The major reason why I do not believe in imposing numerical scores on wines is that my – obviously limited, barely educated – palate cannot determine a link between something that presents itself sensorially as tasty and delicious and a number between one and 100. Scores and ratings are limiting when the pleasure of taste is, truly, infinite.

It is always a bonus when such persuasions are validated through interactions with people far more qualified in this field. Such was the case this week when I teamed up with Alastair Rimmer, a seasoned and well-travelled winemaker, for an impromptu lunch at 96 Winery Road. The day was all about taste: an immense chunk of grilled T-bone beef the size of an Alsatian’s head, as well as bottles of sumptuous wines, including a Shiraz from the Barossa Valley, a bright, waxy and gritty Riesling from the same region, and Alastair’s own Genesis, a red blend bottled under a label sporting a colourful beetle of some kind and the brand name Six Legs.

Schalk-Willem Joubert, the winemaker as beefy as the 96 Winery Road T-bone, joined the table, and soon the conversation turned to wine, taste, industry matters and the rippled rhythms of the wine world.

What I deduced from these two experienced and knowledgeable winemakers was that accessibility, tastiness and delicious drinkability are becoming far more prominent in today’s wine discourse than ever before. Six or seven years ago, the three of us would have engaged in anally repressed diatribes about terroir, site specificity, varietal authenticity and alcohol levels. Now, perhaps driven by the rapidly changing demands of the wine market, the talk is of flavour, satisfaction and immediate sensory joy. These are the primal – yet too often dismissed – reasons wine was made in the first place.

Of course, the conversation was helped by the bottles and glasses on the table. Alastair had brought a Rockford Basket Press Shiraz 2005 from the Barossa, a wine that was – as Schalk-Willem expressed it – Barossa Valley in a glass. Old vines and 21 years in bottle had helped turn this gluggable example of classic juice into a dollop of intensely flavourful wine. Laden with dense autumnal black fruit, the wine exuded a Burgundian forest-floor note, while drifts of graceful tannins lent a plush exuberance, providing a palette of vinous delights to stimulate an array of human senses.

Alastair’s own Genesis 2024 is the result of his vast experience with the vineyards and producers he came to know during his stint as winemaker at Kleine Zalze, coupled with his vision of making a wine in which flavour and deliciousness are paramount, with terroir and varietal composition neither determining nor confining the result.

The blend is expansive: Syrah, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and a splash of Sangiovese adding the sixth leg. The Six Legs Genesis 2024 marketing bumf reads: “Each piece of the puzzle sourced from a producer or site that lends a unique character to the blend, with the ultimate goal of producing a wine that transcends the conventional yet appeals to those who just love a great glass of wine! No Jargon, No Fuss, Just Flavour.”

All the fruit is “cobbled together” from various Stellenbosch vineyards. Some new oak is apparent, while most of the wine goes into older barrels – as one would expect from a wine intended to be drinkable from the outset.

Tasting the Genesis alongside the amply fruited, mature Rockford Shiraz was illuminating, as the richly expressive Shiraz amplified the more austere, classical flavours evident in the Six Legs. My first impression of Genesis was an alluring savoury note. I was not going to attempt to identify the cultivar responsible for this new-leather tease, but my money is on the Syrah and Sangiovese. As true arbiters of taste know, certain fruits taste far better when anointed with a dab of salt, and so it is with Genesis.

That charcuterie-like, gamey touch in Genesis alerted the palate, making way for notes of prune, damson and sour cherry that combined to make a joyous glass of wine. The palate weight was effortless: neither coy nor promiscuous, but alert, life-affirming and lavishly bright.

The conversation turned from deliciousness to the determinants thereof in the making of wine, and here I was chuffed to hear both Schalk-Willem and Alastair agree that balance is key. Balance is an easy word to use, but far harder to achieve in a winery. Yet once attained, the result is deliciousness – the only true indicator of a good wine, and a term far more deserving of a place in the general wine conversation.

