The tune of old vineyards falls chiming and alluring on the ear, adding authenticity, romance and charm to the over-stuffed thematic make-up of the chronicle that is wine. Approaching a wine made from a vineyard that has for decades lived in a specific patch of earth, being exposed to scores of seasonal climatic vagaries, unavoidably gives that wine a certain appeal, one felt in the gut and in the heart.

Some 35 years is globally recognised as the age a vineyard must reach to be classified as “old”, this after old vines began to be a more general wine thing around a decade back. And for a 30- or 40-something person of relative youth, 35 years will be judged as a relevant age for such classification. For age only has true bearing and meaning when compared to one’s own distinctive field of reference.

The advent of South Africa’s democracy some 31 years ago, for example, belongs in the obscure annals of history for someone in his or her 30s. For others of my ilk, 1994 was just the other day.

Therefore, the acceptance and appreciation of wines made from old vineyards only finds traction, for me, when these plants have reached an age which I will call decent, and that is 50 years and over. This is an assured and confident showing of a vine having persevered, roots still rooted in the soils, drawing life from the earth to drive the complex growing processes needed to reach the annual state of bunch-ripeness. Having been attuned to its natural environment, gotten to fall in synch with the mindset of those people who manage the vineyard and itself growing shoots and leaves and grapes for 50 or more years, then one can say that, yes, the vineyard knows what it is doing.

And seeing such a vineyard and tasting the wine made from it, this vineyard and its wine can indeed create what all art aspires to summon from the human heart, and that is wonder.

Wonder has been at the forefront of my mind since a visit to a Cinsault vineyard in Wellington this week, as this patch of gnarled, low bush vines were planted in 1900. During the Anglo-Boer War, to place this into context. The oldest registered vineyard in South Africa, dry-farmed to boot. And during my pre-dawn visit, these viticultural miracles were showing ripe bunches of purple-blue berries, glistening in the soft early morning light before their stems were clipped with secateurs for transporting to a cellar, where the process of transforming these offerings from their 125-year-old parents into wine begins.

The vineyard in question is that from which the famed Wellington Cinsault is made, a wine bottled under the Leeu Passant label in the Franschhoek wine stable owned by Analjit Singh together with Chris and Andrea Mullineux. As I watched the pickers briskly make their way through the wide rows, snipping the bunches in revered silence, Andrea Mullineux asked me if I had tasted the grapes yet. This I had been reluctant to do – some vines had no bunches at all, and on others I counted but three to five. There is not a lot of fruit going around, as one can understand with vines’ being this age, and randomly nicking a berry seemed disrespectful.

Having gotten the go ahead, a grape was taken, and it broke juicy and sweet in the mouth. It was not the usual walnut-sized berry that Cinsault vines offer in their more vivacious youthful stage when yields can be promiscuously dense, and the skin was noticeably thicker than what the variety is known for. The pips were brittle, shattering between one’s dental arrangements and indicating a stage or perfect ripeness.

The vineyard of just under one hectare was already picked clean after the sun had risen over the Wellington mountains to the east. Crated, the grapes were ready to be carted in a cool-truck to the Leeu Passant winery for the vinification process, a situation starkly different to the pre-Leeu Passant days when this Cinsault would end-up in an innocuous red blend presided over by an ethos of co-operative mass production.

Some 45 years ago, when the Wellington vineyard was but a sprightly 80-years-old, Cinsault was the most planted red variety in South Africa, with 12 000ha set in the Cape winelands, compared to today’s1 650ha. The resurgence of an appreciation for the country’s wine legacy and its old vines has led to a slight Cinsault revival, although it is never going to reach the heady heights of Chenin Blanc’s Judas-like re-awakening. There simply are not enough Cinsault vineyards to, like Chenin Blanc has allowed for, create a brand from a cultivar.

And then there is the Cinsault wine itself, which can range from astringent and thin, to something solely deserving status as boxed Dry Red, and on the other side of the spectrum delivering a wine of true magnificence.

During Amorim Cork’s re-corking programme the team came across a 1971 Cinsault made under the erstwhile Oude Libertas label from Stellenbosch Farmers Winery and, poured blind, the impression was that this was a regal matured Burgundy with luxurious tertiary breeding cloaking an apparent immortal, vivid freshness.

The other reason that makes Cinsault hard going in the market is the lack of worldly references. Pinot Noir is Burgundy, Shiraz be Rhône and Barossa Valley and for Cabernet Sauvignon, there is the inspiration from Bordeaux and California.

Being a southern France workhorse grape, Cinsault has to graft extremely hard for notice in a world obsessed with immediate recognition and perception. This is why it needs a number of X-factors to prise into the realm of premier wine acceptance, factors that – as this 125-year-old Cinsault vineyard in Wellington shows – Leeu Passant has.

There is the age of the vines, astounding, underscoring the fact that Cinsault has true Cape wine industry provenance. The Mullineux and Singh commitment to ensuring this vineyard remains a, well, growing concern, is another. And then there is the wine itself, which when – sampled a few days before visiting the vineyard – is about as good as South African red wine gets.

The sample in question was the Leeu Passant Wellington Cinsault 2022. Spontaneous fermentation commences. The wine spends three weeks on the skins. It is aged further in old 500l barrels for 21 months.

