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GRAPE VARIETIES AND WINE STYLES
VARIETIES AND VARIETALISM
The history of grape varieties in the Cape is murky, from the time when van Riebeeck failed to specify in his diaries either the origin or the variety of his imports. Early Cape viticulture would have included Greengrape (Sémillon), White French (Palomino), Steen (Chenin Blanc), Muscat de Frontignan (Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains), Muscat of Alexandria, and Pontac. A large number of other varieties, sometimes mentioned to bewildering effect by travelers, were brought in over the years, though only a few of them became in any way established.
Early commentators do not always give us reason to have confidence in their pronouncements. William Bird in 1882 speaks of Pontac (now identified as the original Teinturier) as “the same as the cote-rotie of the Rhone, the pontac of Guienne . . . and the port grape of the Douro”—a bizarre array. Bird also refers to the “steen grape . . . so called from the same grape on the Rhine.” This suggestion presumably refers to the many German vineyards including stein in their names, and indeed it is far from impossible that some of the grapes referred to as Steen were Riesling rather than Chenin Blanc—which adequately serves to indicate our inevitable uncertainty about the varietal mix of the past.
Any experiments were set aside and things became much simplified, however, during the hurried vineyard expansion during the early decades of British administration in the Cape Colony: Sémillon (Greengrape) came to dominate overwhelmingly. Even so, we cannot be sure of what subsequently happened in terms of varietal planting over the nineteenth century, until some conscious efforts at improvement were made in the last decades, especially through the government farm at Constantia, which raised awareness about varietal identity—particularly when the question of appropriate rootstocks became an issue. The ravages of phylloxera did give producers the opportunity of replanting with superior—or at least recommended—varieties, but the replanting process was slow.
We can, however, start being more confident about which varieties are actually being referred to as of the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1907 the young I.A. Perold, a temporary professor in chemistry at the University of Cape Town who had already shown evidence of his profound interest in wine and viticulture, was sent abroad by the Cape government, which recognized a need to widen the range of grapes available. He was to bring in 177 varieties, which formed the core of a collection that still exists at the Welgevallen Experimental Farm of the University of Stellenbosch (where he became the first professor of viticulture). Perold was also important in identifying various varieties in use locally (and in producing a new one, Pinotage).
But for much of the twentieth century (the KWV years), quantity rather than quality counted. There was little diversification, and a great shift toward the dominance of white grapes suitable for brandy and, later, for fruity table wines. A historical chart of the two most commonly planted varieties after World War II shows a rather gratifying X shape, with Cinsaut’s line plummeting downward and Chenin Blanc’s as inexorably rising: the lines cross at approximately 22 percent of total plantings in 1968. From roughly this period we are in early modern times, starting to move toward the current pattern—though Chardonnay, for instance, was still to make its impact, and the changes brought about by reentry into the international market in the 1990s were a huge boost to the proportions of the “noble” varieties in general and black grapes in particular, at the expense, mostly, of Chenin Blanc.
More statistics regarding the changes in plantings are given in the appendix, and chapters 1 and 2 have pointed to the major shifts over the past forty years, but before we move to a discussion of the roles of the different varieties it is interesting to note again continuing developments in recent years. The leading ten varieties at the end of 2011 were as follows, with the percentage of total plantings (in terms of vineyard area) given in parentheses, together with the change from the percentage fifteen years earlier:
Chenin Blanc (18.2 percent in 2011, down 12.9 percent from 1996)
Cabernet Sauvignon (12.0 percent, up 6.5 percent)
Colombard (11.8 percent, down 0.2 percent)
Syrah (10.3 percent, up 9.5 percent)
Sauvignon Blanc (9.6 percent, up 4.3 percent)
Chardonnay (8.0 percent, up 3.0 percent)
Merlot (6.4 percent, up 4.2 percent)
Pinotage (6.5 percent, up 2.7 percent)
Ruby Cabernet (2.2 percent, up 1.3 percent)
Muscat of Alexandria (2.1 percent, down 4.2 percent)
These ten make up more than 85 percent of the total plantings as measured by area. (Note that the percentages for 1996 differ from those originally published by the authorities because until 2003 they included Sultana, virtually entirely used for raisins and table grapes; these figures are adjusted to exclude Sultana.)
VARIETALISM, BLENDS, AND LABELS
Varietal naming of wines is currently dominant in South Africa, at all quality levels, as in most of the New World since it emerged as an inexorable practice in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. This procedure is, of course, not inevitable, and earlier practices and debates in South Africa related instead to the European procedure of identifying wines by geographical origin—although reference was generally to European rather than local areas, except in the case of Constantia. Baron Carl von Babo was not the first to complain when he commented in his first report as government viticulturist in 1885: “It is entirely useless and misleading to adopt foreign names for Cape wines; such names as Constantia, Paarl, Breede River, and Montagu on the labels of bottles containing properly prepared and manipulated Cape wine will read as well as Sherry or Madeira. . . . Also the name Hock is false and unjustifiable.”
In fact, there have long been some Cape wines named for varieties, either wholly or partly and with uncertain accuracy. Most notable were probably Hanepoot (Muscat of Alexandria), Muscadel (Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains), Steen, Pontac, and something called Frontignac (discussed later)—sometimes used together with “Constantia,” the only Cape area to have attained sufficient prestige to be really useful as a brand. All of those varieties were to some extent associated with a particular style of wine. But, judging by the insouciance, confusion, and ignorance with which varietal names were handled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (precisely because they were not widely considered to be immensely relevant in themselves but were generally used to indicate a style of wine), varietal naming was inevitably subordinate to a myriad of hopeful associations, such as Mallaga, Vintint, Moselle, Vin de Grave, Rheinwein, Rota, and even Boene—that is, Beaune.
While varietalism is a strong force in South Africa, monovarietalism is a little less so, as there is also a tendency toward producing blended wines. The tendency is notable, for example, in the use and image of the red Bordeaux varieties. A rough estimate, based on the summary of wine ratings in the 2013 edition of Platter’s Guide, suggests that there are approximately equal numbers of varietal Cabernet Sauvignons and blends using a significant proportion of Cabernet. This seems to be very different from the situation in, say, California and Australia. In the Cape, the authority of the Bordeaux example would appear to be simply greater. In California varietal consciousness appears to imply that if varietalism is good, then monovarietalism is better. In South Africa there can be observed an evident pride in including all five of the main Bordeaux black grapes—more than a few wines even allude to this in their names (De Toren Fusion V, Constantia Glen Five, Raka Quinary, and Gabriëlskloof Five Arches among them), in something of a triumph of tradition over terroir.