And perhaps that is where wine finds itself today. Not in pursuit of points, nor imprisoned by technical jargon, but in the far simpler quest to offer pleasure. The wines on our table differed in origin, style and philosophy, yet they shared one thing: each made us want another glass. No score could explain that. Balance can. Deliciousness certainly can. And, in the end, that is the only rating that really matters.

There was a time when South African wine sought validation by measuring itself against the world’s great benchmarks. Bordeaux for Cabernet Sauvignon. Burgundy for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The Rhône for Syrah. That era, according to two of the wine world’s most respected voices, is over.

Speaking at the Trophy Wine Show judges’ feedback session, Master of Wine Heidi Mäkinen and veteran British wine writer Oz Clarke delivered an enthusiastic assessment of South African wine’s current standing. Their message was clear: South Africa is no longer trying to find its place in the global wine landscape. It has found it.

For Mäkinen, who last judged at the Trophy Wine Show in 2017, the progress has been striking.

“It’s very exciting to be back after nine years,” she said. “I do think that this country has gone miles forward since last time I was here.”

Her observations were not merely about improved quality. They reflected a deeper confidence she senses among South African producers.

“There’s a lot of belief in what you do uniquely in this country and less of the comparisons to the Burgundies and Bordeauxs in the wine world,” she said. “After a while you just have to have that inherent belief in what you do.”

That confidence, she believes, is now visible across the spectrum of South African wine. Whether working with international varieties such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, or grapes more closely associated with South Africa such as Chenin Blanc and Cinsault, producers are increasingly expressing a distinctive identity.

For Mäkinen, the comparison she once made with Spain is becoming increasingly relevant to South Africa.

“I was raving about how my favourite wine country is Spain,” she recalled. “But here am I thinking maybe I should change that topic to saying South Africa is that country.”

The reasons are similar. Spain’s rise has been built on indigenous varieties, innovative young winemakers and exceptional value. South Africa, she suggested, is following a comparable path, while adding its own unique voice.

Her optimism extended beyond the vineyards and into the marketplace.

“I think South Africa has gained that presence already in the premium wine market,” she said. “Be proud of yourselves.”

If Mäkinen’s comments reflected the view of an international observer returning after a decade, Oz Clarke provided the longer historical perspective. Few wine writers have witnessed South Africa’s post-isolation wine journey as closely as Clarke, who first judged local wines internationally in the 1990s and was present at the inaugural Trophy Wine Show in 2002.

Looking back, he described an industry that was once convinced it was producing world-class wine while the rest of the world was less persuaded.

“There was immense goodwill towards South Africa,” Clarke recalled, “but the wine world was largely complacent and thought they knew how to do things.”

The challenge, he said, was that countries such as Australia, New Zealand and California were innovating faster and responding more effectively to consumers.

What followed over the next quarter-century has been one of the wine world’s most remarkable transformations.

“South Africa is now doing as a world leader what it wasn’t doing 25 years ago,” Clarke said.

Central to that evolution has been a willingness to embrace both innovation and heritage.

On the one hand, South Africa has developed distinctive interpretations of global varieties. Clarke singled out Syrah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir as examples of wines that no longer mimic international styles.

“You’ve come up with a new style of Syrah which France wasn’t making, which Australia wasn’t making,” he said.

The same applies to Pinot Noir.

“It’s not like the French, it’s not like the Californians, it’s not like the New Zealanders. It’s yours.”

Yet South Africa’s success is equally rooted in its history. Clarke was particularly enthusiastic about the preservation of old vineyards and the work of the Old Vine Project.

“You haven’t ripped up all your old vines,” he said. “Those old grapes are precious.”

He spoke warmly of varieties such as Cinsault, Grenache, Carignan, Palomino, Clairette and Grenache Blanc, arguing that in a world crowded with Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, these heritage varieties provide South Africa with something genuinely distinctive.

Perhaps the strongest endorsement came when Clarke discussed Cabernet Sauvignon.

At a time when many regions are producing increasingly ripe, powerful and heavily extracted Cabernet, he believes Stellenbosch is charting a more classical course.

