Nederburg The Winemasters Shiraz 2022
By Christian Eedes, 15 July 2024
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The Winemasters Shiraz 2022 from Nederburg is much talked about after it won best in category, best value and best red wine overall at this year’s Trophy Wine Show. How plausible that a big-volume wine selling for R115 could conquer all before it? Show chairman Michael Fridjhon has analysed some of the issues that this result raises here and all I can usefully add is a tasting note and rating.
Consisting of 96% Shriaz and 4% “other”, grapes were sourced from Stellenbosch, Philadelphia, Paarl and Wellington. Winemaking involved fermentation in stainless steel tank before maturation in mostly French and some American oak for some 15 months.
The nose is very fragrant with notes of red berries, fynbos and white pepper while the palate is medium bodied with pure fruit, unobtrusive oak, lemon-like acidity and crunchy tannins. While not massively intense, it’s uncontrived and immensely likeable. You must be a bit of a grump not to acknowledge the quality relative to price on offer here.
CE’s rating: 92/100.
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Greg Sherwood | 17 July 2024
Blind tastings have their purpose, as do sited tastings. Blind tastings were not necessarily started to catch people out… more to try and level the playing fields and remove some conscious bias. But this past weekend, I drank a Rene Rostaing Cote Rotie Cote Blonde 2005 with Chris Mullineux. A nice treat indeed. But if this wine had been tasted blind on release, is it possible that a wine like the Nederburg could out score it? Possibly. But the benefit of sighted tastings will then tell you that A) the Cote Rotie will only start hitting its straps after 20 years, and B) The Nederburg, however lovely it is in youth, will fade away after 6, 8 or possibly 10 years … if not sooner. The great wines like Rostaing, Lafite, Mouton etc… wear their hard earned pedigree on their label. So by tasting blind and removing this added insight, can sometimes be a bit deceptive… and sometimes, possibly pointless.
Mike Froud of Top Wine SA | 18 July 2024
Come on Greg! ‘Blind’ tastings are never “deceptive” or “pointless”. As you said earlier, they “level the playing fields”. Why should wines that are expected to be really great after 20 years in bottle get really great reviews in their youth when they haven’t yet “hit their straps”? What if in 20 years some vintages don’t match the greatness of others?
James Bosenberg | 16 July 2024
Some food for thought! Thanks for engaging Kwisp.
James Bosenberg | 16 July 2024
Thanks CE, Kwispedoor. Kwisp, I’d like to challenge the notion of blind tasting ‘levelling the playing the field’, so to speak. I refer to Alheit’s set of results in Platters this year. Surely there is so much room for error (is it actually a lack of skill? Pallet fatigue? Sensory tricks?) in blind tasting and in the end I feel it creates a lack of trust to the average wine consumer like myself.
I totally get that scoring wine is not an exact science and there will also be sighted biases no matter how impartial the critic, but it just seems blind tasting almost takes away the skill of the critic (ironically) when it comes to tasting a line up of the same varietal or perhaps, as you say Kwisp, pallet fatigue starts to set in and this is where the problem lies?
In a world of 100 different wine competitions, it starts to dilute things when scores start to vary by more than 5-10 points. In a world of score inflation, that is the difference between a world class wine and a ‘good’ wine.
Again, I write this as a woeful amateur and someone trying to understand blind tasting and scoring, especially when it throws up this score for Nederburg and the Alheit saga.
Kwispedoor | 16 July 2024
I don’t think tasting blind entirely levels the playing field. Many grey areas and shifting dynamics remain, and tasting wine will never be an exact science.
In addition to that, one may consider that Butch has acknowledged that 2022 wasn’t the greatest vintage. Even so, I’d think that his ’22 range deserved at the very least three or four five star accolades. But, being mostly Chenin, his wines must surely have been tasted in large flights at the Platter’s 5-star tasting, which brings us back to the anomalies that come with tasting larger numbers of wine at a time. Some professionals deal better with large flights, but not even they are immune to it.
Christian Eedes | 16 July 2024
Hi Greg and James, It is now general practice that 95 points on the 100-point quality scale is the threshold for gold but I think this is one of the key drivers of score inflation. At Winemag.co.za, we equate 93 points with gold and 95-plus is reserved for “world class” (90 – 92 = silver; and 88 – 89 = bronze). In my mind, therefore, Nederburg Winemasters Shiraz 2022 is worthy of a strong silver.
James Bosenberg | 16 July 2024
This was given 98 in the TWS. On par, you’d say, with a porceleinberg, epilogue, etc. Does this not lend credit to blind scoring being a hit or miss exercise? In theory, I understand it should strip away preconceived notions of what’s in front of you, but I’m struggling to believe this wine is 2 points away from perfection and vastly different from CE’s sighted rating.
Kwispedoor | 16 July 2024
That’s always the thing, James. When encountering the perceived top end Syrahs in a blind tasting, they may not quite get the 98’s and 99’s that they do when their reputations are on full display during a sighted tasting. Similarly, one might argue that a wine like this Nederburg is likely to get pinned somewhere in the 88-92 bracket, even before the first sniff, if tasted sighted. That’s why it’s so valuable to taste blind. However, when tasting blind, the track record of the wine is not there to colour in the fleeting tasting encounter either.
In cases like these, one might argue that the issue is not tasting blind, but rather the tasting of large lineups, where comparison with the other wines and palate fatigue – and even palate confusion – may very well be problematic. I’m pretty sure that this Nederburg would have struggled to get to 98 points if it was tasted blind next to only a Porseleinberg, an Epilogue and a Mullineux Schist. In my view, larger tastings will always bring about some valuable insights, but it will most often come with some anomalies too.
Greg Sherwood | 15 July 2024
Are you courting controvesy with MF again?
Do we know what the winning score from his wine show was? 96/100? That would suggest another “difficult to reconcile” differential. I await Tim James’s indepth analysis in due course. I know he is very adept at rating and reviewing the more value based offerings of the SA wine category… which of course has a massive following… for obvious reasons.