Afrikaans philosopher-writer Marthinus Versfeld once wrote: “Each bottle of wine is a parcel of history”, so the more nostalgically minded will appreciate this Cinsault purely on account of the vines’ historical significance. But drinking Leeu Passant Old Vines Cinsault 2022 over a plate of steak and roast potatoes with a South African friend who has been residing in Toulouse for the past two decades, it was apparent that the wine has much more, so much more, than history going for it.

The impression is one of depth and concentration, led by a heady perfume, that harvest-time aroma of crushed dark berries at the onset of fermentation, a sour-cherry whiff with a layer of summer fynbos. With the old vines’ Cinsault’s thicker skins, the wine has the colour of night-black, the slightest of garnet rims resting, broodily, on the surface.

Regal and monumental, yes, but the wine’s appeal – the only one that truly matters to me – is the deliciousness. There is fruit, heavy, sugared plums verging on the edge of becoming prune, with an exotic edge of dried fig and an open-minded petrichor whisper. Fruit is glowing, not crunchy. There is juice and sap, yet dryness is non-negotiable. Slight garrique and potpourri cut loose toward the finish, with cedar dust and pine-needle present as the wine slips away.

Texture is the lifeblood of a great wine, and here the Cinsault straddles that of adorable, luxurious silky plushness and stern, moody dramatic presence. Like Maria Callas singing an aria while dressed in a negligee, this is classic, serious and seductive.

An image for pause, and wonder.

The crinkled tuxedo and red wine stains are still moist on the once-crisp white shirt, and I am thinking about last night’s all dressed-up event at Groot Constantia for the annual blessing of the South African wine harvest, as well as the annual honouring of the country’s wine legends. Those men and – a few – women who have been identified as having played profound roles in the Cape wine industry.

Johann Krige, proprietor of Kanonkop Estate, received the evening’s main accolade, namely that of the 1659 Award for Visionary Leadership, well-deserved as have been most of the previous recipients.

This lauding of the country’s exceptional wine people began in 1974 within the surrounds of the KWV, being moved to Groot Constantia just over a decade ago. The occasion is relevant, not only underscoring the fact that Cape wine has a long and illustrious history, but also acting as a reminder that formidable South Africans with wine coursing through their veins and vinous philosophy inhabiting their minds have allowed the industry to progress through these persons’ respective roles and influence.

It was a great occasion, one of reverence and respect complemented by spirited camaraderie in a magnificent setting. Groot Constantia remains the home and heart of South African wine.

But if the country’s industry truly wants to honour the roles individuals have played in its evolution as one embodying the connection that exists between the influential South African people of the past and the status of today’s industry, then more must be done.

It is befitting to annually honour certain people with a brief summary of their contributions to everything Brand SA Wine encompasses today. But what is needed is to put the contributions and dynamic roles of these individuals into context through a platform where the story of South African wine is once and forever fully, comprehensively and correctly told.

South Africa has a unique, multi-faceted, complex and rich wine history, but this statement is not suitably backed up with authoritative and engaging details of record. To put it bluntly, if one is looking for the story of Cape wine in books or websites, details are all over the place, inconsistent and in many instances factually incorrect.  Statistics are, fortunately, in good hands due to the sterling work of Sawis. But the recording of a progressive narrative depicting pitfalls, challenges, ups-and-downs and successes, is lacking. It needs complete telling. One of how the wine industry truly came to be where it is today. How dramatic and visionary changes were driven by people of pioneering spirit, people spurred on by that wonderful combination of creativity, reality and foresightedness together with an in-bred commitment to pursuing a better proposition for the wine world in which they live. And what the effect of their actions and spirits were, sometimes against the hard-headed confinement of authority regulation.

Take Kanonkop as but one example in the modern history reflecting the extent to which South African wine has changed for the better.

From the late 1940s until 1973, Kanonkop – like many of today’s famous wine-producing estates, was making bulk wine for selling to a large brand-owner, in their case Stellenbosch Farmers Winery, with this wine ending-up bottled under large commercial labels.

Only 52 years ago – but a breath in the world of wine – did Kanonkop bottle its first estate wine under an own label. By doing, so the estate was a part of the shift in focus and of mindset among of a group of Cape producers towards creating wines that reflect a region and a specific wine farm’s geographic finger-print. Which in turn led to aspects that are today deemed a given when talking about wine, such as greater emphasis on vineyard quality, matching variety to suitable terroir and an awareness of the role of expertise and creativity in the cellar.

Accordingly, in one pause in history, the offering of South African wine changed dramatically in terms of quality and diversity, just as it is now continuously changing every year.

Parts of this history have been recorded by the estate’s themselves, as well as in recent books, but a complete precis on the extent to which the story of Cape wine changed over the past 60 years to being the multi-faceted and revered distinctive South African feature it is today, remains largely lacking.

Another chunk of information currently residing in a void, is on the introduction of grape cultivars to the Cape. With official records only going back to 1973, scant and mostly anecdotal evidence exists on when, where and by who varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay and Shiraz were introduced into the South African winelands, and what wines were made from them, when.

The list goes on. It is eventful, colourful, fascinating and, mostly, important.

The needs of the industry are vast, and they are many. But one that stands out is an official researched platform, albeit print, online, film or whatever, from where the complete history of South African can be viewed, used and promoted.

For you can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have come from.