“Stellenbosch is making almost the most classical Cabernets in the whole world,” he said.

More provocatively, he suggested that the best Stellenbosch Cabernets today are often closer in style to traditional Bordeaux than many modern Bordeaux wines themselves.

“It’s a maritime grape,” Clarke said. “It makes savoury wines, beautifully balanced wines that are meant to make your mouth water.”

The maritime influence of the Cape’s vineyards was a recurring theme throughout the discussion. Clarke pointed to the cooling Benguela Current and the diversity of coastal sites as major advantages, particularly for Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.

Those natural assets, combined with increasingly sophisticated viticulture and winemaking, are helping South Africa carve out a unique identity.

What impressed both Mäkinen and Clarke most was that this identity is no longer built around imitation.

Twenty-five years ago, South Africa was often evaluated according to how closely its wines resembled European benchmarks. Today, the conversation has changed.

For Mäkinen, the defining characteristic of South African wine is confidence.

For Clarke, it is authenticity.

The two themes are closely linked.

South African wine is succeeding not because it has become more like Bordeaux, Burgundy or the Rhône. It is succeeding because it has become more comfortable being itself.

The result is an industry that combines old vines and new ideas, heritage and innovation, global ambition and local character.

As Mäkinen put it: “There is a really good way forward.”

And if Clarke’s assessment is anything to go by, the rest of the wine world is paying attention.

“You’ve managed to catch hold of the good parts of your history,” he said, “and you’ve created an entirely new narrative at the same time.”

For a country once searching for recognition, that may be the greatest achievement of all.

• Trophy Show results due Monday 8 June.

Perhaps we don’t know what they know, but from the sidelines it seems the younger generation is intent on stripping the world of life’s, well, finer and more cultured pleasures. Tastes and fashions change, of course, but viewed through the eyes of someone slightly grey and distinguishedly seasoned, the whole affair leaves a rather sour aftertaste.

My own brush with the youth-led abolition of things long considered enjoyable concerns wine. Fact is, global wine consumption is at its lowest level in 60 years, and the blame is squarely pinned on the under-30s, who have failed to inherit their wise parents’ enthusiastic thirst for the grape. Of course, it could be a case of said parents setting a poor example, but I put all this down to the nerdish rebelliousness of today’s youth.

France, a nation as inseparable from wine as Arabia is from camel milk and air-raid sirens, offers the starkest example of this drought in wine consumption. In 1960, the average French citizen enjoyed 100 litres of wine a year. Today that figure hovers just above 30 litres per person, a dramatic collapse that has dealt a bruising blow to France’s reputation as the World’s Wine Nation, considering that 30 litres is roughly the average annual brandy intake within the borders of Worcester and Rawsonville.

And it’s not just France. Wine is losing seemingly favour everywhere, largely because of younger tastes. The youth regard wine as “old-fashioned”, “not flavourful enough” and — heaven forbid — “uncool, not really suited to pretty Instagram and TikTok posts… right?”

Further grim tidings from the French republic of good taste come in the form of that country’s younger generation now turning its nose up at France’s other gastronomic masterpiece: cheese. Or rather, French cheese. Those ripe, aromatic, full-throttle beauties that overpower the nostrils, seduce the palate and bless the stomach with a sensation of post-coital bliss. (Oh, and apparently the youth are also bonking less these days, but this another story.)

French cheese. Think of the musty blue-cheese jewel that is Roquefort, made from sheep’s milk and left to mould in dark caves filled with mystery and ancient wonder; the earthy Munster and its flavour of freshly dewed compost heap; or the gloriously runny Epoisses, whose brazen, riotous aroma fogs up your spectacles before assaulting your mouth, leaving viciously primal aromatic traces on your breath for three days. All these wonders and glories are being eschewed by the youth that appear to now know no pleasure.

