they enjoyed huge growth in Hong Kong (as Covid-19 restrictions were finally lifted), a silver lining to the lead sarcophagus which has been weighing them down since the trade dispute with China cost them 99% of that once lucrative market.
The USA and Europe are de-stocking, partly because it was the first response to the anticipated recession which everyone incorrectly thought would ensue from the inflation spike. But where the retailers weren’t wrong was that the market was changing in front of their eyes. Suddenly wine has become a lot less sexy, while alcohol as a category has taken an additional hit.
Some trends are compounding the problem: GenZ is drinking less alcohol, more exotic fruit juices, more beverages with added nutritional or metabolism-enhancing components, more fizzy drinks. The fashion curve – which added so much excitement to the wine category for the past 35 or so years – is on a downward trajectory. And the only consolation is that everyone is in the same boat.
However, South Africa has some advantages which it’s going to have to exploit to the hilt if it’s going to pull out of the death dive. Key among these is the absolute quality of our entire offering, a factor not based on our devalued currency – as a number of blind tastings in the past few months has shown.
The pattern was certainly discernible when the results of what used to be called the Tri-Nations Wine Challenge (now the Global Fine Wine Challenge) were announced late last year. Among the judges, some of whom were MWs based in Australia, together with a rotation from the wine producing countries, was Anthony Mueller, the Robert Parker critic under whose brief South Africa falls.
He was there as a representative of the United States – having made the selection against which South Africa competed. The final results tell their own story. South Africa (tying with New Zealand) garnered five best in class trophies – one fewer than Australia. The US by comparison managed only a trophy for Merlot. Overall our best results were in red wine categories (and New Zealand’s were in whites). There’s no doubt we’ve begun to shake off the stigma of gawky, green-edged red wines.
When it does come to whites, the recent blind tasting hosted by Wines of Elgin tells its own story. A line-up of several of their best chardonnays were presented against some not unimpressive examples from Burgundy (mostly selling for two to three times the price of our wines). The outcome showed incontrovertibly that our wines are not simply doing well “at the price point” – they are doing well, irrespective of the price-point.
Much of this isn’t news to wine-savvy South African wine drinkers. However, the fact that our sales have so under-performed compared with our New World competitors in a recession year tells us that our messaging has failed. If we are to emerge from the current melt-down with at least the key components of our industry intact we are going to have to change the way we do things.
This is not a job we can afford to abdicate to WoSA: administrators are not salesmen. The wine industry is packed with hot marketers – think Mike Ratcliffe, Eben Sadie, Ken Forrester – and it is to them we should turn if we wish to stop the inevitable slide into oblivion.
With the exception of a few producers and occasionally a prominent sommelier or two, the wine industry is fairly understated, with very little visibility beyond the trade itself. This is obviously as it should be; there’s little time for self-promotion whilst you’re busy growing, making, selling, distributing and so forth. enotourism and especially social media is changing that landscape, but for the vast majority of involved consumers, information about wine still tends to come from books, magazines and articles. This is the home of the wine writer and our job is to open up and share the world of wine, as honestly and accurately as we can.
Actually, is that wine writer or wine critic? Nowadays I don’t believe there’s much of a distinction to be made between the two; I can’t think of a wine writer who doesn’t write tasting notes, even if they don’t affix scores, nor a wine critic who doesn’t give contextual background and information to the wines they’re tasting. Some are fortunate enough to have secure roles with major publications, often covering a specific country or group of regions that they have experience with, whilst many, me included, work on a freelance basis for multiple publications. Importantly and dishearteningly, very, very few are able to earn enough of an income to only write about wine, at least not without a supportive spouse or generational wealth to fall back on.
The rise of social media, content creators and influencers threw something of an existential hand grenade into our world. At first, they were mostly met with scorn and derision. Then with frustration, as many of the press trips and opportunities that would have traditionally gone to writers were now being filled with the Instagram savvy instead. Finally, I believe we’re at a point where there’s an element of acceptance and understanding. You see, we’re in the same game. The objective is the same and, in many cases, so is the quid pro quo; come on a trip or receive samples, inhale everything we have to say and tell your audience about it. I am of course being a little disingenuous; there are wine writers and there are wine writers. Just as there are content creators and content creators. The devil’s in the details. What makes the best stand out from the rest?
