Cape Winemakers Guild Reflections

The Cape Winemakers Guild (CWG) were in town to pour members’ wines selected for this year’s Auction in October. It was all magnificence, but the following wines left fond memories.

Bartho Eksteen Wine Estate Vloekskoot Sauvignon Blanc – Wooded 2020

If fynbos could grow beneath the icy waves of the Atlantic Ocean there would be an earthly reference for this wine. For it is alive, a rush, wet and wild and awash with just about each and every Sauvignon Blanc flavour that has been noted in the annals of wine writing. Gooseberry gasps, before a lush run of grenadilla goops across the page, the thiol-notes hitting brittle clips of freshly cut Buffalo grass. On the mid-palate the wine flows and here comes winter fynbos on soaked soils, the earth drying out under an unseasonal sun to reveal stony, salty notes. A totally awesome Sauvignon Blanc, and truly South African in the assured, confident ease it displays a side of this variety most mortals and vineyard sites can only aspire to.

David Finlayson Wines “Naja Nivea” Chardonnay 2023

The regal, cultured chimes of the Chardonnay tune ring calm and true in a thoroughbred wine made by a jockey who knows a thing or two about the white beast of Burgundy. A delicate, fragile and waif-like entrance on the palate, more a peak than an attack, opens to whispers and the delighted chuckling of children that have found something wonderous. Fragrant white flowers buckle in an unseasonal warm breeze as touches of densely skinned Cape lemon move forward to lead one onto a path of taste and sensation. Heated oatmeal laced with heather honey coats the palate without hindering the purity and freshness of citrus and cut pear, with a slow, ponderous finish creating dreams that best be put inside a pocket for cherishing at another time.

Delaire Graff Estate Banghoek Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

Spilt blood lies on a warm spread of shale, and the smell of fresh tar adds to the intoxicating aroma of this brilliant Cabernet Sauvignon. A miniscule sip commands the entire palate with a swashbuckling, randy presence requiring another mouthful to ascertain the generous abundance of this wine’s gifts. Black-currants the size of golf-balls find their way onto the flavour profile, as does Turkish dried fig and a generous sprinkle of Provençal herbs dried under a sexy Mediterranean sun. On the finish the wine kisses a last goodbye with that delectable string of liquorice before disappearing in a splash of salt-like, rose-petal and raspberry cordial. Tannins are rippling with toned muscles to ensure that structure matches flavour in perfect Cabernet Sauvignon harmony.

Kershaw Wines Ziggurat Chardonnay 2023

Like the fist-fighting abilities of Steve McQueen, this Chardonnay is a model of aggressive refinement, its potential for creating violence only suppressed by an overpowering femininity. The bracing grip of citrus, sea-spray and crushed coral is brought to more land-bound environs by slithers, chunks and rips of Edenesque fruit. Green melon, iced and perked with lime-juice. Sappy kumquat and the peel of an underripe fig. Finely grated mace has immersed itself in the fruit, and there is a golden mound of dry hay rustling in an easy breeze coming in from a glacier lake. But the wine does not find easy resting in the mouth, the flavours cut and run, boundless and free, making every mouthful an event, the timeless combination of nature and he who corrals the vineyard.   

Lismore Estate Vineyards The Sheltering Sky Syrah 2022

Its perfume is of the kind that makes a bishop want to kick a hole in a stained-glass window, the texture in the mouth luxurious and as svelte as a room-temperature oyster fed to you by a geisha girl on the first day of the Tokyo cherry blossoms. Once the lavender and musk and Zanzibar cardamom which the nose offers calms down, the wine teases the mouth with long runs of Yangshao silk flavoured by the juices of paradise and the sweat of heavenly, but tainted, mortals. Honied cranberry offers a semblance of a crunch to this whole-clustered wine, but is assertively covered by layers of fruit of the blue, dark and purple kind. Perfectly dried prune and just-plucked mulberry come to mind, wallowing on a bed of lilacs cooling down under a setting pastoral sun. Emotions of fun and a child-like deliciousness are stirred-up by clods of pounded raw cocoa, while an aged Havana cigar box offers pleasure of a more adult kind.

Leeu Passant Franschhoek Hillside Cabernet Franc 2022

In the low-light of the tasting hall, the wine runs dark and inky, and true into the glass. The nose is attracted by aromas of classic gorgeousness, focussed on showing the heritage of the Cabernet Franc grape that has played such a profound role in creating great Bordeaux wines – for longer than its Cabernet Sauvignon off-spring. You smell graphite and pine-needle, a meaty splinter of spliced pine-tree. Also, a vivid succulent note of liquid and juice, rustled. On the attack, the wine gives a dramatic and showy display, challenging the alertness of the oral senses. There is something steely and shiny in the precise linearity of it all, with flavours presented in sculpted tones of perfected ease. Dark fruit lurks in the forms of blue-berry and black-currant, with an alerting umami slide of cherry. Lingering, as this wine does with its patient presence, further layers are unveiled with anise and fynbos coming to the fore, giving the classic, cultured presence a thrilling feral touch.  

Paul Clüver Wines The Wagon Trail Chardonnay 2023

Upon the first scent of lime-peel and honey-comb you want to bite it. This Chardonnay, a Cape classic perennially presenting the rocky green cold heart of Elgin in one glass. Citrus notes lean towards bright yellow grapefruit, the irresistible bitter edge of which perks-up the palate, evokes juice and crunch. On the mid-palate pecan and walnuts, crushed and grilled, combine with splashes of sea-spray, pillowy butter-cup flowers and grated Packham pear, just on the edge or ripening. The delight of it all is strung together tightly with cords of rock and maritime coast reflecting the work of a true master of his craft who has an intimate knowledge of what Chardonnay is capable of.

Savage Wines Auction Syrah 2022

Sometimes I come across a wine that makes me dab its surface with my finger just to make sure this is real. Then I sip, and no, you are not dreaming. It is the kind of red wine that does everything to the senses you’d ask it to do. Caress the palate tenderly with flirtatious, seeking finger-strokes of playful permissiveness inviting you to taste, to drink, to roll-over without a care in the world. Flavours are opulent, lusty and joyous but without any a hint of the unmannered boisterous . Sappy mulberry and damson gathers depth from nuances found in prunes and dates, and on the back-break I detect a slight savoury edge of wafer-thin Jamón, with a rivulet of olive-brine. No grip to speak of, this wine rolls along with unbridled ease and delight, and it can keep right on coming.

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2 thoughts on “Cape Winemakers Guild Reflections

  1. I sometimes wonder what your dreams are like at night; amazing descriptive daytime
    use of the English language…love it!!

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