“Why so many wine competitions?” was one of the debates arising from Michael Friddjhon’s article Why do some wine producers enter competitions and others not? In the case of the Muskadel SA Awards, its reason for being is surely to keep an excellent niche category with a nevertheless declining public following alive.
Results of the 18th Muskadel SA Awards, sponsored by Vinochem, were announced recently and the organisers let me review three of the four platinum award winners. Tasting notes and ratings as follows:
Montagu Muscat de Frontignan Single Vineyard 2016
Price: R198 per 750ml bottle
Matured for 18 months in bourbon barrels. Sultana, orange, potpourri and spice on the nose. The palate is rich and round – luscious fruit offset by bright acidity.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Mont Blois Pomphuis White Muscadel 2017
Price: R250 per 500ml bottle
W.O. Robertson. From a 1991 vineyard planted on gravel. Matured for 12 months in old 225-litre barrels. Hay, peach, spice and a waxy note on the nose. Cocentrated fruit, lively acidity and a dry finish. Oily in texture and the spirit addition lend a fiery quality – alcohol is 17%.
CE’s rating: 91/100.
Viljoensdrift Moscato Blanco 2016
Price: R190 per 375ml bottle
W.O. Robertson. Grapes from a 60-year-old vineyard. 18 months on the lees. Complex and exotic aromatics of sultana, peach, ripe citrus, pineapple, potpourri and spice while the palate is full with pure fruit and vibrant acidity – manages to be wonderfully luscious without sacrificing vibrancy. Alc: 16%.
CE’s rating: 94/100.
Nuy Barbieri Idro Rooi Muskadel 2015
Price: R235 per 500ml bottle
W.O. Nuy. Matured for five years in barrel. Raisin, apricot, a slight nutty quality and spice om the nose while the palate has great fruit density and thickness of texture, bright acidity and a savoury finish. A Muscadel that might be mistaken for Tawny Port.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
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It’s a fine and interesting thing to witness the birth of a new wine, even when any surprise is tempered by some knowledge of the DNA of both parents – winemaker and terroir. The former in the present case is Francois Haasbroek, whose Blackwater range is one of the most consistent and affordable delights of Cape wine, an always totally drinkable yet serious pleasure. The terroir, which Francois would agree must be the senior determining contributor to the character of the offspring, is Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards.
TMV was founded around the turn of the century, since when it has had two names (from 2010 it was named Fable, as easier for Americans to pronounce), four owners, and five winemakers (including two who have since achieved significant fame elsewhere: Chris Mullineux and Callie Louw). That’s not a recipe for success and we must hope that things will now settle down; vineyard manager Werner Wessels knows the property well, which is useful. The farm is a large (180 ha) and beautiful one, mostly pretty wild, with vines on the lowest slopes of the Witzenberg, between the towns of Tulbagh and Wolsely. The present owners also got a very useful discount on the value of the 28-odd hectares of expensively established vineyards – the previous owners, who had taken over the property from the disgraced Charles Banks, were really only keen on the Mulderbosch part of their purchase.
Those new owners are locals (the first had been British, the next two American), a consortium of businesspeople from the north of the country, who had been looking for a Western Cape farm, not necessarily a wine estate. Francois Haasbroek has rented the whole of the well-resourced TMV cellar for his own winemaking, and has come to an agreement with the owners to establish a new wine for them there, perhaps two, under the older name. They seem to be not excessively rushed about it, but would no doubt like the estate to stop losing money as soon as possible.
And so to the interesting birth of the new wine, which is of course a longish process rather than an event, so I’ll drop the metaphor. There are just three grapes on the estate to work with: syrah, grenache and mourvèdre, which inevitably suggests the essence of the estate blend which Francois is concentrating on – if there is to be a pure syrah, that will emerge in time. Both styles have been made in the past off the estate, of course: a Syrah, with Night Sky and second-label Raptor Post Red as the blends. I tasted the 2018s of the first two with Francois, and they were pretty good wines, especially the perfumed Syrah; I found the Night Sky a touch too chunky and lacking real harmony.
So Francois does have plenty to relate to in land and precedent (he points out, for example, that it has proved virtually impossible to make bold and powerful wines off TMV), but his wines are emphatically going to be new, based on his aestethic and his experience and understanding of what the farm offers. He is, he says, still assessing the vineyards. We tasted some samples of 2023 syrah, all around 13% alcohol, from single vineyards among the schist and shale soils, with varying aspects and vine-training methods. All offered different expressions of syrah, with vibrancy, structure, and depth of fruit among the variables.