This tendency to blend is nothing more than that: there are probably more varietal Syrahs than Cabernet Sauvignons, for example, but fewer blends based on Syrah than on Cabernet. But where an estate produces both a varietal Cabernet (or Merlot or Cabernet Franc, for that matter) and a Bordeaux blend, the latter is likely to be the flagship wine and to take first choice of grapes when it comes to assembling the cuvées. The general rule in the Cape seems to be that wines labeled simply with the name of the property (like Morgenster and Vergelegen) or with an invented name (Buitenverwachting Christine, Mvemve Raats de Compostella) are blends, while the varietal Cabernets are usually named as such.
A factor that must have played some role in all this is that generic naming based on European models was dealt a heavy blow in 1935. In that year the so-called Crayfish Agreement between the South African and French governments involved the dropping here of names and words associated with French appellations in exchange for a commitment to buy South African crayfish. (It’s pleasant, incidentally, to note than an exemption was given to Chateau Libertas as it had been on the market since 1932; it is now one of the most venerable of local wine labels—and still spelled without a circumflex on the first a of Chateau.) The names of German vineyards remained to be plundered, however, and increasingly were—hardly surprisingly, since the German influence on winemaking here has been strong. Even now many popular wines are marketed (only locally, of course) under such long-established names as Kupferberger Auslese and Grünberger Stein. Stein even became a generic description for off-dry or semisweet white wine, inevitably causing some confusion because the more general name for Chenin Blanc remained Steen until comparatively recent years. But in Fairest Vineyards by Kenneth Maxwell, the first near-complete list and description of all Cape wines, published in 1966, the only French that creeps in is the occasional Vin Rouge, Vin Blanc, and Rosé, alongside a few Chiantis and the Germans. Apart from the many “Sherries,” the remainder mostly go simply by the name of the producer either alone or with a varietal appendage or with a more-or-less fanciful name.
Before the Wine of Origin legislation of 1973 there were no controls over varietal naming. Such had been the misuse of variety names that restrictions were introduced gradually; for instance, a requirement that a wine had to include at least 75 percent of a variety in order to be given that variety’s name was phased in over a period of years. Today, however, the international standard of 85 percent is observed. When a South African producer wishes to indicate on a label the different varieties that have gone into a blend, this is a matter of bureaucracy and paperwork—meaning that in practice, details of blends are not always given. Where they are, there is no requirement to indicate percentages, but the varieties must be given in descending order according to their proportions: it is not unusual for a producer to have a wine called Shiraz-Merlot one year and be obliged to change the name to Merlot-Shiraz the next, if the majority component has changed. If the varieties are listed, then usually all must be listed (though there are provisions for the smallest contributors to be omitted).
RED WINE VARIETIES
THE BORDEAUX BLACK GRAPES
Cabernet Sauvignon
In a brief discussion of Cabernet Sauvignon in the first (1980) edition of the annual Platter Guide, it is unquestioningly remarked that it “produces wines hard and astringent in youth. . . . A minimum of seven years ageing should be given a full-bodied cabernet to do it justice.” How times have changed! There certainly are some local wines that will benefit from seven years or longer in bottle, but comparatively few that are not made with the hope of giving at least some pleasure when they are released a few years after bottling. In the 1980s and into the 1990s (but seldom nowadays), serious red wines tended to be offered for sale only three or four years from their vintage date, and the advantages of further maturation were obvious to equally serious wine-lovers. Even at a modest level, Cabernets were expected to improve.
It is uncertain when Cabernet was introduced to the Cape vineyard. When it was being grown with some seriousness at Groot Constantia in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the claim was made that it had been growing there for about fifty years. During the first half of the twentieth century it gained a good deal of prestige, even though most of the wines associated with Cabernet were blended—above all with Cinsaut, ostensibly to “soften” the wine, but also to eke out the small quantities available. One of the most famous wines of the mid twentieth century was the GS Cabernet Sauvignon made experimentally in 1966 and 1968 by or for (details remain uncertain) George Spies, production director at Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery. This bore a significant “100%” beneath the name of the variety on the minimalist label, testifying to the unusualness of the percentage, and also probably alluding to what was probably part of Spies’s experiment: to show that Cape Cabernet could make a valid wine by itself. The wine is still splendidly alive now—as are some older so-called Cabernets.
Plantings started to increase through the 1970s, but even by 1990 it remained under 4 percent of the national vineyard. Paarl and Stellenbosch had and continue to have the largest Cabernet plantings, but it is to be found virtually everywhere to some extent, such is its comparatively forgiving nature and its reputation for quality. There is a great deal of high-cropping Cabernet churned out, for example, by the cooperatives of the warmest regions (from the Swartland to Robertson); these wines are usually just about acceptable, adequately fruity and ripe, often with the expected pseudo-serious gloss supplied by oak chips but with tannins reined in by clever winemaking. Particularly at that level, no customers expect to have to wait a few years for tannins to soften before drinking their Cabernets.
The same truth applies at more ambitious levels too, in most instances, although some of the most classic, such as Vergelegen’s, can be austere in their youth. But the majority of the best, while they should improve with at least five years in bottle, are made to provide satisfaction at release: with forward fruit, ripely smooth, and soft tannin and acid structures. If the expensive new oak is still very obvious, as it often is—well, many of the customers expect that and, sadly, welcome it as a sign of quality, or at least of price. These are, in any case, truths common to all red wines and also hardly unique to the Cape. Tannic or early-charming, Cabernet Sauvignon remains undoubtedly the grandest of the Cape’s red wine grapes, its prestige enhanced by its association with some of the finest red blends—though challenged these days by some Syrahs and a few Pinot Noirs.
Cabernet remains comfortably ahead of Syrah as the most planted red variety in the Cape, although at the end of 2011 it was down a little from its peak in 2004, but still more than double the hectarage of fifteen years previously. In 2000, well over 40 percent of the vines were under four years of age; now, as the vineyards mature, that figure is less than 3 percent. There are now more than 12,000 hectares planted, nearly half of them in the Stellenbosch-Paarl heartland.