When it comes to opportunism and marketing in the world of wine, no prize for giving top kudos to the Americans. President Donald Trump has hardly had time to acquaint Melania with the sleeping arrangements in the White House, and already a California winery has rushed to the fore with an offering of wines made to appeal to wine drinkers of Republican Trump supporting ilk. And, possibly, introduce a new generation to the juice of the fermented grape which they deem unfashionable, old school and out of synch with the current red-blooded heartbeat of America.

Where one would expect Trump supporters to prefer moonshine and rotgut rye whiskey distilled by toothless Appalachian families resulting from inter-generational in-breeding, the Republican Red Winery in the Santa Lucia Highlands in California’s Monterey County has rushed to the fore with a range of wines honouring the world that Trump espouses.

It appears to be a proper business, by the way, with a smart website offering instant shipments, thorough tasting notes and a summary of the press-coverage bestowed on Republican Red Winery, including from the legacy media.

As to the wines, first up is the 45+47 Pinot Noir, referring to Trump’s position in the line-up of American presidents. As to the tasting notes, well, these provide for reading of entertainment value that even the most creative wine scribe would not be able to replicate:

“Our ’45+47′ Pinot Noir, is a distinguished tribute celebrating Donald Trump as both the 45th and 47th President. This exceptional Pinot Noir embodies the boldness and charisma of its namesake, delivering a rich, complex flavour profile that’s as captivating as the man himself. Grown in the prestigious vineyards of the Santa Lucia Highlands, this wine boasts layers of flavours, with a smooth finish that lingers like a memorable speech. Whether you’re toasting to past victories or future triumphs, ’45+47′ Pinot Noir is the perfect companion for those who believe in making America great again – one glass at a time.”

Only in America. Give me a creative South African wine-scribe who can top that.

Onto the next wine, and I present you with Republican Red Winery’s Cabernet Sauvignon, this made from fruit in Paso Robles and charmingly named 2nd Amendment Cabernet Sauvignon after the value Trump’s party holds most dear, namely the one to bear arms. This is guns and stuff. The wine comes with another note advocating a call to wine and arms, which could be a lethal combination. In any event, this reads:

“Show your support for the Second Amendment with our ‘2nd Amendment’ Special Edition Cabernet Sauvignon from Republican Red Winery. This bold and robust wine not only delights the palate but also celebrates the fundamental right to bear arms. With flavours as strong and uncompromising as the principles it represents, this Cabernet Sauvignon is perfect for those who cherish their freedoms. The grapes were expertly fermented at moderate temperatures and then aged in French oak barrels, enhancing the wine’s depth and ensuring a perfect balance of fruit and tannins. Raise a glass to liberty and enjoy this exceptional wine that stands as a testament to American values.”

Whether the Red Republican Winery offers a box of .45 Magnum cartridges with every two cases ordered is not yet known, but do not be surprised.

My personal favourite is this winery’s energetically named white, namely the Drain the Swamp Chardonnay. This alludes to the term Trump and co. frequently used in campaigning for his first tenure where he aimed to depoliticise Washington DC by removing bureaucratic slime from a city which, physically, is actually a low-lying, humid and damp swamp.

How fun to draft a tasting-note thus:

“Make a bold statement with our ‘Drain the Swamp’ Special Edition Chardonnay. Crafted to champion accountability in politics, this wine is a perfect way to express your support for meaningful change. Raise a glass to progress and the power of making a difference. Produced from grapes grown in the esteemed Santa Lucia Highlands, this Chardonnay showcases remarkable complexity developed through a long growing season on well-drained slopes. Cheers to a brighter future with every sip!”

And last but not least, check out the Golden Age of America Sparkling Wine “that Toasts Triumph and Unity”. Here the tasting-notes read more like a manifesto, the winery’s marketing department now obviously in fully aroused throttle:

Commemorating the Victory: Our limited-editionGolden Age Cuveé is a sparkling wine that commemorates President Trump’s glorious victory at a pivotal moment in American history. Let’s raise a glass and welcome the Golden Age of America.

Celebrating the Red Wave: Pay tribute to the Republican Party’s remarkable commitment and unity that secured control of the Presidency, House, Senate, and Supreme Court.

Steadfast Commitment: Let each sparking sip remind us to come together and stay vigilant to pass laws and make rulings while the getting is good.  Now is the time to secure a brighter future for generations to come.

Pop the cork, stand proud, and join us in ushering in the Golden Age of America.  Cheers to victory, solidarity, and knowing that the best is yet to come.

On the website, Republican Red Winery also proudly markets itself as “Made in USA”, “Family Owned” and “100% Woke Free”.

Only in, well, yes, that place.

A translated extract from Krummels in my Koffer (Protea Books)

From Porto I take the night train to Madrid. Now I am a wanderer once more, backpack slung over my shoulders as I navigate the wide boulevards of Madrid, guided by my Let’s Go Europe guide to the youth hostel. Here in Spain, everything is larger, more bustling than in Portugal. Vast markets brim with fish and any other edible ocean creature, in shell and with tentacles. I see and smell vegetables, and fruits; cheeses and flowers and thirty different kinds of olives. And the flesh of the pig that Spain so dearly loves: the reddish-brown jamón, those hams that are salted and air-dried, cured for years in Spanish mountain caves. The red chourico sausages, coloured and flavoured with paprika.

But it is the Spanish countryside that calls to me. After a few days in Madrid, experiencing the splendours of the Prado Museum and drinking beer and eating ham and cheese sandwiches in bars with other wanderers from America, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Denmark, I head southward.