Fewer than 10% of French young adults — aged 18 to 24 — eat traditional French cheeses. Instead, they gorge on Mozzarella and Emmental: cardboardy cheeses lacking in taste, charm and character, but which melt obediently onto pizzas and toasted sandwiches. Cheese is now reduced to convenience food, something to nibble while waiting for the next tattoo appointment, or to wolf down alongside an almond-milk cappuccino before Pilates class. And, of course, the visual of a stringy cord of melted Mozzarella strung mid-air between pizza and its influencer eater makes for great Instagram, the latter being the current determiner of good taste.

Another possible reason for French youngsters rejecting mature, ancient, characterful cheeses is the belief that “right-wing” people are supposedly more inclined to enjoy old-school cheeses than their liberal, left-leaning counterparts. A wedge of blue Roquefort, therefore, apparently signals that the eater thereof is a neo-Nazi or Donald Trump acolyte and, sacré bleu!, which boy or girl in their spring years wants to be associated with this? Pass the processed cheddar slice and skip the tune to Bono or Taylor Swift.

Personally, I accept that every sport comes with its injuries. And I’m perfectly willing to risk my reputation for the pleasure of a proper hunk of ripe, runny and pungently aromatic French cheese washed down with a crisp Sancerre white wine.

In fact, make that a double.

By Lafras Huguenet

There is, I think, a tendency among wine commentators — and perhaps especially among South Africans — to become over-excited whenever one of the Cape’s wines edges towards international distinction. One hears, with exhausting regularity, that this or that bottling is “world-class”, usually after a flattering score from London or New York. Most of the time, the claim is premature. Sometimes it is faintly embarrassing.

The Leeu Passant Chardonnay is another matter entirely.

After a decade of vintages, and after the recent vertical tasting held in Franschhoek, it has become difficult to avoid the conclusion that this wine now belongs among the world’s most compelling expressions of Chardonnay. Not because it resembles Burgundy, nor because it flatters fashionable contemporary taste, but because it possesses that increasingly rare quality in fine wine: inevitability. It tastes exactly of where it comes from and of nothing else.

This is rarer than technical brilliance. Cellars across the world are full of technically brilliant Chardonnay. Stainless steel can preserve freshness; barrels can confer texture; cultured yeasts and reductive handling can manufacture intrigue. None of that, however, guarantees identity. Indeed, modern Chardonnay has often become a kind of international dialect spoken with varying accents but using exactly the same vocabulary.

The Leeu Passant wine refuses this trap.

What struck me most about the reports from the vertical tasting was not merely the quality of the wines, but their composure. These are not Chardonnays straining for attention. They are not laden with oak sweetness, nor reduced into flinty caricature. They are calm wines. They trust the vineyard. In an age of vinous theatricality, that restraint feels almost radical.

And the vineyard itself deserves attention. A Stellenbosch Helderberg facing the cool influence of False Bay, it has now crossed that invisible threshold at which vines cease merely producing fruit and begin transmitting place. Young vines often shout variety. Older vines murmur geology.

That, increasingly, is what one seems to encounter in Leeu Passant Chardonnay: geology rendered drinkable.

The 2015 maiden vintage now appears almost prophetic. First vintages are usually earnest things, admirable perhaps, but slightly anxious, as though the wine itself senses the burden of expectation. Yet the inaugural Leeu Passant already carried remarkable assurance. The citrus tension, the saline edge, the refusal of easy generosity, all the essential signatures were already there. One suspects the wine must now be entering that deeply satisfying phase of maturity where primary fruit begins yielding to wax, hazelnut and marine savouriness without losing freshness.

And freshness, here, is crucial. South African Chardonnay has too often struggled with the burden of sunlight. Ripeness comes easily in the Cape; finesse less so. Many producers have therefore oscillated absurdly between excess and denial, first embracing Californian opulence, then pursuing reductive severity with almost religious zeal. The result has frequently been wines more concerned with fashion than truth.

Leeu Passant has wisely ignored fashion.

The 2017 vintage, to my mind, sounds close to profound. Christian Eedes called it his favourite release at the time, and one can see why. The descriptors — grapefruit, blossom, salt, crystalline acidity — suggest a wine in complete equilibrium. Great Chardonnay is never simply rich, nor simply taut. It must possess both breadth and line, both sunlight and shadow. Too much fruit and the wine becomes obvious; too much acidity and it becomes merely intellectual. The 2017 seems to occupy that elusive middle territory where flavour and structure become indivisible.