Merlot
Merlot’s critical reputation in the Cape is even more uneasy than it is in, say, California or Australia. Although there are a few good examples, many show an overtly herbaceous element, often expressed as mint, and often combined with an ultraripe lushness consequent on late harvesting that has endeavored to combat the greenness. Like Cabernet, it was widely planted, but proved less forgiving of unsuitable soils and climates. Its supposed tendency to make soft, round, and supple wines when compared with most of the other Bordeaux black grapes means first that it has historically been used in the Cape, as in Bordeaux and elsewhere, more frequently as a contributor to blends than for a varietal wine. Second, where it has been offered alone (sometimes with a stiffening of Cabernet), it has acquired the status of a particularly easygoing style of wine as much as a variety—even if not so markedly here as the film Sideways showed the case to be in the United States.
It seems that the little Merlot that was around in the 1970s was used for blending, and it was certainly planted by Billy Hofmeyr at Welgemeend in that decade for his Bordeaux blend. It has also worked well as a partner to Pinotage, at Middelvlei for example. Overgaauw is credited with the first varietal bottling for its 1982 Merlot. There are now nearly as many varietal Merlots as there are Bordeaux-style blends, though not as many as there are Cabernet Sauvignons, and they are in most cases less ambitious and less expensive wines than either of those two categories. A few consistently good Merlots are made, including those of Thelema and Bein. As with other “noble reds,” but even more than most, plantings of Merlot increased substantially over the fifteen years to 2011, and it now occupies more than 6 percent of the total vineyard, in third place among the reds and seventh overall. There is a wide distribution (cool Elgin has a promising newcomer from Shannon Vineyards, for example), but Stellenbosch and greater Paarl have the largest plantings.
Cabernet Franc
For much of the twentieth century there was a little Cabernet Franc grown alongside Cabernet Sauvignon, gaining more recognition with the rise of the Bordeaux-style blend, of which it came to be seen as an increasingly useful part, adding some perfume, complexity, and even elegance. It was widely observed to perform extremely well in a number of areas (the Helderberg in Stellenbosch has been rather more associated with Franc than anywhere else), and it became ever more used in such blends and started playing a larger role in some of them. It had a parallel career as a solo performer, with Landskroon the pioneer here, and there are now a few dozen varietal Francs, some of them (such as Raats, Warwick, Raka, and Buitenverwachting) very good. It is generally producers aiming at elegance who want Franc, who also delight in its aromatic profile and are not scared (when “herbaceous” tends to be a term of abuse in red wine) to welcome the leafy note that often, but not always, accompanies even ripe Franc grapes. Growth in plantings has been fairly spectacular: there are now more than 1,000 hectares devoted to it, a threefold growth over fifteen years. Franc is most important to the wines of Stellenbosch, greater Paarl, and Constantia.
Petit Verdot
It was long thought that Welgemeend contained Petit Verdot, but this proved to be a misidentification, and the 1996 figure of 10.3 hectares of Petit Verdot might even have been exaggerated. In the years since then, however, from that minuscule base it has seen proportionately the fastest growth of any variety: by 2011 there were 675 hectares. An increasing number of varietal wines have been made—some twenty-five by 2013 (possibly more as experiments than with deep conviction about the suitability of the grape for going solo, and none are immensely convincing)—but undoubtedly the main purpose of its cultivation has been, as in Bordeaux, to use it to complement the other traditional varieties in the blend, adding complexity and sometimes depth of color.
Malbec
What is true of Petit Verdot is also true to only a slightly lesser extent of Malbec, in terms of growth and its role in the blend. But Malbec might well soon outstrip Petit Verdot, not because of its actual or theoretical usefulness in blends but because of its suitability as a varietal wine—with the imprimatur of Argentina. There are already about thirty audaciously fruity and delicious Malbecs made (including Annex Kloof, Paul Wallace, High Constantia, and Diemersfontein, for example) and probably there will be more, as more producers and consumers become aware of the variety’s charms.
Other Bordeaux-Related Black Grapes
It might be fanciful to associate Pontac with Bordeaux, just because the name connects it to the well-known historical family from there and therefore with the associated area south of Bordeaux city. But Perold showed that Pontac, so important here in the nineteenth century, was identical with Teinturier (the original “dyer” grape, also known as Teinturier Mâle or du Cher). It seems to have come to the Cape in the seventeenth century (when it was also first noted in France). Its great career in old Constantia had late echoes in a number of fortified sweet wines, and a few table wines were made until the 1990s, but the last heavily virused block has now been pulled out. It would seem the last wine made in South Africa from Pontac was a Cape Vintage port from De Wet Cellar in Worcester; but in fact, it looks as though four Pontac vines were saved by the relevant authorities and cleared of virus, and at least one commercial winegrower is intent on propagating it once more.
It was thought for some time that the local crossing called Roobernet, released in 1990, was derived from Pontac and Cabernet Sauvignon, but tests in 2007 proved the parents to be Cabernet and Alicante Bouschet (the latter is a French crossing with Teinturier in its background, so that Roobernet is indeed related to Pontac). It scarcely matters: there are still only some 140 hectares planted, and Roobernet seems unassured of a great destiny.
Ruby Cabernet is quantitatively much more important, although this high-yielding American cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Carignan is of no great significance for high-quality wine. There is a good deal of it about—mostly in the hotter areas, particularly Worcester, for which it was bred—and it actually ranks ninth in surface area: at well over 2,000 hectares nearly triple the area it occupied in 1992 (it was first planted here in 1982). A handful of varietal wines are made, but most goes into proprietary red blends, generally sold in boxes.
The Bordeaux Blend
If the continued strength of the Bordeaux blend tradition in South Africa is based on proven success, the tradition was begun on the basis of the authority of the Médoc and an attempt to replicate its strengths in a South African context. Billy Hofmeyr, a land surveyor by profession, became a winemaker initially by avocation, inspired by his love of claret. His Paarl farm, Welgemeend, produced, in the 1979 vintage, the Cape’s first commercial classically Bordeaux-style blend. Meerlust and Kanonkop followed rapidly. The success of these wines, in a decade when the estates were becoming increasingly important to fine-wine production, led to a proliferation of the style. It would probably be true to say that most such blends continue to be based on Cabernet Sauvignon, but experimentation with the Bordeaux grapes has led to a great range of cépages. Even Welgemeend soon produced a second version, with Merlot and Malbec predominating. Nowadays, Merlot is the lead variety in, for example, Morgenster; Cabernet Franc leads in an increasing number of examples, of which Boekenhoutskloof’s Journeyman is only one of the more recent.