It was the beginning of summer, and the Spanish landscape reminds me of trips to the Karoo and Namaqualand with my parents. Red earth stretches across open plains, the rolling hills dotted with olive trees and endless green vineyards. The air is still, windless, dry, and warm. I hitchhike, catching rides with taciturn truck drivers and chatty holidaymakers on their way to the coast. Here and there, I take the train. I have a complete freedom, with no idea where I’m ultimately headed, except that I’m aiming for Seville. There’s work at Amorim’s Spanish cork factory.

Late one afternoon, I find myself on a train that stops at a station in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It’s just me and a handful of other passengers on the train; one dishevelled man in a loose-fitting cheap suit speak English and tells me the train stops here for the night and won’t continue until tomorrow. There is no reason, no alternative plan. Mañana is always another day. The  passengers disembark, I am alone.

At the isolated station there is, as at all Spanish train stations, a café. It’s cool inside, and the bartender and a few other men, who look like local farmers, are glued to a bullfight taking place on a large television-set. I order a beer and watch for a while as a large black bull is taunted and killed by a nimble matador in his tight golden suit. The bar counter is made of zinc, and the metal feels cool against my bare elbow.

After a while, that goes slowly, it is dusk outside, and the farmers leave one by one, the roars of their vehicles slicing through the silence. Now it’s just me and the bartender, and the bulls. And the stationary train by the platform. The bartender, a short, dark man in his sixties, asks me something I don’t understand. Seeing my puzzlement, he makes the universal eating gesture: moving his fists toward his mouth. I say “sí” and “por favor,” realising how hungry I am.

He disappears into a doorway behind the bar, and as another dead bull is dragged out of the dust of the bullfighting arena by two horses, I hear the sound of pots and pans and the sizzling sound of something frying in hot oil. And there is the smell of garlic, as is always the case when cooking is done in southern Europe.

About ten minutes later, the bartender emerges from the hidden kitchen. I turn away from the television to watch him place a plate on the zinc counter. On the plate lies a golden-yellow omelette, with pieces of golden-brown potato set in the egg. Beside the omelette lies a strip of meat with a slightly charred surface from which a watery red-pink juice oozes, too red to be pork. I thank the bartender and ask, in my rudimentary Spanish, for a glass of red wine: “vino tinto.” Mom and Dad would have enjoyed red wine with meat and eggs.

It is a thin beef steak, perfectly medium-rare, that has been fried in oil. Together with the robust, raw Spanish red wine, it is the best meat I have had since the Karoo lamb chops Dad grilled for Peter and me the day before we left South Africa to fly to Portugal. And I’m not surprised by the deliciousness of the omelette alongside the steak. Already in Madrid I had noticed that the Spaniards are friends of the egg, serving baked eggs under paprika and omelettes – called tortilla – everywhere. But out here in the sticks, this simple egg dish is simply heavenly to eat. The omelette is light in texture yet rich on the palate due to the orange farm eggs it has been cooked with. The cubes of potato break the richness slightly, bearing the flavours of earth and water, with a salty fried crust.

I eat everything and wash it down with two glasses of wine. Wipe my plate clean with a chunk of crusty bread. The bartender takes my plate away and returns with a cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy.

After the last bull has died and the television is turned off, I thank the bartender and pay. He closes the café and rides off on a noisy motorbike that sends plumes of white smoke and the hollow clatter of the engine into the still night air of Spain.

The station platform is now bathed in a dim yellow light, and the night cools slightly so that the scent of plants and earth rises, covering me in the cool and the fresh. I unroll my sleeping bag and lay it out on one of the benches. Far away in a strange land and alone, I close my eyes.

And I dream of bulls.

Despite an all-consuming personal and professional association with wine, there are times when only a beer will – and can – do. Ice-cold and necked straight out of the easy-to-grasp 375ml bottle. No habitual sniffing of the surface to assess its aromatic complexity. No tentative analysing of the first small initial sip from which to make sensorial deductions for further pondering.

It is a bottle of beer to be drunk in huge non-plussed draughts. The dry cold liquid of easy and familiar malted hoppy flavour, perked up with the titillation of sparkle and bubble and foam, all going down like a cheerleader on Florida Spring Break. Refreshing, sating and hitting all spots requiring momentous satisfaction.

My personal beer of choice is Castle Light, and that’s the other cool thing about beer. Upon entering the liquor store it is, unlike with wine, a non-debatable choice. No deciding on what cultivar, style or terroir-driven product one is in the mood for, or should sample so as to keep up with current vinous modes. Just head to the walk-in fridge, grab two six-packs, done. You know what you want, and you know that those green bottles of Castle will guarantee you getting it.

Drinking beer is easy. Unlike with wine, you are free of making notes on what you are drinking, filing them for further use in articles or as topics of conversation with wine industry people. There is also no need to style a photograph of a bottle of Castle Light, beaded with condensation, and post it on Instagram for impressing the followers. For they, too, don’t need influencing or persuasion or opinion, because everybody knows that beer is good.

Beer is why pubs are better and more popular places than wine bars. Because in pubs, beer in hand, there is conversation and talk to be had on life in all its greater, as well as trivial splendours. Go to a wine-bar, and it’s boring. Punters gazing at the minute words chalked on the blackboard listing tens-upon-tens of wine marques, cultivars, geographical origins and styles. And once the wading through the list has been done and the smidgen-portion of liquid poured into the glass, wine bar frequenters are obliged to limit themselves to discussing, commenting and debating the contents of their glasses.