First and foremost, let’s start with an unpopular opinion: if you are a wine writer, you are either mostly writing for the industry, or for the consumer. Regardless of your intent, there will be carry-over to the other side; if I am writing with the intention of finding and sharing the best wines of the Swartland, the sorts of wines I would spend my own money on, that’s clearly consumer based, yet the wineries will benefit from the exposure. The reverse is also true but much less so; it’s rarely in the consumers best interest to be fed an advert under the guise of genuine, effusive praise from a writer. Herein lies the problem. All wine writing is intended to be read by a potential consumer. How do they distinguish between the two? An article in a major magazine enthusing about a winery will generate interest; it’s meant to! Would the writer spend any of their own money on the wines they’re praising in such an article? A much harder question to answer but very often, no, they wouldn’t. How do I know? Because I’ve written plenty of these articles before, earlier in my writing career.
Another possibly controversial contention I would make is that a wine writer needs to let his or her preferences and personality show. One of the great myths of wine education is that objective ratings are all important and difficult to achieve. In reality, objective criticism of wine quality is really quite easy. After a few years of tasting, judging and practicing, everyone ends up at roughly the same level. Simply put: it isn’t difficult to determine how “good” a wine is according to BLIC (Balance, length, intensity and complexity), the baseline for qualitative assessments in our industry. Once you’ve done it a few thousand times, it comes naturally. It’s important of course but not in and of itself. It only really sets the foundation for what’s to come next; context, insight and opinion, from someone who’s actually got something to say. Assuming they do, of course. Early in my writing career I was shocked to discover that prominent critics existed, who had never visited the regions they were proclaimed as a regional expert for. You don’t have to live in a region to have an informed, educated opinion, but you do have to have set foot there at some point!
Lastly, I believe wine writers need to be willing to take some risks. At some point, you’re going to have to disagree with a producer, however prominent and famous they might be, as Tim Atkin MW recently wrote about. If you’re writing about a region, you’ll discover that many of the producers are not on the same wavelength as the regulatory body managing it and both are going to give you conflicting information and the question becomes: what’s the truth as you see it? Most importantly, you’re going to have to be willing to sacrifice some sacred cows when you believe in the opposite. In the world of industry-focused wine writing, this usually looks something like “Natural wine isn’t really natural, ha!”, but in consumer wine writing it’s normally a little more original, provocative and risky. Access from producers is easily cut off and there’s a lot of entrenched information in wine; swimming against the current is tough work.
Managing all this whilst actually surviving in a world where writing pays increasingly little explains a lot about the cautious nature of the work, and the lack of new, young writers in the industry. For example, I am away from home for 20-24 weeks of the year for tourism and enotourism related work; I wouldn’t personally be able to pay my bills with the money I make from writing alone. The positive is that I can be picky about what I write about. Despite the difficulties explained above, there are still some excellent wine writers and communicators managing it all with aplomb. Some are friends and others I would dearly like to meet one day. I will leave a shortlist below of some of the very best, and I hope it helps you find some new corners of the wine world.
Recommended Following:
Tim Atkin MW – Tim is not only a fantastic writer and journalist himself, but publishes a number of articles on different topics, often from lesser known writers. Peter Pharos, Jon Atkinson MW, Anne Burchette and Margaret Rand are often found on his website, writing some of the best articles and opinion pieces outside of any major publications. As a disclaimer, I also write for Tim.
Konstantin Baum MW – For a long time I thought about creating a YouTube channel and now I don’t think I will, if only because Konstantin is doing a better job than I ever could. Surely the best wine communicator outside of traditional writing in the world, right now, with fun, informative and interesting video content.
Tom Hewson – If ever a corner of the wine world needed a fresh voice, it was for sparkling wine. Tom Hewson is the specialist writer for sparkling wine at Decanter but also has his own substack, with regular articles and content on the world of Champagne and sparkling wine. I’ve already learnt a huge amount from Tom in a short period of time.
Everyday Drinking – Jason Wilson, the author of Godforsaken Grapes, has one of the most irreverent, amusing and interesting newsletters in the world of wine. It goes beyond the world of wine into drinks more generally, with a little overlap with food and pairings. It’s one of only a few newsletters I look forward to reading when it arrives!