The somewhat abstract determination to include “all five” main Bordeaux black grapes has been mentioned (fortunately for such producers’ peace of mind, Carmenère has no presence here). It took two famous Bordelais winemakers, Bruno Prats and Hubert de Boüard, to speak slightly ironically of the authenticity of Syrah in a Bordeaux blend when they released the first vintage of Anwilka, the wine in which they have a direct interest. They were, of course, referring to the older practice of adding sunny Rhône wine to Bordeaux in poor vintages, as well as to some plantings that persist even now in Bordeaux. Using Syrah is not a necessity, but nor are any rules broken, when making the mix in the Cape, and producers here are far from alone in finding it a satisfactory partnership, especially when they want to bring some early complexity to a wine.
The Bordeaux blend is undoubtedly one of the strongest categories in South African reds—no doubt at least partly because it is one on which many producers lavish the most care. Of producers with both a blend and a varietal Cabernet, it is most commonly the former that gets the best barrels of Cab.
THE RED RHÔNE AND MEDITERRANEAN VARIETIES
Syrah/Shiraz
There is no doubt that the huge growth in plantings of Syrah from the 1990s onward has been prompted by its international fashionability, which in turn was stimulated—initially at least—more by the offerings from Australia at all levels of quality than by the great wines of the northern Rhône. In fact, some authorities have thought it likely that Syrah has been present in the Cape in a small way for a very long time, if not necessarily continuously, and may have been among the earliest plantings. Unambiguous references are in short supply, however, and it is also more than possible that Australia was, more recently, the source. Certainly the influence of Australia on South African Syrah plantings long predated recent decades. Following a visit there toward the end of the nineteenth century, C.T. de Waal, the enterprising manager of Groot Constantia, recommended that the Department of Agriculture (which exercised a monopoly on the importing of grapevines) should send to South Australia for vine cuttings. Syrah was prime among the imports; known in Australia as Hermitage, it understandably impressed him more than Cinsaut, the local usurper of that great terroir’s name.
It must have been this more immediate origin that led to South Africa and Australia sharing Shiraz as a primary synonym for Syrah. Interestingly, although Perold in his 1926 treatise spells the former version in the now-accepted way, during the 1930s the spellings Schiraz and Schiras are also found. The use of Syrah as an alternative grew once it became an official synonym here after an application by Stellenzicht estate for its 1994 bottling, made by André van Rensburg. Van Rensburg wanted to use the French rather than the traditional name, as he insisted that his wine was different from “old style, sweaty, horsy Shiraz.” This excellent wine was perhaps the one that most alerted winemakers and wine lovers to the local potential of the variety.
The grape had made little headway in the Cape in the first seventy-odd years since its (re)appearance here. Although a few varietal wines were made (the first varietally labeled example was from Bellingham in 1957), what little was planted mostly went into good-quality blends with Cabernet and Cinsaut. When the WO legislation was introduced in 1973, there were fewer than half a million Syrah vines in the country. The great leap forward started in the 1990s, and plantings grew steeply to well over 10,000 hectares in 2011. Syrah is the only red-wine grape that has increased its plantings every single year in the fifteen up to 2011, and it is now the fourth most planted grape: more than 10 percent of the total vineyard area, and more than 20 percent of black-grape plantings.
A necessary corollary of all the new plantings is that there are still many youngish vineyards around—although the grape’s age distribution profile has changed dramatically in recent years. At the end of 2011 only 35 percent of vines were under ten years old (in 2008 the proportion was 75 percent). On the other hand, only 7 percent were older than fifteen years, and a mere 2 percent over twenty. Fashionability has meant that Syrah is planted heavily in all parts—from cool Elgin and Elim to the hot Klein Karoo. Clearly the picture of Syrah in the Cape will be different in ten and twenty years’ time, with more mature vineyards and a better sense of terroirs most suited to it. What is already encouraging is that good wines are coming from many sources, although performance generalizations are difficult, especially as winemaking still tends to dominate.
Syrah is used more as a monovarietal wine than in blends. The modish addition of a dollop of Viognier (a practice ultimately deriving from Côte-Rôtie, though the immediate inspiration is Australia) is perhaps waning, and anyway now done with more subtlety than was often the case in the past. Mourvèdre and Grenache, in the style of the southern Rhône, are more common minor blending partners (not always announced). The Swartland—with the inspiration of first Charles Back’s Spice Route and more definitively with Eben Sadie—has emerged as the leader in such blends, but it is far from alone in producing them. Nico van der Merwe, Catherine Marshall, Newton Johnson, and La Motte are among the other sources of fine Syrah-based blends of this type.
The Australian model of Syrah-Cabernet blends has not been compelling here, although Syrah is often successfully used within what would otherwise be Bordeaux-style blends. Rust en Vrede’s flagship Estate Wine has long been of this type, as has Rouge from nearby Alto; and this has fostered something of a minor subregional tradition on the Helderberg and Simonsberg slopes (Uva Mira, Haskell, and Guardian Peak among those fitting in). Anwilka’s was a more recent high-profile launch of a predominantly Cabernet-Syrah blend.
Cinsaut and Other Varieties Associated with Southern France
Cinsaut is of great historical significance in the Cape. It has been grown here since the middle of the nineteenth century and was known locally as Hermitage (for unclear reasons) until the trade agreement with France in 1935 prevented taking the names of French wine regions in vain. Perold had already made the formal identification with Cinsaut (often spelled Cinsault) of southern France, and that name became widely used. Until the rise of Chenin Blanc, it was South Africa’s most planted variety, occupying nearly a third of the vineyard and used for everything from brandy, through rosé, to sweet, dry, and fortified red wines. The quality range was extreme. Records are rare, but apparently even some of the best “Cabernet Sauvignons” and blends of the mid twentieth century included a greater or lesser percentage of Cinsaut. From the 1960s onward, uprootings ensured that it now accounts for less than 2 percent of the total—mostly in the warmer regions, but a surprising amount lingers in Stellenbosch. Some 27 percent of Cinsaut vines are more than twenty years old, and a mere 2 percent are under four.