Back at the, pub we just take another slug of draught beer to replenish the vocal cords before continuing to ponder the merits of the TMO in international rugby or debate world politics. Such as whether Donald Trump, now and again, gives Melania one.

If criticism on beer must be made, then it is the general poor quality of draught beer to be had in South Africa. Without the generational beer culture of the UK, Germany and Belgium, local pubs tend to mistreat their kegs, allowing for the beer not being cold enough and – equally offensive – lacking the correct degree of energetic foaminess.

And that’s the other great thing about beer, in that there are only two types: Good, and flat and warm. Easy choices rule the world, and here beer is king.

And then, not a word. The mountains still echo with the bewildered murmurs over the demise of Afrikaans newspapers, yet not a single voice in that or any other community makes mention of another South African treasure that has quietly disappeared over the past year or so, namely the once proud Cape wine known as sherry.

Where the country was in years past globally regarded as the only one whose sherry quality could be spoken of in the same breath as those from the wine’s birthplace, namely in the vicinity of Jerez de la Frontera in Spain’s warm south, the local wine industry has silently turned off the sherry tap. Now the Cape has lost a once proud part of its wine history. The shelves where sherry once stood are bare, the reason being – just like with the decline of newspapers – that its production is no longer deemed financially viable.

South Africa produced this magnificent wine for the first time in 1933, though it had been adored worldwide for hundreds of years due to its captivating combination of flavours, including nuts, dried fruit, and salt, presented in various styles from syrupy sweet to bone-dry. The secret lies in the flor yeast that must rest like a dense mouldy blanket on the wine to impart those complex flavours and lingering mouthfeel. It was not until the aforementioned 1933 that KWV’s legendary wine genius Charlie Niehaus discovered this yeast in a vineyard in Stellenbosch. Vergenoegd, no less.

The success was immediate. The Cape’s soil types and climate, especially the warm areas of Worcester, Swartland, and Robertson, create ideal conditions for producing grapes as close to those of Spanish character as a Breedekloof drum majorette is to a flamenco dancer. Suddenly, Cape sherry was in high demand internationally, especially in England where the delightful consumption of a few glasses of dry sherry before noon was considered mandatory in whetting the appetite.

There are still British television segments showing how hundreds of millions of litres of sherry were exported from South Africa to England in the 1960s and 1970s, with experts at the time suggesting that the Spaniards should watch out because, in terms of quality, the Cape sherries were breathing down their necks.

Local sherry lovers could still experience the splendour until a few years ago through the quality wines that KWV and Monis continued to bottle. But then, like mist before the sun, everything disappeared. Monis stopped filling its well-known translucent sherry bottles – the good stuff being blended away with that innocuous faecal coloured liquor known as Old Brown. Any reference to sherry vanished from KWV’s extensive wine list.

And so, a chapter of the country’s wine industry is hereby closed. To those who had the foresight to fill their cellars with bottles full of these offerings from the Cape’s vineyard treasure, may you be blessed. Enjoy every drop to the end of days, yet do raise the occasional glass to the rest of us who sit with dry mouths. Droëbek being the operative word.

The history of the Chardonnay-Pinot Noir still wine that catapulted Franschhoek ‘s Cabrière Estate to uncharted commercial success began with a fish soup called bouillabaisse. And, of course, with the role of Cabrière’s founder, the legendary Achim von Arnim.

It was sometime in the early 1990’s and Achim had been invited by Freda van der Merwe, then owner of the famous Freda’s Restaurant in Kloof Street, Cape Town, to join a few winemakers and foodies to lunch on her famous bouillabaisse. The only proviso being that each guest bring a bottle of wine to best match her dish. And the winning wine was to be selected as the perfect Bouillabaisse Brother.

The day arrived, and Achim had gotten waylaid at the cellar. Upon realising he had better hot-foot it to Cape Town from Franschhoek – if a journey in a clapped-out Citroën could be called hot-footing – he realised he had not planned a wine to take along. So, in typical Achim fashion, he found a few empty bottles and filled them from the tanks of fermented Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that yet to be sent for secondary bottle-fermentation, as per the way of Cap Classique. For which he and Cabrière were, at the time, most famous.

The rest is predictable, and is history. Achim’s instinctive unlabelled, unbottled blend of lusty young Chardonnay and Pinot Noir trounced the other wines lined-up next to Freda’s bouillabaisse, beating Chablis, Riesling, Sancerre, Provençal rosé and the other assembled numbers to be announced the winning wine.

And thus, the wine’s history as a singular Cabrière offering began, going on to become an ubiquitous Cape wine with a huge following.

To honour its three decades in being, Cabrière last year released a limited-volume bottling Chardonnay Pinot Noir from vintage 2024 of which only 696 bottles were made. The make-up is 78% Chardonnay and 22% Pinot Noir from the property’s own vineyards, both of the mature kind – the Chardonnay sticks were planted in 1983 and the Pinot Noir took root in 1991. The wine was fermented and aged in a single clay amphorae and bottled in a piece of glass heavy enough to cause cramp in Eben Etzebeth’s pouring finger.