In the 1996 edition of Platter’s, the tasting note for the Cabernet Sauvignon 1990 from Stellenbosch property Overgaauw reads as follows: “Fresh fruit, cassis, hints of mint, eucalyptus. Velvety texture. Could make a Bordeaux winemaker envious” and it was duly rated Four Stars.
Drinking it now, it shows rather more red fruit than black although a definite “green” note remains, reminiscent of dried herbs while there also hints of boot polish and undergrowth. The palate is light-bodied with fresh, slightly hard acidity and a dry finish. It’s a modest wine but still intact – good fruit integrity, the tannins pretty much resolved.
CE’s rating: 90/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Richard Kershaw, originally a chef, switched to winemaking working harvests around the world before settling in South Africa in 1999 where he worked at Mulderbosch and Kanu. He qualified as an MW in 2011 before founding his own label the year after.
Kershaw’s departure point when it comes to winemaking is “the right grape in the right place” and is convinced that cool-climate Elgin has all the intrinsic factors to make world-class wine. The Clonal Selection range sees him combining different parcels of grapes with a view to creating a more complete whole while the Deconstructed range are limited production wines that are an effort to dig deeper into the nuances of both individual site and clone. Tasting notes and ratings for the current releases below (please note that prices quoted apply until 29 February after which there will be an increase of up to 10%):
Clonal Selection
Elgin Chardonnay 2020
Price: R655
From 11 vineyards planted to five different clones. Expressive aromatics of pear, peach, citrus, oatmeal, vanilla and spice. The palate is wonderfully harmonious with pure fruit and lively acidity. Plenty of detail and good length to the finish. Alc: 13%.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Elgin Pinot Noir 2020
Price: R695
From eight vineyards planted to four different clones. Red and black berries, musk and cured meat on the nose while the palate shows dense fruit, quite tart acidity and grippy tannins, the finish nicely savoury. Alc: 13%.
CE’s rating: 93/100.
Elgin Syrah 2019
Price: R625
From six vineyards planted to three different clones. Red and black berries, cured meat, liquorice and pepper on the nose. The palate is linear, even angular with a savoury finish. Alc: 13.5%.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Deconstructed range
Lake District Bokkeveld Shale CY95 Chardonnay 2020
Price: R1 250
Citrus, oatmeal and a hint of spice on the nose. The palate is rich and round, even luscious. Excellent fruit concentration matched by punchy acidity. Full of flavour. Alc: 13.5%.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Lake District Bokkeveld Shales CY96 Chardonnay 2020
Price: R1 250
The nose shows pear, lime and lemon plus some struck-match reduction. More linear and tense on the palate – high acidity and a pithy finish. Alc: 13%.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Kogelberg Ironstone CY548 Chardonnay 2020
Price: R1 250
Elusive and rather hard-to-describe aromatics – earthy, nutty, leesy notes are perceptible. The palate is quite broad and weighty with tangy acidity and a savoury finish. A wine of real substance. Alc: 13.5%.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
Kogelberg Sandstone CY76 Chardonnay 2020
Price: R1 250
Restrained but rather attractive aromatics including floral perfume, lemon, oatmeal and struck-match reduction. The palate has dense fruit and snappy acidity before a finish that’s long and dry. Wonderfully pure and focused – has a compelling tension about it.
CE’s rating: 96/100.
Kogelberg Sandstone PN115 Pinot Noir 2020
Price: R1 300
Cranberry, red cherry and white pepper on the nose. The palate is vivid and balanced with concentrated fruit, lively acidity and fine tannins. Alc: 13%.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Groenland Bokkeveld Shale SH9c Syrah 2019
Price: R1 075
Black berries, fynbos, undergrowth and pepper on the nose. Medium bodied with fresh acidity and a very dry finish. A particular, rather esoteric take on the variety. Alc: 14%.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Groenland Bokkeveld Shale SH22 Syrah 2019
Price: R1 075
Red and black berries, lily and pepper on the nose. The palate is energetic and harmonious – good fruit expression, bright acidity and fine tannins.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
My most enjoyable recent wine experience was not grand – and it was the sort of occasion when the idea of sternly scoring or rating a wine “in the glass” by some abstract notion of quality seems, well, more absurd than usual. We’re all, I trust, fortunate enough to know many such trumping occasions. This one involved a pretty simple red wine, served cold in a jug and drunk from a tumbler.