Some ambitious new producers of the Swartland particularly have sought out old bushvine Cinsaut for inclusion in their serious Syrah-based blends (Mullineux and Badenhorst, for example). There are some splendid old bushvine vineyards of Cinsaut in that area, and Sadie Family Pofadder is one of very few ambitious monovarietal Cinsauts in the country. But there will undoubtedly be more, and not only from the Swartland, as winemakers come to realize that the results obtainable from well-farmed, low-cropping vines are a world apart from the insipidity of Cape Cinsaut in the late twentieth century. Cinsaut’s main claim to fame, or notoriety, in the Cape remains, however, its role in the parenthood of Pinotage.
Carignan, too, lingers in one or two decent wines made from old vineyards, notably Fairview’s Pegleg from the Swartland, and it finds its way into a few good blends in that area; but the variety has never been present here in anything like significant volumes. Grenache, like Carignan, is a grape that is originally Spanish but internationally best known for its voluminous presence in the south of France. The original importation into South Africa seems to have been from Spain, and it was established (mostly for fortified wine production) by the time Perold identified it in 1910. Some is now being planted, but as the variety is generally regarded as requiring more vine maturity than most to make decent quality, the tiny volume of older Grenache (notably in the Piketberg area) is keenly sought after by ambitious producers of both Rhône-style blends (especially in the Swartland, but also Ken Forrester’s the Gypsy, for example), and monovarietal wines (by Neil Ellis, Vriesenhof, Sadie Family, Tierhoek), of which the numbers are growing. There is also a little of the red (gris) and white versions.
Mourvèdre, the French name for the Spanish grape Monastrell, is officially known in South Africa primarily as Mataro, reflecting its importation from Australia at the end of the nineteenth century, though it is invariably referred to by its French synonym. Of the little group of varieties associated mostly with the south of France, it is probably the most fashionable in the Cape, but plantings are still very small. There are some good varietal wines made from it (from Beaumont, Spice Route, and Tobias, for example), but its main role is probably as a minority partner with Syrah—the best known of which blends is Sadie Family Columella.
Tannat, the grape from southwestern France, has risen from nothing to nearly 75 hectares in 2011. As yet it mostly disappears into blends—including Zorgvliet’s flagship Richelle, otherwise a Bordeaux blend—but a few rather tough and alcoholic varietal examples are made.
Petite Sirah is officially known as Durif, and exists only in some small plantings made by Charles Back at Fairview and Spice Route. Back is a great believer in the future of Petite Sirah in the Cape, and it would be foolhardy to disagree with the assessment of such a man.
ITALIAN VARIETIES
One might have expected South African interest in Sangiovese, and even more in the varieties of the southern Italian mainland and Sicily, but official indifference and widespread ignorance have dictated otherwise in the past. Difficulties and delays in importing stock are still a deterrent, but interest in the grapes of Italy is growing, and Sangiovese, with 61 hectares in 2011—a huge increase since 1996—is making a modest showing: there are half a dozen varietal examples, and some blends. On a smaller scale, the same is true of the Piedmont-based varieties Nebbiolo and Barbera. Strangely, considering the climatic difference involved as well as the notorious difficulty of succeeding elsewhere with the grape, Nebbiolo was mentioned in Perold’s 1926 treatise as doing well in warmer sites in the Cape, but little seems to have been known of it subsequently until it became the first of the Italian varieties to appear on a label here: that of Steenberg in the late 1990s. Steenberg Nebbiolo is now becoming increasingly convincing. The few local producers of Italian extraction have understandably shown interest in making wines from these grapes, but unfortunately the examples from Idiom and Morgenster have generally been subjected to overripeness, precluding them from serious interest. There is also a minor but interesting fashion to blend the three available Italian varieties together in serious wines, which can work very well for Nederburg Ingenuity and for Bouchard Finlayson Hannibal (which contrives to include also Pinot Noir and Syrah). Zinfandel/Primitivo, which has been planted in a small way in the Cape for many decades, has never aroused much interest—although Blaauwklippen has made it something of a feature of its range—and now seems to be on the decline, even while other Italians are prospering.
PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH VARIETIES
As with Italian, the lack of penetration by Spanish and Portuguese varieties is unfortunate to the point of being scandalous in light of similarities of climate and conditions—that is, leaving aside Garnacha and Monastrell, Spaniards that entered the country with French passports. And various port varieties have been here for some time and are increasingly being used for table wines as well as fortified ones, especially by the port producers of the Klein Karoo. Tinta Barocca (the official misspelling of Tinta Barroca) is by far the most extensively planted of them, although it had just 221 hectares in 2011, which is in fact a big decrease from 1996’s figure, while the plantings of the finest variety, Touriga Nacional, has quadrupled to 87 hectares in the same period. Eben Sadie is now making a wine from old Tinta Barroca vines, which is bound to increase interest. Other port varieties are grown in a small way, including Tempranillo/Tinta Roriz and Tinta Amarela/Trincadeira.
OTHER BLACK GRAPES
Pinotage
Whether South Africa’s “own” grape is ever to provide a unique selling point is surely starting to seem doubtful to even its greatest admirers. While varietal Pinotage and Pinotage-charactered blends do reasonably well in the international market, as they do at home, and a rare few are even lauded, the grape continues to have its implacable detractors, both locally and internationally. There are, of course, many passionate defenders and advocates of Pinotage—but as they are mostly local, there is often some discernible element of self-interest or of patriotic stirrings. Yet Pinotage makes enough good wines to establish that it is certainly not “vile” (as British writer Jamie Goode once called it).