And while such terroir expressiveness is vital, and “minimal” winemaking is to be taken for granted (both these lessons drummed into us with regard to every new-wave wine), even low-intervention winemaking inevitably takes different paths. Thus, we also tasted two 2023 syrahs from the same block and racked from the same fermentation tank. One went into an older 300-litre oak barrel: it offered length of flavour, purity of floral-fragrant fruit. The other went into concrete and, though those other characters were there, it stressed something different, rather brooding, even mysterious. That’s after a few months. Will the differences deepen or even themselves out?
And that’s just the syrah. So, the number of permutations, with two other varieties, varying sites and varying basic winemaking choices, is great, and even to make significant progress in working out what is wanted (what is best, let’s say) will take time, and experimentation in the cellar. It was gratifying to see Francois’s eagerness to move ahead, and his ambition. And it may be fanciful, but I did wonder if some of his particular elegance and lightness of touch wasn’t already showing through…
The 2023 blend is likely to be 80–90% syrah, says Francois. But there is already a 2022 Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards estate blend, coming onto the shelves in a few months, from 72% syrah plus 14% each of grenache and mourvèdre. Some stems were included – about 15% overall; the wine was matured in foudre and 500-litre barrels, for about 13 months. It’s been bottled, and is awaiting a label. I didn’t see what they’re working on, but Francois says it will feature the large pine tree which stands on a high slope above the vines and serves as a kind of focus of the farm’s energy (shown on a rainy day in the photograph above). The cost should be somewhere in the mid-R200s.
For a “first attempt”, the wine is impressive, pure-fruited and drinking well already, though firmly structured. There’s undoubted elegance, but I suspect, from the 2023 samples that I tasted, that the 2023 will have both more concentration and more vibrancy. But very satisfactory as the first step in what Francois calls “an adventure that is going to take time to work out”.
Read A visit to Tulbagh – part one here.
New-wave local producers of Syrah seem to want to favour elegance and refinement but let’s not forget that the wines of the Rhône, always held up as a reference point, can be quite beefy – Côte Rôtie, for instance, literally means roasted slopes.
I’ve liked the Voorloper Bush Vine Syrah from Daniël de Waal of Super Single Vineyards for a while now and again the 2020 doesn’t disappoint although it’s not necessarily an easy wine.
From a Stellenbosch vineyard planted to clone SH-99 and untrellised in 1985, winemaking involved whole-bunch fermentation before maturation in third-fill barrels. Rather wild and heady aromatics including red and black berries, lavender, fynbos, earth, some meaty character and strong pepper precede a palate that has dense fruit, arresting acidity and grippy tannins, the finish long and dry. With a moderate alcohol of 13.54%, it’s in no way overblown just immensely characterful. Price: R350 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
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The last two decades have been nothing short of revolutionary in the world of fine wine. New, often younger, producers have popped up across the globe, bringing with them a new injection of energy and ideas. Consumer tastes have moved away from the ponderous, oak-laden wines of the ‘90s and the views of a handful of critics who often lavished praise on them. Indigenous grapes have made a comeback in Mediterranean countries, whilst New World vineyards have diversified enormously and previously unheralded regions have risen to fame.
In Spain all of this came together, seemingly quite suddenly, in Galicia, a region in the north-western corner of the country covering five appellations: Rias Baixas, Valdeorras, Monterrei, Ribeira Sacra and Ribeiro. Galicia forms a part of “Green Spain” due to its lush, green vegetation, heavier rainfall and cooler temperatures, largely influenced by its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. Like much of Spain, the origins of winemaking here are credited to the Romans with the baton handed to the monks for the subsequent centuries. Yet its rise to fame has been recent, driven mostly by a change in consumer attitudes and a desire for fresher wines; lower in alcohol and less reliant on the heavy extraction and oak regimes that Spain became somewhat prone to in the past.
By the mid-2000s, it was becoming obvious to those in the know that Galicia was producing some of the most exciting wine in Spain, even if they rarely won medals and acclaim in the media. I worked a harvest in Alella, Catalunya in 2015 and the head winemaker spoke to me passionately about Galicia as much as he did about the harvest we were actually managing. Since then, that same enthusiasm has spread across the country and beyond, with the original pioneers of the region now joined by a number of new projects and winemakers, many of whom are a driving force behind the revolution of “The New Spain”.
