Mullineux Roundstone: A Blend Apart

Words: Lafras Huguenet

There’s no glamour in the Swartland. Just rock, wind, and a kind of hard light that makes you squint even when you’re not looking at the sun. It’s the sort of place where vines have to earn their keep, clinging to slopes of schist and quartz on Kasteelberg Mountain like they’ve made some long-term, bad-idea pact with survival.

This is Roundstone, the Mullineuxs’ patch of seriously bold dirt. One hundred hectares of stubborn, stony hillside that’s been beaten into giving up some of the most honest, well-structured and quite frankly statuesque wines in South Africa. Nothing here is easy, nothing is dressed up. And that’s exactly the point.

Chris and Andrea Mullineux don’t do fashion or shortcuts. They farm like they cook:  with precision, patience and the heartfelt need to provide something tasty that is as good for the soul as it is for the sensorial apparatus. The kids also like offal, which is a good thing. Offal-detesters are hard people to trust. And winemakers need all the trusting they can get.

Since 2008 they’ve been pushing toward organic, regenerative farming, not because it’s cool but because it’s the only way the land makes sense long-term. The soil’s alive, the vines are tough, and the fynbos –  that wiry, aromatic bush scattered through the vineyards – is part of the system. It keeps things balanced.

The wind here is relentless, a local enforcer that scrubs disease out of the canopy and slows the ripening to a crawl. That’s why the wines have a taut, reverberating tension. Because they’re forged under pressure.

Known for Syrah and Chenin Blancs, the Mullineuxs recently off-loaded two new harmoniously blended wines onto the market.

The Roundstone Blanc 2023

If white wines were people, this one would be the quiet type who doesn’t talk much but always has the last word. It’s a mix of everything that shouldn’t work together but somehow does: Macabeu, Chenin Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Clairette Blanche, Roussanne, Verdelho, Vermentino, Assyrtiko. A Mediterranean fever dream that’s been through Swartland boot camp, caressed by the sleight hands of Andrea and the sinewy cool direct approach of Chris.

The grapes are picked at dawn, when the air still has a bit of mercy in it, and pressed whole into barrels. No lab yeast, no sterile stainless-steel babysitting, just wild fermentation doing its slow, slightly dangerous thing. Seven months on the lees, eleven in oak, and then it’s bottled without filtering. What you see is what you get.

The 2023 vintage was a long, cool ride, and it shows. This wine doesn’t shout. It hums. From the heart, through the belly and the tune is crystal and sweet. Think white pear, fynbos, chamomile, and that faint mineral whiplash you get from stone and salt. It’s textured and firm, like a handshake from someone who’s worked for a living, and it finishes clean and long. The kind of white that makes you stop talking mid-sentence because something on your tongue just clicked into focus.

Only 1 770 bottles exist. If you’ve got one, don’t waste it on a hot-tub crowd. This thing will age twenty years easy, maybe longer. But if you’re opening it young, decant it and let it stretch its legs.

The Roundstone 2023

Now for the red. This one’s got muscle and manners in equal measure being a blend of Syrah, Grenache Noir, and Cinsault, all raised on the same stone-cut slopes. It’s the kind of wine that smells like the landscape it came from, all dark berries, fynbos, pure-earthed dust and sun, and tastes like someone decided restraint was the real flex.

Everything’s done by hand. The grapes are picked in the cool hours, whole-bunch fermented in 500-litre barrels, stomped the old-fashioned way, just enough to keep the cap wet. No stainless, no pumps, no over-extraction. You could call it minimal intervention, but that makes it sound trendy. It’s really just winemaking with a conscience and knowing when to do nothing.

After six weeks of slow fermentation and maceration, the wine goes back into barrel for 22 months. That’s where it pulls itself together. The tannins smoothing out, the structure tightening, the fruit taking on that clean, stony edge that only quartz and schist can give.

When you finally pour it, it’s got presence and the kind of texture that grips your gums but never bites. There’s a flicker of wildness, but it’s contained, disciplined. Best served at 16 to 18 degrees, decanted if it’s young. You’ll get a better conversation out of it that way.

Only 5 040 bottles made. Again, not a wine for the masses, but a wine for people who like things that taste like somewhere, not something.

And Roundstone is somewhere. Special. It isn’t some manicured estate with a tasting room playlist. It’s a working piece of land, and it behaves like one. Every vine looks like it’s survived something. The Mullineuxs don’t hide that, they build on it.

That’s what makes both the Blanc and the Red so damn compelling. They don’t pretend to be perfect; they just tell the truth about where they come from. And in wine, that’s rarer than you think.

If you’re lucky enough to stand on Kasteelberg in late afternoon, when the sun drops and the rocks turn gold, you get it. The wind dies down, the heat releases, and for a minute the place breathes differently. That’s the moment these wines are built on, a balance between beauty and struggle.

You don’t need to know the science of schist or the metrics of regenerative farming to feel it. You just need to taste. Because under all the talk of terroir and technique, what the Mullineuxs are really doing is simple: making wine that respects where it comes from, doesn’t fake a thing, and refuses to bore you.

There’s honesty in that. The kind of honesty that cuts through noise. Like good food, like hard work, like the Swartland itself.