The variety dates to 1924, when Professor Perold successfully crossed Pinot Noir and Cinsaut. The latter grape was known in South Africa at the time as Hermitage, hence the second part of the portmanteau name later given to the cross. Perold, one story has it, planted four seeds in the flower garden of his university-owned house. Two years later he left the university and in 1928 a young lecturer rescued the young plants from a team clearing the garden and took them to Professor Theron at Elsenburg Agricultural College. It is possible that Theron knew about the seedlings if they had, rather, been planted at the university’s Welgevallen Experimental Farm. Different accounts persist (Pinotage’s most thorough historian, Peter F. May, has been unable to resolve the discrepancies). The young plants were grafted onto rootstocks in either 1932 or 1935 by Theron, who proceeded to evaluate the new variety. He and Perold then selected the strongest of the young plants for propagation and gave it its name (“Herminot” was a possibility, too).
In 1941 the first wine from Pinotage was made at the small Welgevallen winery by C.T. de Waal. The first commercial plantings seem to have been near Somerset West in 1943. But in 1953, Bellevue and Kanonkop also planted this unknown new variety. In 1959 a Bellevue wine made from Pinotage was named best wine at the Cape Young Wine Show. The wine was marketed in 1961 by Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery under the Lanzerac brand, the first label to carry the new variety’s name.
Since then, the grape has inevitably had its vicissitudes in terms of producer and consumer popularity. The grape was viticulturally undemanding, and quite widely planted during the 1960s. It came to occupy about 2 percent of the vineyard, but by the early 1990s its hectarage had grown little and it was the second-cheapest red grape in South Africa. The mid-1990s wave of international enthusiasm or curiosity about South African wine added impetus to Pinotage. It seemed an omen when a Kanonkop Pinotage received the Robert Mondavi Award as the best red wine at the 1991 International Wine and Spirits Competition in London. Prices for Pinotage grapes rose dramatically through the 1990s and so did plantings, which reached a high point in 2001 when Pinotage occupied 7.3 percent of the national vineyard. But thereafter plantings fell away (as prices dropped even more than for most other red varieties), and its relative status plummeted. By 2011 its share was down to 6.5 percent. We can presume that this is not the end of the story in the fashionability or otherwise of Pinotage.
Pinotage is grown widely around the Cape, with most of it in Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Swartland. What does seem clear is that the best wines come off older, dryland bushvines—and there are, in fact, still a number of producing vineyards dating from the 1960s; although, as the notable result of such conditions is comparatively low-yielding vines, this is perhaps the essential reason for the higher quality. Such vineyards are mainly responsible for fine Pinotages from, for example, the Kanonkop, Meerendal, and DeWaal estates.
No doubt Perold’s hopes were that his cross would have the inherent greatness of Pinot Noir combined with Cinsaut’s prolific ease and tolerance of hot days. But strange things emerge in such processes, of course—who would have imagined, for example, that two grapes that tended to produce light-colored wines would merge to produce a grape giving deep color? As to the elegance and finesse characteristic of good Pinot Noir, few would claim that these number among Pinotage’s virtues, although there certainly are some more lightly made Pinotages with a perfume and grace that recall this side of the grape’s origins, and after the best versions have been ten years or so in bottle, its noble ancestry seems by no means implausible. Many have aged well: tasted in 2010, the Lanzerac 1963 was splendid, lively and fresh with not too much grip and deep, lingering fruit. More recent wines than that, notably Kanonkops, have also shown the ability to mature beneficially over a decade or more.
The problems? There are indeed a few, though it must be stressed that as viticulturists and especially winemakers have learned to deal with the grape these are encountered increasingly rarely. Judicious winemaking reduces to a whisper the sweet acetone pungency (deriving from isoamyl acetate), and the trace—or more—of bitterness that emerged in the 1990s particularly is now rarer, and often even attractive when at a very low level. Pinotage is prone to deliver big tannins, a characteristic exacerbated by the overoaking inflicted by some ambitious winemakers. In fact, there is perhaps more ambition around than a lot of Pinotage can take, and too much patriotic anxiety also, as well as “cultural cringe.” Without at all decrying the very good Pinotage wines made by a number of producers (apart from the few already mentioned here, one should add at least Beyerskloof, Grangehurst, Simonsig, and L’Avenir), the great virtues of less-grand wines should be mentioned: lightly wooded, sufficiently ripe, delicious examples like the standard Beyerskloof, now made for an international audience in huge volumes.
Using Pinotage in blends has been a less purist track to the goal of a South African style of wine that will be both unique and compelling. The idea of a “Cape blend” has had some success among eager producers at least, so that the phrase appears on a number of labels at all price levels. The minimum percentage needed for a wine to be considered a Cape blend is a matter of some debate even among the advocates of the idea, and any regulation around the matter is a long way off—not least because there are a number of producers who dislike the idea of one recipe arrogating to itself a name that implies such authority.
In fact, Pinotage frequently works happily with other varieties. The first wine to make a declared virtue of blending it with other grapes was Welgemeend Amadé in 1979, which also included Grenache and Syrah to make an indigenous equivalent of the southern Rhône blend. There was no general enthusiasm for the idea until the first half of the 1990s, when Uiterwyk (now DeWaal) introduced its Estate wine, which took on the Cape blend moniker from 1994; a number of other wineries subsequently took up the idea. Generally both Bordeaux and Rhône varieties feature in such blends. Pinotage tends, in fact, to be the minority component, partly because it tends to dominate. This dominance typically becomes much less pronounced after a few years in bottle—a maturation that is well deserved, as some of these wines have shown (Beyerskloof Synergy, Clos Malverne Auret, DeWaal, Grangehurst, and Kaapzicht among them). In terms of style, as with varietal Pinotage, the blends range from the comparatively restrained to the large, powerful, and lush; from modest, scarcely oaked, graceful wines to august, ambitious wines matured in all-new French oak.
Pinotage also makes a good rosé and does occasional service in other styles of wine, from sparkling to fortified. But the big success story for the “national grape” in recent years, locally and increasingly internationally, has been so-called “coffee Pinotage.” Pioneered at Diemersfontein in the early 2000s by its then-winemaker, Bertus Fourie, it basically implies a wine fermented on highly toasted oak staves to give a strong mocha character. There are now numerous big-brand examples—somewhat to the horror of Pinotage’s true believers.
Pinot Noir
This famously difficult variety has a short history of real success in the Cape, but has made great, even exciting progress during this century. Plantings are growing but still small, just over 1 percent of the total, and by far the larger part of the Pinot harvest goes into sparkling wine. The number of genuinely good examples of varietal Pinot can be counted on a pair of hands, but the number is growing, and what’s more, from varied geographical origins.