More importantly, though, it appears to possess energy. This matters enormously. One can drink many technically accomplished Chardonnays and remain unmoved. Energy is different. Energy is what compels another sip. It is what makes wine feel alive rather than assembled.

Then comes 2021, a vintage which increasingly looks set to become one of the Cape’s modern classics. Here, apparently, the wine broadened without softening. The fruit spectrum deepened into yellow citrus and white peach, yet the acidity retained absolute authority. One hears repeatedly of low pH levels in these wines, and thankfully so. Acidity is not merely refreshment; it is architecture. Without it, Chardonnay collapses under its own weight.

What is so impressive about these wines is that they achieve concentration without resorting to sweetness, extraction or oak inflation. There is no attempt to seduce. They ask the drinker to pay attention. That confidence marks the difference between luxury wine and fine wine. Luxury seeks approval. Fine wine simply articulates place.

And this, ultimately, is why Leeu Passant matters so profoundly to South Africa.

For decades, South African wine has existed in a slightly awkward psychological condition. The country possesses extraordinary vineyards, yet has often looked abroad for validation. Burgundy remained the implicit benchmark; Bordeaux the silent authority. The language surrounding Cape wine therefore became permanently aspirational: “emerging”, “promising”, “up-and-coming”.

Frankly, it grew tiresome.

The Leeu Passant Chardonnay renders such vocabulary obsolete. This is not an “emerging” wine. It is not promising. It has arrived.

Moreover, it has arrived without surrendering its South African identity. Too many ambitious New World Chardonnays attempt to erase sunshine, as though ripeness itself were shameful. But the Cape is luminous. It should taste luminous. The genius of Leeu Passant is that it preserves this sunlight while disciplining it with maritime freshness and mineral structure. The result is neither Burgundy nor California nor Australia. It is Helderberg.

That achievement is cultural as much as viticultural.

The broader Leeu Passant project — recovering old vineyards, reviving neglected Cape varieties, treating South African wine history as inheritance rather than inconvenience — may prove one of the most important intellectual contributions to modern Cape wine. The brand has helped reposition South African fine wine not as imitation, but as interpretation of its own landscape and memory.

And memory matters. Great wine cultures are built not merely on quality, but on continuity. A vertical tasting of ten vintages is therefore significant beyond the bottles themselves. It establishes chronology. It creates historical confidence. It allows drinkers to understand that South African Chardonnay is capable not merely of youthful brilliance, but of evolution and endurance.

That, in the end, may be the most convincing argument of all.

Fine wine is time made visible. The Leeu Passant Chardonnay appears increasingly capable of carrying time with grace. Few wines anywhere in the world can truly do that. Fewer still can do so while speaking in such a distinct and unmistakable voice.

South Africa should stop calling these wines “world-class”.

The phrase is too small for what they have become.

One of the aspects of the old South African wine industry, harking back to when it was still run by the KWV, is the aversion shown to media queries deemed troublesome. Journalists daring to ask questions about South African wine matters and legislation considered probing and veering away from the industry’s official “need-to-know basis” were usually brushed off, avoided and deemed prickly shit-stirrers.

Ask any hack seeking answers surrounding the KWV’s illicit trading in fake Champagne in the early 1990s, or the extent of farm-worker riots in the winelands at the same time, and they will concur: you reached a firmly closed door.

After the KWV was privatised in 1997, the attitudes of industry bodies towards journalists hardly improved. During Su Birch’s reign of terror as head of Wines of South Africa (Wosa), I penned a piece questioning Wosa’s lacklustre and ineffective methods of promoting Cape wines internationally. Galled to the hilt, Vinpro – the producers’ arm that had evolved from the KWV – called me in to explain myself. I was eloquently crapped on from a dizzy height for not supporting valiant industry marketing efforts and for simply not understanding the hard times grape growers and winemakers were facing.