For many, their first taste of fine wine in Galicia came in the form of Albariño. Supermarkets have long been awash in the overtly floral, peachy bottles produced by co-operatives and larger operations, but at its best, Albariño is one of the truly great white wines of the world. The vineyards of Rias Baixas are home to some of Spain´s oldest vines, many of them dating before the onset of phylloxera due to the inhospitable nature of its sandy soils; this raw material simply needed the right winemakers to let it show. Forja del Salnes, Zarate, DO Ferreiro and Nanclares y Prieto are all producing superlative wines; the focused, saline nature of the grape shines bright without the use of cultivated yeasts and low temperature fermentations. Eulogio Pomares, the head winemaker of Zarate, is making perhaps the most interesting wines of all under his own label, fermenting and ageing old vine Albariño in chestnut casks. The results are extraordinary.
Further inland, you could be forgiven for thinking you´d wandered into a different country entirely as you gaze upon the Sil River valleys, their steep vineyards plunging alarmingly towards the water. Grape-growing here is appropriately referred to as “heroic viticulture”, with mechanisation almost impossible to fathom, let alone implement, in some vineyards. This is the home of the peppery, brambly Mencia, though most vineyards are a chaotic blend of a number of grapes, including Merenzao (Trosseau), Brancellao, Souson, Caiño tinto and more. Field-blend fermentations are common, with Envinate´s evocative “Lousas de Aldea” an absolute benchmark for the region and one of Spain´s greatest QPR red wines. Fedellos do Couto, Fazenda Pradio, Algueira, Guimaro, Castro Candaz and Lalama are all leading wineries on these green slopes, producing wines that are often, justifiably, compared to the finest examples of the Northern Rhône with which they share a stylistic kinship.
Separated from Ribeira Sacra by the Bibei River, Valdeorras is Galicia´s eastern-most region. Granite and sand form the backbone of the soils here, with the same perilous slopes as their neighbour, yet the star of the show is the nervy, white Godello grape. Rafael Palacios has become the leading producer of Godello, with his As Sortes and Sort o Soro bottlings in particular generating favourable comparisons to top-end, white Burgundy with its effortless energy, verve and persistence. The same combination of nutrient poor granitic soils, steep slopes and southern aspects led Telmo Rodriguez to Valdeorras, where he produces the finest Mencia in the region from remarkable, abandoned vineyards that have taken years to nurture back to production. Drinking his individual vineyard bottlings is to understand what would happen if you crossed Foillard´s Cote du Py with Clape´s Cornas.
Ribeiro is situated on the northern banks of the Miño river, with its warmer climate allowing for a variety of grape varieties to be grown successfully, with Treixadura in particular, shining bright. Luis Anxo, Bernardo Estevez and O Morto Wines are all hidden gems in the region, the former in particular is producing some of Galicia´s most underrated red wines. Monterrei is the warmest area of Galicia and the least active, though the wines of Quinta da Muradella are a beacon that has already attracted new investment and attention to the region.
Remarkably, considering the modest yields, perilous viticulture and occasionally hostile weather, the wines still remain affordably priced. There are moments when I drink wines made here and I realise the revelation that early pioneers of the classic French regions must have felt. The discovery. The realisation that you´ve found something truly quite special. Not only that, but there´s a sensation that it´s all just getting started and the best is yet to come. There´s magic at work in Galicia, and I´m delighted to be along for the ride.
The Laurence Graff Reserve, pinnacle wine from Stellenbosch property Delaire Graff, is named after its English jeweller owner. Always a single-variety Cabernet Sauvignon, grapes come from a mother block of clone 169 chosen on account of producing “balanced and well-structured wines with round tannins” and planted in 2001.
Maiden vintage was 2009 but it isn’t bottled every year, with 2010, 2016 and 2019 the vintages to be declassified so far.
The 2018 has just become available at R4 800 a bottle. Winemaker Morné Vrey says that if 2017 was a “classic” vintage, then 2018 is “rich and plush”. Matured for 18 months in barrel, of which 80% was new, the nose shows red and black berries, floral fragrance, pencil shavings and attractive oak spice while the palate has luscious fruit, bright acidity and velvety tannins, the finish gently dry. It is indeed soft and luxuriant but stops short of being ingratiating.
CE’s rating: 95/100.
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The 1947 Chenin Blanc from Bottelary property Kaapzicht has proved to be a bit chunky in recent times but the 2022 is tight and focused. Matured for 10 months in a combination of 500-litre barrels (partially new) and, for the first time, a 400-litre clay amphora, the wine has a lovely interplay between fruit and acidity.
On the nose, pear, peach, quince and pineapple plus herbs and hay while the palate has good presence despite a moderate alcohol of 13% – dense fruit, tangy acidity and a savoury, slighty grippy finish. A great showing from South Africa’s second oldest Chenon Blanc vineyard. Price: R730 a bottle.
CE’s rating: 96/100.