The wine is a delight in having breadth and depth, and a truly unique flavour-profile for a white wine. It has a full, generous and cool entry on the palate bearing instant agreeability. Ruby grape-fruit comes to the fore, as well as kumquat and slivers of chilled persimmon laced with lime-juice. There is a shard of stoniness, too, all white and gleaming, ensuring that despite its wallowing expanse of flavour, there is a perky lift of sunny energy.

Due to professional duties, I did not allow this wine to mature, but it is a collector’s item for sure, and an honour to one of the many mark’s Achim and Cabrière have made on the Cape wine industry. And a fine fishing story, to boot.

There is a green forest atop the slope, which faces south-east and runs steep, up to 350m above sea-level, and it is a beautiful piece of country, the forest’s wilderness looking down on vineyards that have been making some of the very best wines on earth for a very long time. It is Corton, and it is in Burgundy, this part of the region probably best known for the tight bind its Chardonnay wines tie to the hearts of those who drink it, but for me it makes the best red wine in the world.

The Pinot Noir from these red Corton vines are wines that could by some, even knowledgeable wine people, be termed as being very “unlike” Pinot Noir. For they are the kind of red wines with which Burgundy was associated before the region’s boom times, pre-1980, days when the area’s wines were associated with intensity and force and strength. Then, power dominated, as money and price does today.

Auberon Waugh, son of the great British novelist Evelyn and a wine writer of ferocious honesty and rigid conviction, said that from the 1980s red Burgundy changed, as the producers suddenly became chasing cherry and floral flavours.

But Corton runs true to its legacy and origins and reputation. And I love the sterner, more dramatic and bigger reds made there, as I was reminded at the end of last year when I chanced upon a wine, the having of which going down as one of my most memorable.

The wine was from Burgundy producer Faively, the Clos de Cortons Faively vineyard, theirs exclusive, and it was from the 1999 vintage, making it 25 years old at the time of the experience. I found this age a disheartening factor, as this means that if I was going to truly experience their true potential, the couple of young Burgundies I still have stashed away would have to remain unopened for an uncomfortably long time.

To say the 25-year-old Clos de Cortons Faively was sublime is like saying Sandra Bullock is well-built or that Maria Callas had been quite a good singer. For this wine’s ability to harness one’s sensorial experience with the deep-rooted inner workings of emotional cords able to create emotion and love, made it an experience, one branded into the current consciousness with a red-hot poker. Leaving an impression that I would have been so much poorer, as a man, if I had not been blessed to partake therein.

The cork was long and ochre and slid from the bottleneck with the sigh of a nun seeing Michelangelo’s David for the first time. I poured the wine into a decanter, as I was showing it unsighted to friends, and it ran black and red into the glass vessel, leaving wet rivulets the colour of rose-petals on the glass walls. An aroma filled the room, not a perfume, but a chilly breeze scented by cracked apple-wood, haybales and organic earth tilled by a slightly sweaty Frenchman eating saucisson sec.

It lay moody, dark and troubled in the wineglass, the wine wondering who had dared to stir its quarter-century’s slumbering and, what’s more, had ripped it from the hills where the Emperor Charlemagne first planted vines 1200 years ago, daring to transport it to the southern land of South Africa.

Closer to the nose, the wine is monumental, two sniffs and the tears pricked with the aroma of life and time; earth and history; thunder and sun; wilderness and the genius of civilisation. Considering the decision of allowing the liquid to enter the mouth was one of apprehension and thrill.

Then it exploded.

Everything I had thought and talked, told and wrote and bragged and – on grappa-fuelled occasions – had sung about wine, all this came true in one sip and one swallow. It was taste and flavour and presence I could hear and see, as well as – most importantly – feel.

The tannic thrust was resounding, like an axe cleaving the steel-helmeted skull of a Saracen warrior, and it was sheer beauty as the tannins collected the flavours and tastes, scooping them up and planting them into the senses of he was having the wine.

Bramble-berries, wet with the blood drawn from the fingers pricked by the plants’ thorns. Ripe, warm wild strawberries salted by fat dripping from a raw goose liver. And this Pinot Noir was not showing forest-floor, it had dug down, going deep and drawing flavour from the thousands of roots probing the mysterious regions of earth ancient and damp and dark, and indeterminably deep.

Structure? Palate-weight? Mouth-feel? Quite frankly, I could not give a flying Faively fuck. It was a wine transcending the need for such peculiar and petty analyses, for like I who was drinking it, these are too small to be considered in the immensity of what it was offering.

I am haunted by Corton.

The late South African rugby legend Boy Louw had a famous saying when his team’s narrow victory was questioned by the opposition: “ag man, well just looks at the scoreboard.” As the South African wine industry wraps up 2024 and reflects on the year’s achievements, those who look at the scoreboard will see another Louw at the top: Thys, owner and winemaker at Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville.

When it comes to awards and honours, Diemersdal indisputably stood out as the top performer in the South African wine industry this year. Anyone doubting, just look at the scoreboard.

The names Louw and Diemersdal are especially renowned for their Sauvignon Blanc wines, and they indeed excelled in that category this year. However, the standout performance is how well the estate’s other wine varieties performed.

Take, for example, Cabernet Sauvignon. This year, Diemersdal won its third General Smuts Trophy at the National Young Wine Show. With this king of red grapes, Diemersdal also excelled at the Veritas Awards, where The Journal Cabernet Sauvignon 2020 earned double gold. The Journal Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 received a five-star rating in the Platter’s Guide, placing it in esteemed Cabernet company.