Journalists have thick skins, and reactions of the passive-aggressive kind largely blow over. Currently, relations between industry bodies – such as SA Wine and Wines of South Africa – and the media are largely non-existent, the only communication from the industry side being the odd press release underscoring continued resilience and regenerative farming traits of which we, as interested parties in Cape wine, should be proud. So be it.

However, once a viable query arises and a penner of vinous words seeks an answer, the industry does the old trick of jumping back down into the bolt-hole.

At issue is a recent piece of South African wine legislation concerning the letter “s”. One letter. And it is not “sharp”, “Shiraz” or – least of all – “sensible”.

A few producers alerted me to the oracles of wine officialdom who had initiated a move to change the words “Old Vine” that said winemakers have implemented on their labels. One must remember that Old Vine wines are, by the very industry officialdom itself, deemed a shining light of the local wine industry, one it actively encourages producers to promote. And quite rightly so.

Well, the folk at the Wine Certification Authority are concerned about the use of “Old Vine” on a wine label, as consumers could allegedly be misled into thinking that the contents of the bottle are made from one single vine. To avoid the continuation of this immense deviance, an old-vine producer must therefore amend “Old Vine” on the marque to “Old Vines”. Because consumers apparently have a rightful need to know that the wine in question is made from an old vineyard constituting a number of vine plants. And only if the juice originates from one single vine plant may one drop the “s” and state that this is an “Old Vine” wine. Interesting to see, then, if the Old Vine Project which manages this part of the industry will be requested to become the Old Vines Project.

I am not going to opine on the merits and logic of this bit of nonsense, but for the sake of thorough clarity and objective reporting for an article I am writing for Die Burger newspaper, I contacted the officials at SA Wine. Wanda Augustyn, professional and courteous as ever, acknowledged this vine-to-vines amendment and helpfully gave me the relevant contact details for the Wine Certification Authority.

A simple missive requesting confirmation, reason and clarity for the sake of communicating wine-industry legislation in a daily newspaper has, to date, been ignored. Another friendly official from SA Wine assured me that the Wine Certification Authority had been prompted to react to the media query, and it is interesting to note that said official and their body have been ignored too.

Back to this piece of legislation concerning “Old Vine” and “Old Vines”: does the certification body not have anything better to do, or is it trying to justify its existence by concocting ridiculous red-tape snippets such as this?

An example of a surely more urgent matter, and one to which the Wine Certification Authority was alerted last year, is the selling and marketing of a “wine” made from oranges under the label “Orange Wine”. Fermented oranges, sold as South African wine. No action has been taken on this by the relevant authorities, who are probably too busy analysing petty wine nomenclature rather than acting where action is actually needed.

Save one’s gunpowder for the big game, and stop wasting it on the dassies. Or, as you wish, the dassie.

Fresh from a bout of research into a few key role-players in the history of South African wine, I replaced my history and academic readings with the inner calm of catching up on the devastation of the war in Ukraine. This colourful, action-packed interlude veered into some roundabout investigation into Ukrainian wine, and an unexpected finding as to the origin of a wine grape cultivar that had always been assumed to be South African.

The variety in question is Roobernet, the most famous South African red grape crossing after Pinotage, and listed all over the local place as one of the country’s “indigenous varieties”. Roobernet is a viticultural liaison between the grapes Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet that was first done by CJ Orffer, Professor of Viticulture at Stellenbosch University from 1963 to 1986.

A brilliant academic consumed by his subject, between 1958 and 1964 Prof. Orffer carried out numerous wine grape crossings, and cultivar status was granted to six of these, namely Chenel, Weldra, Roobernet, Therona, Grachen and Nouvelle. He also made numerous rootstock crossings, of which the best known are US 2-1 and US 8-7.