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Depending on your wine budget, the extent of your geekiness, and possibly whether or not you live in the Cape, you will either drink wines made on what used to be called estates, or from producers whose USP is that they are artisanal craftsmen. These broad (and therefore easily shot-down) generalisations reflect the following assumptions: the less you can afford to spend, the more you will gravitate to higher volume wineries (these might include the so-called producing merchants); the further you live from the Cape, the less readily available the lower volume (and often geekier/more artisanal) wines will be.
This situation suits everyone for a variety of reasons: it enables the Cape to feel vindicated in its natural sense of superiority about the mining town in the north, and it allows Gautengers to mock what they see as the cottage industry side of the wine business.
As with all generalisations, there is enough truth to the caricature to make it stick. Distribution costs tend to keep from the average Gauteng retailer’s shelves many of the craft producers’ wines. If you live in the Cape – close to the winery (and possibly with friends or colleagues who know someone who knows someone who knows a boutique-type producer) – there’s a kind of tupperware party quality to these connections.
If on the other hand we’re talking about the rockstar artisanal producers, their wines are hardly ever visible on the shelves of even the most upmarket wine stores. These “vinous treasures” are offered and sold through mail order. You need to be a bit of a wine buff even to know that unless you get your name onto a mailing list, the only way you’re going to be able to buy the wine is on auction several years later.
At one level, the snobbery which comes with these distinctions is misplaced. Just because you can afford to buy something more expensive and less accessible doesn’t ensure you’re getting anything better than the person who is not persuaded that shortage of supply is a guarantee of quality. Just because other people buy on the basis of brand is no reason to assume their judgement is any better or any worse: exactly the people who look down their noses at folk who proudly display their Louis Vuitton handbags or their Gucci belts delight in serving “on-allocation only” vinous rarities. The same attributes are required to own the handbags or the wine: money and access.
So is there an objective – or relatively objective way – of distinguishing between quality and puffery? Given that quality itself is not verifiably measurable (at least in absolute terms) this may seem a fool’s errand. If we accept that it is possible to compare wines on the basis of their attributes at a given moment in time, then skilled palates can draw a distinction. This is what happens when acknowledged wine judges, tasting blind, arrive at a conclusion. They may differ in terms of preference but they are likely to be able to sort the great from the good, and the good from the ordinary. They are obviously unable to pass the kind of judgement that would be influenced by knowledge of the terroir – so their opinion is more about the here-and-now, and less about what the future might hold.
You might ask that if this is all that is required to arrive at a less-than-subjective view on wine quality, why isn’t this the approach adopted by wine industries around the world. The answer is that those who depend for their sales on perceptions of rarity and the perceived desirability of relatively unobtainable products would never knowingly agree to such an arbitration. At the time of the inaugural Trophy Wine Show we assembled the wines of the leading producers who hadn’t entered the competition and conducted a blind tasting which we called “The No-show Show.” Needless to say, the producers in question – all of whose wines were in the public domaine – were incandescent with rage. (Incidentally, so were quite a few consumers, who didn’t like the idea that their favourite brands might not have performed so well).
So why do some wineries enter competitions, while others don’t? Those which are newly established, or have invested heavily in winery/vineyard upgrades, know that show successes are a cheap way of getting the message out. But there are also highly regarded producers who take their chances every year, despite the apparent downside risk. They have worked out that their brand is strong enough to survive a disappointing showing. When a consumer trusts a producer, he/she is more likely to blame the judges for not recognising the virtues of a favourite wines.
A healthy wine industry is a self-critical and dynamic one. The best producers seek constantly to improve, no matter how good or prestigious they may already be: the Lafite Rothschilds produced today are vastly better than the wines made in the 1960s and 1970s – a situation forced upon even the most famous Medoc estate by the arrival on the scene of Robert Parker.
Clinging desperately onto a position of pre-eminence hoping not be overtaken by newcomers is a certain route to catastrophe. Wine consumers are like the electorate in a functioning democracy: they don’t change sides easily. But they have also learnt the biblical lesson of Lot’s wife: when they move on, they don’t look back.
Elgin property Sutherland was acquired by Gyles Webb of Thelema in 2002 with a view to exploring what a cool-climate site could produce. The wines recently got new labels, four reserve wines now named after Webb’s granddaughters, these being Anna Chardonnay 2017, Lisa Grenache 2017, Emily Petit Verdot 2017 and Sarah Red 2017, the first two priced at R400 a bottle and the second at R450.