Then there’s the Diemersdal Pinotage. The Journal Pinotage wines from 2020 and 2022 each received double gold at Veritas, with the 2022 Pinotage Reserve reining in an Absa Top 10 Trophy. The Platter’s Guide also named The Journal Pinotage 2022 as the top Pinotage in the country.

For another red variety, Shiraz, Diemersdal achieved a Veritas double gold, and their Syrah 2023 shone with five stars in Platter’s.

Diemersdal’s Sauvignon Blanc wines maintained their prominence despite their reds’ success. Wild Horseshoe 2023 was named Platter’s Sauvignon Blanc of the Year, while The Journal Sauvignon Blanc 2023 earned five stars. Diemersdal Winter Ferment Sauvignon Blanc 2024 was also among the FNB Sauvignon Blanc SA Top 10 winners this year.

Reflecting on these achievements at year-end, Thys remains characteristically humble, despite frequently being asked about the reasons behind Diemersdal’s competition successes. While 2024 may be their most successful year yet in terms of wine accolades, Diemersdal consistently features on the awards stage year after year.

Thys feels blessed to farm in the Durbanville region. “It’s a cool climate influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, combined with soils of weathered granite and clay that just create good terroir for the varieties we grow here,” he explains.

Certainly, where you farm is crucial, but so is how you farm. Although my own relationship with plants and soil is mostly unsuccessful, I can see that Diemersdal’s vineyards are managed with precision and skill. Recently, I toured some of Thys’s Sauvignon Blanc blocks, the vines verdant and lush, with small green clusters ripening. The foliage is uniform, each vine’s arms neatly tied to the wires, and the dry, expired cover-crops between the rows rolled flat. Not a weed in sight.

While Thys is now at the helm, the influence of his father Tienie is evident in this precise, organised wine farming operation. Tienie is a man of detail and of discipline. He still reprimands Thys if the kid’s bakkie is left outside of a farm garage at night, and pity any team-member who during harvest time allows juice or grapes to spill from the trucks without cleaning up the werf, pronto.

It’s values, and family. Thys believes it is family that underlies Diemersdal’s current success. The estate was established in 1698 and has been owned by the Louw family since 1885, with Thys as the sixth generation in the roles of owner and winemaker.

Winemaking runs generations deep in the Louw family’s veins, even before their time at Diemersdal: Thys is a direct descendant of Jan Pietersz Louw, better known as Broertjie, who was tasked by Jan van Riebeeck in 1660 to plant vineyards and make wine along the Liesbeek River in Cape Town’s southern suburbs. Broertjie did this successfully, even before Simon van der Stel’s famed involvement in winemaking at Constantia.

“When we talk about terroir in the wine industry, it’s usually about the soil, location, and climate that influence the vineyards and wine character,” says Thys. “But I believe that the impact of people and generations of farmers plays an equally significant role in shaping a vineyard’s wine.

“What we do today at Diemersdal is simply a continuation of what was initiated in 1698: planting these Durbanville soils with vineyards and ripening the grapes to make wines that reflect the terrain and sites. A value that crosses generations. What my team and I do in the vineyards today is influenced by my father’s farming methods, which he learned from his father and his ancestors.

“While each generation adapts to its circumstances and plants according to market demand, the roots of vineyard farming here run deep into the past. Without this, Diemersdal and its wines would not be what they are today.”

One practice that has remained unchanged since the estate’s beginnings is dryland vineyard farming. “The 190 hectares of vineyards here have never been irrigated,” says Thys. “All of the world’s great wines come from dryland vineyards; it simply makes better wine.”

Thys’s involvement with Diemersdal began in 2005, after completing his studies and gaining experience at other wineries, when he joined Tienie. Sauvignon Blanc wasn’t the primary grape variety at the time, but with his predilection for this wine and recognising a rapid market growth, Thys ensured that Diemersdal and Durbanville became synonymous with Sauvignon Blanc.

“I suppose I’ve been somewhat lucky,” Thys admits. “Even though Diemersdal has a history of producing good red wines, my sheer love of Sauvignon Blanc – and the estate’s ideal cool location for the grape – led to an increase in plantings of this variety and a focus on its diversity in styles. This focus coincided with the phenomenal growth of the Sauvignon Blanc market over the last 20 years, making it today’s most popular single-variety wine in South Africa.

“However, I’m just the current custodian. The next generation might choose to focus on something completely different. The impact of history is, after all, fluid.”

The saying goes that wine is made in the vineyard. As the late wine legend Duimpie Bayly used to say, “you don’t win the Durban July without a jockey.” The role of the winemaker is crucial, especially when you’re processing over 2 000 tons of grapes to create a variety of wines from Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay to Pinotage, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Shiraz.

With top winemakers like Mari Branders and Juandré Bruwer by his side, Thys leads the team, but his word is final. I can attest to the importance of a head winemaker with a discerning palate and the intuition for wine. Tasting through the tanks and barrels with Thys, he confidently discusses aspects like the nuances of oak influence on Pinotage or how the lees contact affects his single-vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, and what further steps are needed to prepare a wine for the market to get it “just right”.

I recall asking Thys one year, just before the Easter weekend, if he was heading to his beloved West Coast for a getaway after a busy harvest period. “No,” he replied, “I’m staying on the farm for the weekend. All alone – just me and the wines.”

Because, scoreboard or not, that’s what truly matters here.