Orffer’s legacy was fresh in my mind when reading about the wines of Ukraine, thus I had to look twice when coming across the origins of the Ukrainian grape going by the rather captivating name Odesa Black. Because there it stood: Odesa Black evolved as a crossing between, yes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet, done in 1948 at the Tairov Institute in Odesa, thus preceding Orffer’s Roobernet by some distance of time. And yet, most South African resources – official industry and other – claim the Cabernet Sauvignon/Alicante Bouschet wild child was the result of Orffer’s (indisputable) ingenuity.

Upon contacting some of the more communication-savvy folk at industry body South Africa Wine, they too were surprised, yet exceedingly co-operative, and I was sent a paper written by Orffer himself admitting that, when considering Roobernet, the initial idea was not to have Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet as the parents. The former, yes, but the other side was meant to be the Pontac variety.

Shortly before his death, Orffer requested Vititec – the Cape wine industry’s nursery for clones, cultivars and all things vine-related – to verify the parents of some of his crossings, as he suspected that some of the parentages had been recorded incorrectly.

Since the time of Orffer’s varietal crossings and his writing, DNA analyses of grape varieties had become de rigueur, and the great man had been alerted to all not being well with the assumed origins of his inter-cultivar activities. (Modesty in the academics of science tends to be more prevalent than in the arts, culture and literature departments, for sure.)

The parents of Roobernet were initially indicated as Cabernet Sauvignon and Pontac, the two grapes the Professor assumed he had crossed. However, for Orffer there were, in later years, indications that Pontac might not be one of the parents, with Alicante Bouschet being furthest from his mind. In fact, “due to the lower wine quality of Alicante Bouschet, it was never even considered for use as a crossing parent,” Orffer wrote in his paper to Vititec.

Morphologically, the leaves of Roobernet show very little resemblance to Alicante Bouschet and are often confused with Cabernet Sauvignon. However, Roobernet’s large bunches and high production indicated to Orffer a possible intervention by Alicante Bouschet in the Roobernet family tree. The leading authority at that time on DNA analysis in the world of viticulture was ENTAV (Établissement National Technique pour l’Amélioration de la Viticulture) in France.

This body took a look at Roobernet and, using their science – as said, not available at the time Orffer did his crossing – vindicated Orffer’s suspicion: Pontac played no role in Roobernet, and the Cabernet Sauvignon tune had all the time been backed up by Alicante Bouschet.

This was confirmed in 2007, a year before Orffer’s death, and in his letter to Vititec he stated that “pollen from Alicante Bouschet must therefore have entered inadvertently”.

Which, at the end of the day, makes Roobernet and Ukraine’s Odesa Black the same cultivar, the difference being that it was not a Stellenbosch, South Africa “discovery”, as Odesa Black had emerged far earlier.

The advent of DNA analysis also rewrote the origins of other grape varieties. Take the case of another esteemed viticulturist, Dr Hermann Müller of Thurgau in Switzerland, whose Riesling and Sylvaner crossing, named Müller-Thurgau, at one stage surpassed Riesling plantings in Germany. Some researchers later questioned this, as many characteristics corresponded almost exclusively with Riesling and not with Sylvaner. Under scrutiny of DNA analysis, Dr Müller’s famed variety was shown to be, in fact, a marrying of Riesling and the Madeleine Royale grape, with Sylvaner nowhere in sight.

Proving to us of a limited academic nature that even at the top echelons, science is not exact.

By Lafras Huguenet

There are wines that impress, and there are wines that endure. Then, on very rare occasions, there are wines that seem to step outside of time altogether: wines that do not merely survive the decades, but absorb them, refine them, and emerge with a kind of quiet, unarguable authority. Emile Joubert wrote about one, namely Vriesenhof’s 2003 Pinot Noir. Great wine, but still a pup.

How about the 1986 CWG Grand Reserve from Delheim, crafted by Guild member Kevin Arnold under the watchful eye of Delheim pater familia Spatz Sperling, a far more senior number showing that marked authority.

To encounter it now is to engage not only with a wine, but with a philosophy, one rooted in patience, restraint, and a deeply European sensibility of what fine wine might aspire to be. In the context of contemporary Stellenbosch, where ripeness and polish often take centre stage, this wine speaks in a quieter, more measured voice. Yet it is precisely this discretion that commands attention.