The place was Ouzeri, the fairly new Cypriot-Greek restaurant in Cape Town that rapidly became a darling of the official foodie set, the people that give out controversial awards, mostly to trendy places (did you see on Daily Maverick the devastating critique of the Eat Out Awards by Kobus van der Merwe of Wolfgat? and the placatory response?). This was my second lunch at Ouzeri and again I enjoyed it very much, though I’m not quite as adulatory as many, including my frequent lunch partner, John – but then, like him admittedly, I’m a regular worshipper at Table Seven (regular, that is, when they’re open and not making us wait hungrily while they’re closed to do their catering, gigs and whatever), so my comparisons are high.
Anyway, John was late, so I examined the wine list and menu with more attention than usual. It’s a list that’s very well, intelligently selected (OMG, I nearly said “curated” – it’s terrible how one’s standards of linguistic decency slip), mostly in the modern hipsterish mode: generally excellent, lightish, naturalish wines, with subheadings like “Skin-contact wines”.
Wine from keg at Ouzeri.
I noticed a somewhat tucked-away mention of a nameless “light pinotage from Voor-Paardeberg” available in carafes in half- or full-bottle volumes. As this is a particularly favourite category of mine at present (as I rather more than mentioned last week), I asked who the producer was. Turned out to be Tremayne Smith, whose Blacksmith wines I have admired greatly – though I see I last wrote about them nearly five years ago; clearly I need to catch up. So I confidently ordered 750ml of it, some of the confidence being that my not-yet-arrived lunch partner also enjoys wines like I was sure this would prove to be.
I didn’t get much of a head start in drinking it, in fact as he turned up shortly after the wine did. The latter (chronologically the former, if not grammatically so) arrived in a rather industrial-looking, minimalist metal jug. And, as I mentioned early, very nicely cold: a perfect temperature for the delicious, unpretentious, dry and light wine, one that served to further entrench my opinion that properly handled pinotage leaves cinsaut way behind in the light-red stakes.
Drinking from a tumbler seemed not inappropriate, and certainly very acceptable. I do have my doubts about the minimalist steel jug – a glass carafe or a ceramic jug would have suited Ouzeri’s décor and atmosphere rather better, I think – but not about the wine. Nor, in fact about the potential virtues of wines from keg in restaurants and bars. This was the first time, in fact, that I had properly thought about the category, though no doubt in youthful forays in Europe, I’d had vin de pays or vino da tavola from tap (gosh, I can still almost hear myself, 40 years later, asking for deux Côtes-du-Rhône s’il vous plait…).
Rather strangely, despite the obvious advantages for serving wine by glass and carafe, for reasons that seem to involve unwillingness on the side of bars and restaurants and caution on the side of distributors and producers, there are not many places in South Africa that have wine on tap. The category of “keg wines” has, however, taken off particularly in the UK and the USA, says Ingrid Motteux of Fine Wine on Tap. They deal mostly in export – including to the Antarctic, wonderfully enough, although conditions there are apparently very unsuited to fine wine drinking (like airliners, only much more so) – with some of the wines kegged under their own brand, Motteux Family .
Fine Wine on Tap makes use of recyclable but once-off kegs made from PET, with double walls and an inner collapsing liner. Ingrid says that this system, severely restricting oxygen ingress, allows a longer life for the vinous contents than metal kegs (though these seem to work satisfactorily for at least a good while and are standard for beer). An add-on chiller allows the kegs to be kept in room temperature but be delivered cool or cold from the tap.
If there are few significant wines available here from keg, it seems there are quite a few exports, especially to the UK, including such prestigious names as AA Badenhorst, Savage and Craven. It’s such an obviously good idea – with all sorts of advantages, from physical footprint to carbon footprint, to ease of service, and possibly financial saving (though the imported kegs are not cheap here) – that surely we can expect to find more and more of them around. And if they mean more cold light pinotage being available in summer, so much the better.
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