The primary enjoyment of wine, obviously, lies in aroma and in taste, with texture and persistence on the palate becoming discernible as one’s appreciation of the vinous intruder grows. Its visual significance is fleeting, as those who remember judging wines to the 20pt score and having to assign a rating out of 5pts for “colour” can attest to.

Sometimes, however, a wine’s visual relevance becomes as much a part of its complete song as the visceral sensorial aspects due to one’s admiration of the place from whence it comes.

Thus, Sauvignon Blanc from the Fryer’s Cove vineyards lying within splash distance from the Atlantic Ocean at Doringbaai, rooted in russet soils and exposed to the drone of breakers and the shrieks of wayward seabirds, draws an appeal complementing the flavours of white fruit, lime-zest and salt-lick, omnipresent in this wine. So, too, the Cabernet Sauvignon from Kanonkop’s vineyards, looking north-west to Cape Town from its perch on the koppies with the foreboding gunmetal presence of Simonsberg guarding from behind.

So, the memory bank clicked “on” as Chris Williams poured his latest release, a Chardonnay 2023 from the Geographica marque made from vineyards growing out Piekenierskloof way in the Citrusdal Valley, and named “Aletheia”. Before I had picked up the glass, my attention had already been gained, the fascinating dreamlike thoughts on the glorious white grape of Burgundy. The grape originating from the vineyards worked by monks in poor rocky soils of eastern France, having been transported to Africa south, planted in the Piekenierskloof region some two hours drive north of Cape Town and an area straddling man’s desire to tame and to farm on land with a raw wilderness beauty where nature can never truly be conquered.

Tough country, about 260mm of rain in a good year with summers that, as I have experienced on farms in the area, being sun-baked and hellish. Lower down, the soils are sandy, but moving up towards the Citrusdal mountains, loam takes over, making for better, more productive farming of vines and rooibos tea and citrus and nuts.

Wine-wise, Chenin Blanc and Grenache have been the hook for hanging Piekenierskloof and Citrusdal’s hat, aided by the fact that much of the vines are old, thus giving good story. These cultivars make wines of character, the fruits’ inherently scholared European elegance enhanced by a feral, rugged charm.

Meeting a fine Chardonnay in this company is a revelation, although my wonder at the space from whence it comes might just have elevated the appreciation thereof. What are expectations worth, after-all, it they are not to be exceeded?

Chris sourced the Chardonnay from Tierhoek, one of the established wineries out Piekenierskloof way and one of which he knows – Chris vinified the first Tierhoek Chenin Blanc in 2003 before setting off to take the winemaking reigns at Meerlust. And when looking for a Chardonnay to add to his Geographica range – Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc – the call of Piekenierskloof came-a-asking.

Here, the Chardonnay grows at 760m above sea level on loam soils, the elevation ensuring stark variation in diurnal temperature. Ripening grapes bask in the sun as it moves over to set west on the Atlantic Ocean, and on those star-speckled nights, the temperature drops, allowing the fruit to rest, drawing reserves in a state of chilled calm, ready for the next day’s solar onslaught.

The fruit is whole-bunch pressed directly into a tripartite of fermentation and aging vessels: seasoned French oak, terracotta egg and clay dolia (basically a breed of amphora). Malolactic fermentation ensued after the primary ferment, and the wines matured in the vessels for 13 months before blending and bottling under the label Geographica Aletheia Chardonnay 2023.

Chris is a scholar of ancient history, and Aletheia refers to the terms “truth” or “unconcealed” in ancient Greek, as per the aphorism “Oinos Kai Aletheia”, which means “from wine emerges truth”. This was first used by the smart Greek philosopher Plato in 370BC, centuries before the Romans began making “in vino veritas” the go-to term for wine promoters.

But what lies in that glass of Aletheia Chardonnay, well, it ain’t Greek to me. It is just a wonderous thing, the wonder being in its delectable class as well as a cursory wondering if Piekenierskloof is not capable of joining the ranks of the Cape’s great Chardonnay regions. If the variety receives the kind of meticulous attention here as shown by Chris’s Geographica and Johan Kruger’s renditions from Kruger Family Wines, then Piekenierskloof and Citrusdal can be riveting additions to the Cape’s Chardonnay palette. The far-flung region’s distinctive natural allure will assure further appeal in terms of garnering attention from media and buyers, raising the reality that this area is not limited to Chenin Blanc and Grenache, but can assert its geography on the world’s finest white grape, too.

One only has to experience Geographica Aletheia to realise this.

It is sculpted to beautiful classic curves, port-side of the mineral austerity and anorexic leanness that is still too often considered the way to go in presenting modern Chardonnay. In this wine, it is about taste and pleasure, of show and of impressing, as the harness is unleashed to permit the grape to run free and give all it wants to give.

Aromas of toffee-apple and garrique are lashed together, fun, decadent, and intoxicating. To the mouth, a sunny butteriness asking to be liked, to give joy. On the mid-palate balance, poise and harmony are found, and all that is so very fine about Chardonnay comes together. A slight tartness, quince-like, ensures freshness and crunch. This invigoration is followed by thick-peel Cape lemon, waxy and dappled with earth-bound tastes of Sandveld Kukumakranka (Gethyllis), marzipan and oatmeal. Brightness lasts throughout the wine, jasmine and mace with splashes of green plum, ebbing as the wine’s initial golden glow has the last word.

Tasting makes you wonder, but seeing is believing.