Tasting notes for the two samples delivered as follows:
Sutherland Anna Chardonnay 2017
Matured for 10 months in 228-litre barrels. On the nose, there is notable struck-match reduction which so often characterises Chardonnay from this property as well as citrus while the palate shows huge concentration and punchy acidity before a super-savoury finish. The density of fruit is such as to make this almost monolithic. Deep yellow in colour, it is otherwise very much intact and makes for a singular drinking experience. Alc: 13%.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
Sutherland Lisa Grenache 2017
Matured for 17 months in older barrels. The nose shows red and black berries plus spice and that slightly malty quality that development often lends while the palate is hearty with sweet fruit and a fiery quality because of 15% alcohol and not much tannic grip. Some will no doubt appreciated the opulence…
CE’s rating: 89/100.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
Two recent encounters with contemporary South African Syrah reminded me that there’s less agreement about what constitutes quality among the wine community than we might like to admit. In the first instance, I served Sons of Sugarland 2018 and Harry Hartman Somesay 2021 blind to friends very much expecting them to be impressed by these two highly regarded wines. It must be said, though, that both are new wave in style, which is to say relatively low in alcohol and “stemmy” in texture. With labels out of sight, my audience was not as enthusiastic about the two wines as they might otherwise have been…
In the second instance, I recently tasted Gravel Hill Syrah 2017 from Stellenbosch property Hartenberg fully expecting it to be rather too big and brazen for my liking but instead was impressed that although powerful, it is still remarkably poised and maturing well – its relatively high alcohol of 14.5% and its heavy oaking regime (19 months in barrel of which 60% was new) might be out of fashion but it’s an excellent wine (see here).
It made me think that there’s a dichotomy between the opinions of wine professionals and those of consumers that’s probably always been there but has escalated in recent times. Critics and buyers, armed with extensive knowledge and experience, are committed to making assessments which can significantly influence the perception and commercial success of a wine. Evaluating quality is obviously necessary in a vastly overtraded market but the danger is that the colloquial “circle jerk” arises, a situation in which members of the trade are guilty of reinforcing each other’s views or attitudes, out of touch with what consumers really want. Light, fresh reds might have geek appeal but there’s also place for big reds made without artifice. Similarly, I’m regularly asked by punters to recommend a rich and round Chardonnay but where to find such a thing these days?
The above is only exacerbated by the tendency in some quarters towards verbose tasting notes, this seemingly done to assert expertise but really the more detail provided serving only to result in the taster talking to himself and alienating others – wine appreciation occurs across multiple sensory channels and people simply do not smell and taste the same way. The point should also be made that there are few abstract and vastly more associative words for odours and flavours – the background culture of the individual wine drinker is important and the wine trade should look to be as inclusive as possible. “Garrigue” as a descriptor means something to the French as does “fynbos” to South Africans but is there one word that would work equally well for both?
On the other side of the spectrum, we find the consumers, who comes to wine with their own complicated set of requirements – wine as socially acceptable drug, wine as investable asset but hopefully also wine as a source of pleasure, something that tastes good and goes well with food. While the best wine professionals are trying to be as responsible as possible in their judgments, consumers are influenced by a multitude of factors, from their own sensory sensitivities through to brand affinity. There are plenty of wines out there that are more status symbol than anything else…
While objectivity in wine appreciation is necessarily unobtainable, the trade has constant exposure to a wide range of wines, which allows its members to assess any one example against a backdrop of industry benchmarks. Consumers, however, approach wine in a less systematic way, allowing personal preferences and experiences to shape their judgements. That’s why wine tourism and the visitor experience is so important.
Ultimately, the disparity between wine professionals and consumers is not an ugly clash of absolutes but it is an interplay that we should all constantly be aware of. Critics provide guidance, shape trends and elevate standards. Consumers infuse emotion and personal connection into their wine experience. The implications for producers in all this that they must balance the pursuit of excellence with the need to cater to diverse consumer palates. Get this right and icon status awaits.
Simonsig in Stellenbosch has just released Langbult Steen Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2022. Previously known as Chenin Avec Chêne, grapes come from a vineyard planted on a long hill (“Langbult”) in 1987, the wine now eligible for certified heritage status with the Old Vine Project.
Spontaneously fermented and matured for 11 months in older 300- and 400-litre barrels, the nose shows top notes of flowers and herbs before citrus and peach, a hint of spice as well as some leesy character while the palate has concentrated fruit and zippy acidity, the finish savoury and even slightly bitter. Alc: 13.5%.
It rated 90 points in the recent Prescient Chenin Blanc Report and it sells for R235 a bottle. It comes across as primary and perhaps a little angular now and should only gain in complexity with a year or two in bottle.
Check out our South African wine ratings database.
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