Tokara by the Barrel

The late Graham Beck, the larger than life, gruff and assertive founder of his eponymous Robertson winery, had a simple take on Chardonnay: “No wood, no good.” I’d disagree on this in terms of the Great Burgundian white grape, but when it comes to my favourite red grape variety – Cabernet Sauvignon – wood is all good. Especially new, unblemished barriques of French oak, spanking and virginal, their pale-straw coloured raw staves waiting to impart character, structure and taste on fine, just fermented Cabernet Sauvignon.

New wood has fallen out of favour in some wine circles. Wine critics began to diss it when they ran out of topics, insight and inspiration. Some winemakers, too, dismiss the use of new wood, implying that it “suppresses the true nuance of terroir”, and such bull-shit. Usually, these words come from winemakers who can’t afford new barrels, or whose newly fermented wine does not have enough going for it to stand-up to the beguiling, ethereal effects of virginal oak.

Everything I like about new wood is to be found in a majestic Cabernet Sauvignon from Tokara, namely the Simonsberg Cabernet Sauvignon 2021, a loftily priced wine found in this great Stellenbosch winery’s “gift” range. And gifted I was, this bottle being handed out last year at a lunch given by Tokara CEO Karl Lambour to celebrate the estate’s 20^th vintage.

The Simonsberg is – along with Helderberg – known as Stellenbosch’s great Cabernet Sauvignon region, its decomposed granite slopes dotted with the kind of superstar cellars to warrant this status. Tokara is definitely one of the finest here, Cabernet Sauvignon dominating its red offering with a number of really gorgeous wines, culminating in its big-hitting Telos that sells for five grand and some.

Tokara Simonsberg Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 is, price-wise, well under the Telos at R1 850, but is also a true monument to the Tokara ethos of excellence, the farm’s top-of-the-Banghoek geography and the greatness of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape grown in Stellenbosch and, in the same breath, South Africa.

Sure, up there on the Simonsberg terroir is excellent and the viticulture characteristically detailed, but the wine’s greatness is also evident of winemaker Stuart Botha’s masterly knack with Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine’s distinctive fingerprint that is left on memory and in the soul is as much Botha’s as the site that is Tokara.

Grapes are given five days’ maceration after de-stemming and crushing, after which spontaneous fermentation takes hold of the juice and the flesh and the skins, and the Odyssey to greatness begins. This in stainless steel and foudre. The cap was punched-down through the fermenting juice, which also wetted the raft of grape-skins during pump-overs.

Post-fermentation, another period of maceration followed, allowing the wine a final hug of the grape-skins before they would be separated, the wine flowing into brand-new French barrels. Here, it would lie for 22 months in the pure offering of the Gallic oak forests, they deserving the wine as much as the wine warrants the pristine wood.

So, to the nose, and from the outset Tokara Simonsberg Cabernet Sauvignon hollers “Simonsberg”, being more maritime, rockier in its aromatic offering than the rich fruitier breaths whispered by Cabernets originating from Helderberg’s warmer, firmer-ripening slopes. It is dry grape-skins and fennel, with a turn of wet clay, the scents of purity and life uncluttered by all that new wood, this on account of the wine’s ability to embrace the oak instead of being overpowered by it.

It is truly beautiful on the palate, the wine’s initial austerity and frigid calm reminding one of a great Saint-Estèphe made in a golden warm year during which the morning Gironde spring mists sat on the vines, cool and true. Presence is all-encompassing and like a trumpet-solo by Chet Baker, the wine makes itself known in a proud, gaudy way which, like the call of the mythological sirens, is seductive in its alluring beauty.

Flavour begins to emerge, coyly. Fig-paste scattered next to a mirage of cool water and palm-trees. Mulberries struck to the ground by a hail-storm and eaten from the ice. Brambleberry juice, licked from a forefinger from which the prick of bramble thorn had drawn blood. And then, a line of salinity, arousing the fruit, complementing it and creating a sense of enticement precluding true deliciousness.

And in all this, tannins run long and fine and taut, marks of an honest, truthful wine that brings promise of future things, things that must truly be wonderful as right now they appear perfectly, impeccably, absolutely astounding.