Tim James: The Sadie new releases

It felt rather like returning to a more effortful time of wine-tasting. Up while it was still almost dark, taking the dogs for a quick walk, making a coffee-to-go and then going – starting as the light came up on the 80-minute journey (that’s travelling a bit too fast) to the Paardeberg for a 9am start to the Sadie current release tasting. Putting in perspective my fancies about effort, I’d just had a message from Eben Sadie saying that he was about to start opening and tasting the 100 or so bottles he’d be needing for the three large sit-down tastings he was to give that day. I thought how much he’d be talking through the day – although Eben likes to talk and tell people stuff (stuff people like to hear), that would be tiring enough.

It was a fine, sunny winter morning – cold, my car thermometer initially claimed it was 7^o outside – and the Swartland was green and lovely. About 50 of us (mostly good customers) sat down, one glass apiece, between the two rows of wineglass-shaped cement tanks in the new cellar – full of the current vintage while we tasted the wines of 2024 and, for the two signature bottlings, of 2023.

Acoustics in the cellar were bad, so it was hard, at least where I was, to hear most of the words, unfortunately; the last remnants of a cold didn’t help my ever-suspect acuity; and that famous talking meant we had to move a little too quickly through the later wines. Those minor issues aside, it was all great.

No entirely so the vintage perhaps. It was a difficult one, 2024, especially in the warmer parts, with a punishingly dry growing season, and a compressed harvest: the kind of vintage, said Eben, “that you appreciate but are not going to complain if they don’t come too often”.

Apart from the two additions this year (field blends, from mixed vineyards on the home farm, that I wrote about recently), the wines are well known, so I won’t go into much detail. Eben always likes starting with the red wines, and we did so again, starting with Soldaat, the grenache from high-altitude Piekenierskloof – where, apparently crucially, it gets plenty of solar radiation but not excessive heat. (Even Eben, with his love of WO districts and disdain for wards, talks about Piekenierskloof here, though the wine is labelled Citrusdal Mountain.)  After Columella, this was my favourite red this year. I’ve found Soldaat a bit too light and hipsterish in some recent years, but the 2024, at a ripe 13.5% alcohol (and bone-dry as always), has a subtle, seriously structured though delicate power combining with aromatic charm and youthful complexity to give an already fascinating, lovely wine.

To me, it made the Pofadder cinsault, which followed it, seem a touch simple this year, as well as lightly structured, though it’s fresh and full, textured and with plenty of flavour. I had a feeling it was a bit thwarted and closed still and will gain volume and complexity over the next few years. Songvang, the fieldblend aready discussed, showed again generous red fruit, the fresh acidity succulently mixed with fine tannin. What struck me on this tasting was a touch of Italianate bitterness to the tannins, adding to the note of warm rusticity. A really delightful addition to the portfolio, full of promise.

And then Treinspoor, the Swartland tinta barocca that is always dense, darkly pure and tannic – though less tannic these days. Eben never fails to declare (just a touch defensively?) his great, admiring faith in this grape and the wine it makes and I get a little closer each year to being convinced. This 2024 needs time to bring harmony to the characterful balance.

Early harmony is certainly not lacking in Columella 2023. What to say? It has dark and red fruit charm as well as savoury complexity; finely balanced, intense and dense yet light-feeling, rounded and lovely now, the tannins totally inhering – and will only improve over a great many years. Exciting, great wine.

So to the rather splendid, on the whole, array of white wines. Though I was less impressed with Skerpioen, the chenin-palomino blend off West-Coast chalk, than usual. Rather reductive aromas with a lemony edge; the usual salty note is there, and it’s fresh enough, but the acidity lacks the luscious scorpion bite, and I thought the flavour fell away somewhat.

’T Voetpad, the field blend from the isolated “gates of hell” vineyard in the northern Swartland, is one of the great, remarkable and irreplaceable characters of Cape wine, and the 2024 is no exception. At 14% alcohol it shows amazing but pregnant restraint despite its ripe generosity, complex intensity and tannic power. Oh, and it’s delicious and will mature for a decade.

A particularly elegant vintage of Kokerboom followed. A bit lower in alcohol and not as phenolic, it’s undeniably more elegant, lyrical and refined than Voetpad (which also has a good dollop of the red/green semillon that makes up this Citrusdal Mountain wine) – a more perfect wine, but not superior (whatever either of those two fanciful adjectives might mean). This earlier-picked year I even detected, or at least imagined, some of the green-herbal notes often found in semillon. Always a very long-lived wine in my experience, this might age a bit differently – and I hope will do so equally valiantly.

Twiswind, the new fieldblend I have already discussed without coming to a definitive conclusion, didn’t bring me to a firm opinion this time either. There are many fine things about it, including a winning acidity, but in this line-up it struck me as a touch unready, lacking real intensity and presence. But I look forward to trying it again after a year or more in bottle, and even more look forward to future vintages.

And so to the chenins. Skurfberg from Citrusdal Mountain, with its forceful freshness and ripe richness and rather sumptuous texture is, as always, very satisfying and complete wine. But I found Rotsbank, the home-farm’s newish (but old) acquisition more exciting. Plentiful pure and complex aromas, more fruit charm on a palate that’s also linear and stony, with a phenolic and acid bite. Already irresistible, an excellent wine that I’m sure will welcome a decade in bottle.

Mev Kirsten, the sole Stellenbosch entrant here, tends as always to magnificence, with great but non-insistent power, lingering flavours and a lofty completeness. I wish it wasn’t as pricey as it is, but if any chenin deserves to be, this does.

Palladius is another of the Cape’s great, elegant whites, ever more so. It seems silly to note just a few elements in its complex completeness and finesse, but I got especial pleasure this year from suggestions of fennel and other dry herbs – perhaps stuff growing on sunny, stony Swartland hillsides.

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.