Pinotage: Actually, it’s a Miracle

It was a crisp autumn afternoon in Beaune, the capital of Burgundy, France and the world’s most revered wine appellation, and strolling the ancient cobble-stone streets I came upon a smart shop named Fromagerie Hess. A dense, acrid aroma hit me as I entered, gazing at the rows of cheeses of various shapes, sizes and colours, the variety of which can only be found in France.

At the back of the long narrow space was a section dedicated to wine, together with cheese the other consumable most vividly associated with all good things from the Gallic nation. This area beckoned, and upon browsing the bottles of wines from Burgundy and Bordeaux, Italy and Spain, a familiar label came into sight. It was a bottle of Kanonkop Pinotage.

I had scarcely noticed it when a tall lean man in a white jacket asked whether he could be of assistance. Upon telling him that, like the Kanonkop wine I too was from South Africa, the man looked at the bottle and nodded, in broken English stating that this was a good wine.

“I am surprised,” I said, “that here, in the heart of this famous French wine region, you keep a bottle from South Africa.”

He shrugged his shoulders, as if the statement was foolish and he was bordering on emitting a reprimand.

“We keep the great wines from the world in my shop,” he replied, “and from South Africa, a good Pinotage is a great wine.”

Had my French and his English allowed for a better level of communication, I would have added another aspect of Pinotage. Namely that the wine is also something of a miracle.

For here in 2025, a year marking 100 years since the Pinotage grape variety began after that famous experiment where Abraham Izak Perold crossed two red cultivars – Pinot Noir and Hermitage (Cinsaut) – to set the Pinotage ball rolling, it is apt to note that the journey the grape and the wine has taken from then until now has been nothing short of remarkable.

Looking at the legacy of wine in the world, which began some 8 000 years ago in Georgia in Eastern Europe, most of the known and recognisable grape varieties have histories going back centuries. Such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Burgundy, Bordeaux’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Riesling in Germany and Spain’s ubiquitous Tempranillo, to name a few. Yet, in South Africa, Pinotage was only first thought of a century back, with commercial vineyard plantings taking root in the 1950s. As a commercial wine, Pinotage came to being for the first time in 1959. And now, some 66 years later it is an established and recognised part of the global wine conversation, not only being talked and written about as a wine synonymous with South Africa, but also for the distinctive flavour-profile it offers, as well as the proven and internationally acclaimed quality thereof.

Yes, for a grape variety and its wine to be born and to go on to achieve all this in what is but a blink of the eye in terms of the world’s wine culture, is surely miraculous.

But even miracles are not immune to critique and controversy, and here I’d say that South Africans, especially, have been too hard on Pinotage in terms of its merits as a noble grape variety. Local wine writers and winemakers still like to quote those British wine “experts” who visited the country three decades ago and turned-up their noses at Pinotage, stating the wine reminded them of “rusty nails” and “nail-polish”.

Fact is, that the Brits’ self-appointed wine expertise have always had it in for wine varieties made in the so-called New World of America, Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa. Australian Shiraz was termed “hot and alcoholic” and smelling of “burnt caramel”. Californian Chardonnay, again, was “big, blousy and tasted like bread-and-butter pudding”. And if you wanted heartburn, a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was a sure way of bringing it on.

Fortunately, Pinotage has dropped those initial naysayers, going on to prove itself on the world stage as a variety that when grown under the right conditions and in suitable soils, and in the hands of the right winemaker, is capable of making world-class wines. This Beyers Truter already proved back in 1991 when as Kanonkop winemaker he won the Robert Mondavi Trophy for Winemaker of the Year at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London. With a Kanonkop Pinotage 1989 – a vintage that came only 30 years after the very first bottled Pinotage, namely a Lanzerac 1959.

Leading critics from around the world have subsequently handed-out trophies, golden accolades and sensational 95pt-plus ratings to various South African Pinotage wines, ensuring that Pinotage’s time has, truly, arrived.

This is good for South Africa as a wine-producing country, too. Pinotage might have found its way to the winelands of California and New Zealand – even Israel – but no other grape variety is as associated with the Cape and to South Africa as is the variety than Perold gave birth to a century ago. It is unique, and those who drink and follow wine, well, they like unique and they like different in a world where they are spoilt for choice.

Today, more countries produce more wine than ever before. From Denmark to Canada, China to Lebanon, bottles are being added to the marketplace from every corner of the globe. Consequently, consumers have never been able to so many different wines, from so many different countries, as they are now. With such an abundance, wine-buyers the world over look to a wine-producing country they might not be familiar with, and the first thing they ask is: “What makes the wines from your land unique?”

South Africa has a simple answer: Pinotage. It is here at the Cape, from the mountains of Stellenbosch to the valleys of Paarl and Franschhoek; from the cool maritime climates of Durbanville and Constantia, to the sprawling vineyards of the Breedekloof and Robertson, and between the renosterveld-clad koppies of the Swartland, here Pinotage was born and here it shows it belongs. This is where generations of winemakers have harmonized the grape with its natural environment, making Pinotage wines, the unique flavours and characteristics of which prove that its place is here.

But the minds, hands and the souls of the men and women turning the grapes into wine have as profound a role to play in the legacy and the advent of Pinotage as the individual parcels of Cape geography to which the vineyards are rooted. The traditional saying is that wine is made in the vineyard, but as the late great winemaker Duimpie Bayly used to retort: “When I am told wine is made in the vineyard, I have to remind the audience that one must remember that no horse has ever won the Durban July without a jockey.” And of course, this is true. It takes skill, intuition and understanding of the vineyard and its fruit to transform Pinotage grapes into wine exuding the traits of its place of origin, whilst at the same time offering that evocative red wine complexity in the glass for which it is known.