Pinot was probably imported by Perold in the second decade of the twentieth century; in his Treatise on Viticulture of 1927 he describes it as producing on the university farm “a wine of high quality . . . beautifully coloured, strong, full-bodied wine with an excellent bouquet.” Some Pinot seems to have found its way in 1920 to a very short-lived career at Alto (it ripened too early to be easily suitable for blended wine), but it found a warmer welcome at Muratie later in the twenties. For many decades, Muratie’s was the only South African example. Perold’s interest in the variety at the time was also marked by his crossing it with Cinsaut to produce Pinotage.
The prelude to the modern era of Pinot in South Africa came in the late 1970s, when a number of more ambitious producers planted it and attempted to make a good wine from it—foolhardy and obsessed producers, perhaps, since the prevailing wisdom was that the grape could not successfully transplant from Burgundy. At their inspirational head was Tim Hamilton-Russell and his winemaker, Peter Finlayson, in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. The problem that eventually became apparent was that the approved clone was a Swiss one, BK5, developed for sparkling wine. Finlayson soon moved on to another little bit of Burgundy in the valley, and his first Pinot, of 1991, was made from grapes grown in Elgin, where better clonal material had been experimentally planted in the early 1980s. It was immediately apparent to many commentators that this superior clonal material was the only way forward. All significant producers of Pinot with experience in Burgundy have by now replanted to a handful of Burgundian clones.
The Hemel-en-Aarde region and Elgin remain the joint headquarters, as it were, of Pinot production, with a number of good new producers joining the old guard—Newton Johnson, Sumaridge, and Crystallum among them in Hemel-en-Aarde, and Oak Valley (the original supplier to Bouchard Finlayson), Catherine Marshall, and Paul Cluver in Elgin. There are also fine examples emerging from other coolish areas, such as the higher slopes of Franschhoek, where clever work in the Chamonix vineyards has led to a dramatic upcurve in quality. And in the cool heights of the Outeniqua Mountains, Herold is showing what can be done with Pinot in the most surprising places, as is Fryer’s Cove up the West Coast. Pinot is among the varieties being experimented with in Super Single’s high-lying and continental vineyards of Sutherland-Karoo. A few decent examples are made in warmer Stellenbosch, notably Meerlust’s.
The growing sophistication of winemakers and viticulturists, well traveled and acquainted with Pinots not only of Burgundy but also of New Zealand and Oregon, is no doubt as significant a factor in quality improvements as is the improvement in clonal material and virus-cleaned vines. Viticultural methods remain varied—Bouchard Finlayson, for example, used high-density planting and Burgundian-style trellising from the outset, but many others adopt more standard South African practices with success. Overuse of new oak remains something of a temptation for some in the cellar, as does an affection for very ripe fruit and consequent high alcohols, and a reliance on extracted tannin rather than acidity for structure; but if these are faults (and they are not so for everyone), they tend to be minor ones these days. Despite the excitement of what is happening with the fickle grape, there is little doubt but that Pinot Noir will always occupy a tiny niche in the edifice of Cape wine, given the dearth of suitably cool locations with enough water for supplementary irrigation.
WHITE WINE VARIETIES
CHARDONNAY
When ambitious estate winemakers in the 1970s turned to Chardonnay, they found only the badly virused and diseased clones at the Stellenbosch University collection. Danie de Wet of De Wetshof in Robertson was one of the pioneers of the variety (he produced the one Chardonnay listed in the 1980 edition of the annual Platter Guide), and he says, “From day one we knew that we must get better material.” Unfortunately, as described in chapter 2, illegal imports seemed the only way to do this in a reasonable space of time—and unfortunately, too, much of what was brought in proved to be Auxerrois. But better planting material did become available during the 1980s; plantings grew from negligible levels to about 1.5 percent of the total by 1990, and continued to rise.
The style in the early years also tended to reflect the new-world fashion for heavy oaking, though a few producers, like Hamilton Russell and De Wetshof, were making some fine wines even then. But the quality of Chardonnay in the Cape improved at least as much as any other variety in the 1990s, and there is no doubt that now there are some very fine, ageworthy examples. Jancis Robinson was on the judging panel of a local competition in 2007 that awarded a Museum Class trophy to a decade-old Chardonnay Reserve from Chamonix; she asked afterward “where else [other than South Africa] outside Burgundy could field a 1997 in such great condition?”
There is no one recipe for the best wines—some are barrel-fermented, some not; some go completely through malolactic fermentation, some not; lees may be stirred with batons or the barrels may be rolled; increasing numbers are made without acidification and without yeast inoculation. Burgundy is clearly the ruling model here, rather than the Californian “brand Chardonnay” cliché of obvious oak and some residual sugar—although there are, of course, wines in that style, too. The category of unoaked Chardonnay has also grown substantially in recent years, from the time when De Wetshof produced the first such wine with Bon Vallon.
Chardonnay is planted voluminously throughout the Western Cape (there’s even some in the Orange River area), and still expanding. With just over 8 percent of total vineyard coverage in 2011, it ranked sixth in terms of vineyard coverage, the fourth most planted white variety (this proportion up from 5.1 percent fifteen years previously). Clearly the ABC brigades (anything but Chardonnay) are not winning, although the new vineyards are particularly serving the burgeoning growth in sparkling-wine production. More than half of the plantings are in the Breede River Valley, but this does not carry the usual adverse implications for quality, as half of these vineyards are in Robertson, where a rich vein of limestone has proved to be well suited to the grape, even if these are not the Cape’s most exciting Chardonnays. Paarl and Stellenbosch are the areas next in terms of Chardonnay vineyard area; but there are virtually no districts in which Chardonnay is not to be found, and usually producing at least one decent example. It is difficult, then, to suggest that there is any degree of specialization on the basis of terroir that has emerged over the years, beyond the success of the Robertson soils and of the cooler climates in Hemel-en-Aarde, Elgin, and Constantia, where most of the wineries produce good to excellent Chardonnays. It would be difficult to argue against the claims of Hemel-en-Aarde for preeminence, perhaps, from well-established Hamilton Russell (in 2011 I enjoyed a superb 1989 in fine condition) to the newer Newton Johnson and Crystallum. Elgin might disagree, with my support.
