Pinot Noir deserves the reverence it commands, for at its best it is an indescribably beautiful wine. More has been worded about this variety’s elegance, charm, grace and seductive character than there has been about the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy and the Spanish Inquisition – combined.
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Image and premier status should be non-negotiables for Stellenbosch. But the manner in which the region’s wine authorities are allowing the prostituting of its integrity is placing an increasing amount of pressure on producers intent on marketing their wines as deriving from Stellenbosch grapes instead of the trucked-in versions sold by an increasing amount of wineries based in this area.
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In a lingo filled with guttural sounding words to the tune of “achtung”, “mein Gott” and “Schweinehund”, the noun “Riesling” is one of the German language’s more joyous components. I have always found Riesling to be a precise, pure sounding word evoking images of brisk forest streams full of clear water foaming over clean white pebbles, a pristine green mountain forest lying beneath glaciers and a blond German damsel, straight from her fortnightly shower, picking daffodils next to a Gothic cathedral.
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An invitation to lunch with an unacquainted lawyer is usually not an excitable prospect. But as long as there are no pending paternity issues or PC-fuelled lawsuits, there is scant reason to be afraid. Just make sure you meet the legal raptor in a place frequented by folk more likely to take your side in the event of verbal conflict or espetada-stick violence. And keep your wallet in sight.
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The forefathers were into some, like, serious wine skank. Check out the Joubert Clan, hanging out in the foxy little town of La Motte d’Aigues, direction Luberon, France South. In Medieval times, they’s making some of the most serious wine shit in that part of France.
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I had always struggled to nail my precise feeling towards Pinot Noir when Danie de Wet did it for me. “You find three kinds of wine: red wine… white wine,” the Sage from De Wetshof said, “and then you have Pinot Noir.” This was over a decade ago when De Wet had been busy at playing pioneer again – not Chardonnay, but by making the first Pinot Noir in the Robertson Valley.
The deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous description stuck, and the more Pinots I drink the more on-the-button Danie’s words appear.
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One of the many Cape estates experiencing an endless summer of wine tourism success is Simonsig, and this is no surprise. The Stellenbosch farm has always been a wine tourism pioneer. In the 1970’s legendary patron Frans Malan played a lead role in engineering wine tourism in South Africa and as far back as I can remember Simonsig has always been known as a winery with open doors and a hospitable, welcoming atmosphere.
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Trying to stretch the limits of my original and unique Millennium® 1000 points scale for judging wine, I had a look at my expansive collection of Kanonkop wines. It was enough to give me a semi-woody: Pinotage 1973. Paul Sauer 1990, 1995, 1998. Cabernet 1982, 1988 and 1997. But I decided to haul out the Kanonkop Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, a vintage characterised by late berry-set, a pungent north-east breeze during March and a bit of hail in February. Average in the greater scheme of things.
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A recent relentless travelling and business schedule in France had me pushed to the west, direction Bordeaux, throwing the flavours of Pauillac, Sauternes, duck hearts and Arcachon oysters at me with such feverish abandon that I did not even get around to drinking one red Burgundy during my stay. Okay, I did enquire at a wine market, once, but asking for Burgundy in the French west is pretty much like requesting a hymn-sheet at a Die Antwoord concert.
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Despite the calls to duty asking us to embrace Chenin Blanc as the National South African White Grape and the reactionary colourful spats generated by the Sauvignon Blanc fraternity, there is only one real South African white wine worth taking to an international gun-fight, and he be Chardonnay.
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