Each wine is, obviously, a unique individual. But what Pinotage has done over the decades is to inspire winemakers to each make their wines to a style, to a distinctive signature of taste and structure harnessing the grape’s red-blooded individualistic character. And this is the delight, that under the banner of one cultivar, Pinotage, one finds an astounding diversity, a spectrum of enticing red wine variation that, whilst diverse and of multitude, each speak of a discernible Pinotage DNA.

So, Pinotage can be a big wine. Of which Beyerskloof Diesel Pinotage is a statuesque example. This wine, from the home of aforementioned Beyers Truter can be termed a show-stopper as in its making all steps are taken to optimise the variety’s penchant for showcasing a full-bodied depth and unapologetic decadence in its power and unrestrained opulence.

To bring these features to the fore, these grapes of Stellenbosch origin are picked at a stage of complete ripeness. The berries are transformed to open-top fermenters where the magical process of fermentation begins, with sugar transformed into alcohol. To extract tannin, taste and colour from the purple-black Pinotage skins, the intoxicating batch of grapes and juice is punched-down every two hours during the five-day fermentation period, the regular mingling of the skins and juice drawing the essence of the fruit into the fermenting wine, ensuring concentrated completeness.

Once fermented, the wine is removed from the skins and placed in casks of new French oak barrels for a period of 21 months, allowing the wine to be exposed to the tightly-grained wood surface for almost two years, during which tannins are sculpted, flavour enhanced and the wine obtains a polished succulence.

This, Beyerskloof Diesel, is Pinotage at its most Pinotage. Showing that despite its parents – the Pinot Noir and Cinsaut grapes – having relatively light and ethereal personalities, Pinotage itself is capable of presenting itself in a wine of grand scale with a commanding presence.

It is all gorgeous, of the unmissable kind. Aromas of autumnal dark fruit waft from the glass, filling the space around it with fragrance and wilderness. Once tasted, it is unforgettable. Not only for the sheer weight of its presence, the density complemented by a silkiness on the mouth, but for the way it carries tastes of prune and blackberries together with that characteristic brush of fynbos and slight savoury edge of charcuterie.

That a Pinotage style deemed as “classic” comes from Stellenbosch’s Lanzerac winery is no coincidence. After all, the first bottled Pinotage in the world was under the Lanzerac label (1959), although in those days of yore Lanzerac was merely a wine brand belonging to erstwhile Stellenbosch Farmers Winery. Today Lanzerac, situated at the foot of the Jonkershoek Valley, is a commended and functioning winery in its own right, one still committed to the grape variety that ensured its name in the annals of South African wine history.

Lanzerac Pinotage is made from grapes grown in the same Jonkershoek Valley, the beautiful part of mountainous pastoral winelands through which Stellenbosch’s famed Eerste River runs. In the cellar the grape-berries are not manually punched down as is the case with Beyerskloof Diesel, the exposing of juice to those ripe grape-skins instead being done with pump-overs, committed every four hours of the fermentation period. This refined approach to winemaking is furthered by winemaker Wynand Lategan’s choice of barrel fermentation. Here a diverse selection of barrels is chosen in which the wine is to embark on a 15-month slumber, namely barrels of virgin new oak, as well as casks previously used for one or two seasons to age wine. These used barrels have a lighter grip on the wine’s structure, allowing the opening of the doors to emit brightness and fruit-purity.

Lanzerac Pinotage is one of those Pinotages proving that elegance is one of the variety’s features, a mannered nobility that must have been at the forefront of Perold’s mind when he toyed with the idea of creating a new South African grape variety for the world.

This wine has a clarity and focussed fruit-core, with red-currants and damson allowing a lift, a perkiness to prod through the sensual cloak of coiled muscular tannins. Balance and poise are discernible as tannin, acidity and sugar combine with presence and structure in a wine which one not only drinks, but experiences.

An unbridled delight of the Pinotage industry is seeing the younger generation of winemakers showing an infatuation with this variety, and it is in their hands that the future of the grape lies. True, the foundations were laid by the pioneers who aimed to bring the deeper weight and gravitas of the grape to the fore with intense extractions and aging in – or a component of – new wood.

But there is, as with all wines, space for a renewed focus to complement and to build on the deep paths trodden by the more mature school of approach, and this is opening-up a whole new field of appreciation for the Cape’s beloved home-grown variety.

One of these younger gunners is Jolandie Fouché, owner of the wine brand named Wolf & Woman which includes a Pinotage wearing a new cloak of understatement allowing the spectacular tapestry of fruit elements to display themselves in a superlative wine.

Wolf & Woman Pinotage is made from old vines, 50 years and more, grown in the Swartland region and the winemaking is of the subtle less-is-more kind. Instead of fermenting her Pinotage for five to six days with extracting taking place regularly, Wolf & Woman’s wine is kept on the skins for two weeks, with only one extraction daily. For maturation, large 500 litre and 300 litre barrels are deployed – all old, used wood – the wine spending eight months in their casks. Then, before bottling the wine is placed in concrete tank for a month to gain further refinement.

The result is a Pinotage that has grabbed the imagination of wine critics and commentators as one of the new-wave wines underscoring the fact that the future of Pinotage is in good hands. At only 12.5% alcohol, Wolf & Woman has a delicious crunchy succulence with tastes of juice-laden cherries and plump plum, a wine that caresses the palate with a riveting, racy freshness, yet presenting enough deftness on the palate to ensure its presence is never fleeting, never forgotten.

As Pinotage heads into its next century, its future looks as illustrious and brilliant as the wine’s miraculous past. In fact, it has only just begun.