The colour of this Grand Reserve 1986, at first glance, tells its own story: a limpid garnet core fading gently to brick at the rim, suggestive not of decline but of evolution. There is no murk here, no sense of fatigue. Only a poised transparency, as though the wine has shed all excess and now stands revealed in its essential form.

Aromatically, it unfolds with the slow grace of something that knows it has nothing to prove. There is cedar, certainly, and the faintest trace of cigar box, those familiar signposts that might indeed recall the great growths of Pauillac. But alongside these come notes of dried rose petal, of old leather-bound books, of forest floor after autumn rain. The fruit, though no longer primary, persists in a haunting register: redcurrant, perhaps, or a whisper of plum, now softened and interwoven with the tertiary complexities of age.

On the palate, the wine achieves that most elusive of states: harmony without inertia. The tannins, once undoubtedly firm, have resolved into something silken and almost architectural: present, shaping, but never obtrusive. Acidity, too, plays its role with quiet assurance, lending lift and continuity without ever asserting itself. There is a seamlessness here, a sense that every element has found its rightful place within the whole.

One is struck, above all, by the wine’s sense of proportion. There is no excess, no flamboyance. Only balance, clarity, and a kind of inner luminosity. It is, in this respect, profoundly “old school,” though that phrase scarcely does justice to what is achieved here. If anything, it reminds us that the so-called old school was never about austerity for its own sake, but about fidelity. To site, to structure, to time.

And time, indeed, is the silent collaborator in this wine’s achievement. Four decades have not diminished this great Stellenbosch Bordeaux blend; rather, they have distilled it. What remains is not power, nor even complexity in the conventional sense, but something rarer: a feeling of completeness. The wine does not evolve in the glass so much as it reveals itself, layer by measured layer, each nuance contributing to an overarching sense of calm coherence.

There is, inevitably, a poignancy to this experience. Spatz Sperling was a figure of immense character, a custodian of tradition in a landscape that would, in time, change dramatically. To taste this wine is to glimpse his vision and Arnold’s craftmanship – not as an abstraction, but as something tangible, enduring, and quietly eloquent.

What, then, does one say of such a wine? It is not “impressive” in the modern sense, nor does it seek to dazzle. Instead, it invites reflection. It asks us to consider what we value in wine: immediacy or longevity, impact or integrity. In its composed, unhurried way, the 1986 Grand Reserve offers an answer.

Magnificent, absolutely. But more than that, it is instructive. It reminds us that greatness in wine is not a matter of scale, but of balance; not of novelty, but of truth. And in doing so, it stands as a quiet testament to what Stellenbosch has achieved, and will continue to do so. Thanks to the foundations laid by Delheim and others.

1. A gin martini can never be too cold or too dry.

2.  Don’t buy wine to resell it. Buy out of love, and that love will grow to the extent that you’ll never want to let it go. And neither should you.

3. Read everything on wine written by Andrew Jefford and Terry Theise. They give worth, credence and respect to your obsession. And make you feel all the wiser and the better for harbouring it.

4. Never kiss a girl with the smell of brandy-and-Coke on her breath unless you want your morals tested and a beating-up from her girlfriend.

5. Pay no heed to the prescriptiveness of food-and-wine pairings. They are only there to stifle imagination and to keep one from the path of adventure and discovery.

6. Never trust any wine advice from a vegan or vegetarian, for they cannot know what true taste is.

7. A whisky requiring more than two ice-cubes in a double-tot pour can lead to blindness.

8. Never lap Vintage Port from the belly-button of a Portuguese virgin without asking her permission first.

9. A fine Havana cigar makes any alcohol beverage taste and smell better.

10. Never argue with a French sommelier until you have whacked him to the floor first. A true gentleman disagrees from the moral high-ground only.

11. Do not confront a host who has served you box-wine from a decanter. But do pee on his toilet seat on your way out.

12. There can never be enough Champagne, ever.

What are your rules? Comments welcome.