The sullen grey, gloom of a Cape winter was clearing, but my palate was still gripped by a dense, unrelenting film of cloying red wine tannin. It has been a cold red winter, one that saw the daily partaking of dark, plum-coloured wines. Brooding. Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinotage and Bordeaux blends, Merlot and Pinot Noir. And these wines were, mostly, good and fine, satisfying in the chilly depths of dark and stormy nights. But the senses now required clarity after the deluge of wooded red offerings, all plump and plush in their regal, admirable density.
As the sky broke last week, and the sun rose and shone, the mountains of Franschhoek bled, this blood being clear and pale and iridescent in the form of Sauvignon Blanc wine from Chamonix Estate, the first vintage from the farm’s newly planted vineyards. The estate had, apart from the old Chenin Blanc vineyard planted in 1965, undergone a total replanting in 2022 and 2023, the stubborn, tired virussed vines ripped-out of the rocky, clay mountain soils and replaced with lusty vines, young and new.
Thus, 2025 saw the first grapes from these youthful vines being picked and hauled to the Chamonix mountain cellar. They were Sauvignon Blanc grapes, growing at 450m above sea-level, and even as these verdant bunches arrived to be sorted, they showed a will and an energy, a desire to prove themselves as being able to undergo the process of vinification and to appear, reimagined, in the form of a glass of white wine.
And so they did, the fruit from those young vines, when in July appeared Chamonix Sauvignon Blanc 2025, heralding the onset of the estate’s terroir-driven wines from the new plantings. A bottle was procured while the winter was still raw and true, placed in the wine cooler, waiting, for the sun to appear in the broad sky, impossibly blue as I peered at the Atlantic Ocean of Table Bay, Cape Town, and opened the bottle with eager anticipation.
First, the sourcing of information about this wine from its maker, Chamonix’s Neil Bruwer.
He is a young winemaker, but with experience, and his whim was to give the new fruit a whole-bunch pressing – as young winemakers like to do – so as to capture the distilled purity of Sauvignon Blanc essence in the cuvée. From then on, things were kept simple, allowing the grapes to present their souls and identity and character in unfettered juice, which was driven onto the path towards wine through fermentation in gleaming stainless-steel tanks.
There the juice became wine, whereafter it was left on the lees in the cool, still environs of the winery, drawing flavour and texture and persona.
Cracking-open the bottle, the anticipation rose when fragrance abounded as the wine ran into the glass. It smelt of spring, all blossom and clear and very fresh. My mouth was watering, even before the first sip.
This sip was taken, instantaneously reminding me of the day I got off the small aircraft at the city of Manaus, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. That was the day I was hit by a impenetrable invisible cloud of growth, of lush tropical greenness, of huge petalled flowers, of broad flowing water, this cloud being breathed in and making one feel as if, for the first time, you were breathing in life.
Here, in the Chamonix Sauvignon Blanc 2025, the life was bracing and cool, yet with a smiling, welcoming joy. Initially, fruit notes arose, those of Kiwi fruit peel and gooseberry, of sappy winter melons and the generous, thick skin of a Cape lemon. The bright fruits were so very, very welcome after the plum and blackcurrant and tobacco flavours the winter’s red wines had left behind, flushing them off into the cavernous realm of memory, yet not totally forgotten.
Upon the second mouthful, the Sauvignon Blanc’s flirtatious sunny fruit settled, and now one tasted chalk-stream pebbles wet with snow-run water. There was a touch of salt, clean sea-shell not kelp, as well as a hint of dried mountain fynbos that had latched onto some rare winter sun and ate the rays.
Amazement lay in the wine’s structure, that something made with such simplicity and in such a short time could result in an offering of so much generosity and presence. From the aromatic onset to the lingering finish, with the refined clarity of the mid-palate, the wine showed a polished, manicured maturity. From grapes grown on three-year old vines.
In youth is pleasure, and it springs eternal.
Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe and never miss a post again.
Wow… that is a very artistic way of writing…. I like it. It’s not too winey- not too deep into wine culture terms that may loose the me when reading. But this Sauvingnon is surely gonna me tasted.
Thank you, Emile, I cannot wait to taste this wine as so wonderfully described by you!!!