The significance of a greater degree of coolness is also graphically shown in Franschhoek, where Chamonix’s is by far the most successful Chardonnay, from vines that are planted at a higher altitude than elsewhere in the valley. Robertson apart, few of the most highly regarded samples come from warmer areas. The best-known Robertson examples come from Springfield, De Wetshof, and Weltevrede. Stellenbosch has a large number of at least decent, often better, examples (including, but not exclusively, Rustenberg, Vergelegen, Jordan, Thelema, and Uva Mira), but Paarl has many fewer (Glen Carlou having shown the best potential).
White blends notwithstanding, Chardonnay might arguably offer the largest contribution to the list of the best South African white wines—which, on the whole, means the best South African wines tout court.
CHENIN BLANC AND CHENIN-BASED BLENDS
The story of Chenin Blanc in South Africa tends to invite extremes, along with phrases like “highs and lows” and “splendors and miseries.” Today, though far off its quantitative height, it remains by far the most planted variety in the Cape: by area more than 18 percent of all varieties and well over 30 percent of whites. It is spread throughout the wine-producing areas, but inevitably the heaviest concentrations are in the hot, irrigated inland valleys, plantings in marked contrast to the old low-yielding bushvines that produce the finest wines (although old unirrigated bushvines are frequently found in warm parts, like the Swartland and Olifants River). Each year it tends to be the most frequently uprooted as well as the most newly planted variety—with much more uprootings than plantings but with less discrepancy than during the 1990s, when the fashion was to replace as much of it as possible with red varieties. In the early years of that decade Chenin occupied nearly a third of the vineyard area. It was—as it still is to a large extent, along with Colombard—the versatile workhorse of the industry, producing vaguely pleasant wine from heavy-cropping vineyards as well as supplying the grape-juice, brandy, and fortified-wine industries. But with more vines than any other country, and with great quality improvements at all levels of ambition, Chenin is gaining a reputation as a South African signature variety—and a good one, at that.
This is one of the oldest varieties on the Cape, though only in 1963 did Professor Orffer match the Loire variety with what had been known here as Steen. It was also known as Stein; some pardonable confusion and folk etymology made the Germanic connection, and there is even a note in the handwriting of Governor Simon van der Stel suggesting comparability in terms of quality of Steen with German Stein wines, which shows that the duality has been around for a long time. Stein has no status as a synonym any longer, and has also largely lost its status as a generic name for off-dry white wine. One theory has it that the Dutch corrupted Listán (a Spanish name for Palomino, another pioneering variety here) into La Stan and then into De Steen, before dropping the article. Now the name Steen appears as a synonym for Chenin on only a few defiant wine labels (including two fine ones: one from the tiny producer Tobias in the Swartland, and Donkiesbaai, from Piekenierskloof, made by Jean Engelbrecht of Rust en Vrede). It lingers stubbornly, though, among some growers, who associate the lower-yielding, better-quality—perhaps best-adapted—clones of the grape (there are ten currently available in South Africa) with Steen. It is greatly to be hoped that further research will establish not so much a justification for the name as whether the variety has adapted itself to local conditions in a reproducible clone.
So, with varying reputation, Steen-Chenin has been a continuous feature of the Cape vineyard. It was one of the grapes grown at Constantia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although its price was far off those of Pontac and the Muscat varieties. By the early twentieth century Steen was advancing, but still some way behind Greengrape. Although the rise in brandy production was undoubtedly responsible for much of the increased planting of Chenin in warm areas, the grape’s defining moment came during and subsequent to the 1960s with the huge popularity of off-dry white wines like Lieberstein, and its rise (anonymous to the public) became inexorable.
In the post-1994 Cape wine revolution, destruction might have been more extreme had it not been for the awareness of a few farsighted winemakers that mature Chenin vines might produce better wine than the despised or, at best, taken-for-granted grape was usually credited with. There were the first signs of Chenin being taken more seriously. Walter Finlayson of Glen Carlou blended a little of a rather more prestigious grape into his barrel-fermented Devereux Chenin Blanc–Chardonnay 1994. Then Irina von Holdt introduced her nearly dry Blue White Chenin Blanc in 1995, comparatively expensive and in a striking blue bottle.
The growth in number and quality of varietal wines was undoubtedly furthered by an annual competition, the Chenin Blanc Challenge, expressly dedicated to improving the breed. This revival has been further driven by the Chenin Blanc Association, one of the most active of the variety-based winegrower bodies. To an extent, however, the improvement has come with the price that is paid when competitive blind tastings acquire significance: more winemakers started picking their best fruit ultraripe—with resulting high alcohol levels and often a noticeable degree of residual sugar—and then put the wine into new oak to complete the blockbuster effect. While many of these expensive “show wines” are undoubtedly of high quality, not all of them make for satisfying, refreshing drinking to the bottom of the glass.
As the industry matures, however, and as the market’s doubts about such wines grow, more winemakers are relying rather on purity and intensity of fruit. Many of the top-priced Chenins continue to be wooded, but less emphatically so than they were. Any short list of examples would omit many good wines, but labels would certainly include Ken Forrester, De Morgenzon, Raats, Kanu, Rudera, De Trafford, Teddy Hall, and Jean Daneel. Top-end unwooded Chenins include those of Beaumont, Old Vines, Raats, and Vinum, as well as quite a number of new-wave wines from Swartland producers, like Lammershoek. The majority of cheaper, simple and fruity Chenins are unwooded.
The basis of the large volumes of good Chenin at all levels is the old vineyards of, especially, Paarl, Stellenbosch, and the Swartland. The variety’s natural good acidity is fully taken advantage of in such viticultural conditions. The market for relatively expensive Chenin is necessarily limited, so old, low-yielding bushvines are still being pulled out, if at a slightly less alarming rate. Nonetheless, the age distribution chart shows more than half of the vines to be older than sixteen years, and nearly 40 percent older than twenty.
Chenin’s first moment of South African glory came many decades ago, however, when it was used in Nederburg’s Edelkeur, the first of the Cape’s unfortified botrytised dessert wines. It still serves Edelkeur, as well as a number of other extremely good versions, including Ken Forrester T, Kanu Kia-Ora, and Rudera Noble Late Harvest.
