True greatness is felt, not measured. No critic or judge in his or her right mind would allocate stars, scores, or points to Michelangelo’s Pietà sculpture, nor to the film On the Waterfront, not to mention the perfection of Steely Dan’s seminal track “Kid Charlemagne”.
This is a stark reality, and when experiencing a wine such as the latest release of Kanonkop’s Black Label Pinotage – namely the 2023 vintage – I am disturbingly reminded of what a silly bunch we wine professionals have become, having the audacity to appraise magnificent, ethereal wines such as these with impersonal, cold-hearted numerical figures or stars.
Although this wine, made at Kanonkop since the 2006 vintage, is firmly categorised as originating from the Pinotage grape, this corrals it into the suffocatingly limiting borders of classification and the expectation that comes with this identification. Forget about the variety, or even the place, for that matter, for Kanonkop Black is first and foremost a magnificent red wine that happens to be a Pinotage from Stellenbosch. This is what a transcendental wine should be, and this is what Kanonkop Black Label is, and what it has become known and admired for. Hence, many gladly fork out close to R3 000 a bottle for the honour and privilege of the experience it provides.
Details? Well, the wine originates from a vineyard planted in 1953, upon the instruction of Paul Sauer, who owned Kanonkop from 1929 until his death in 1976. Sauer believed in Pinotage long before the variety had acquired any semblance of commercial value. Perhaps the fact that Sauer was taught about grapes and land and farming by Prof Abraham Izak Perold, the founder of Pinotage, had something to do with this.
This vineyard was thus 70 years old when harvesting for the 2023 Black Label commenced – and the vintage is deemed to have been “extraordinary”.
A relatively dry winter and mild, dry spring provided ideal conditions for flowering and fruit set, with minimal disease pressure. The regular south-easterly winds helped keep the canopies healthy. However, the season’s trajectory shifted dramatically in December when more than 100 mm of rain fell – an unusually wet month that prompted a reassessment of harvest expectations.
January delivered cool, consistent ripening weather, setting the stage for a timely start to picking.
Of course, the Black Label Pinotage is made according to traditional Kanonkop winemaking methods: open concrete fermenters; skins manually punched through the fermenting juice every two hours; the wine drawn off after three and a half days. After malolactic fermentation, the wine was aged in new French oak 225-litre barrels for 18 months.
Yes, it is a classic wine, and being from a 2023 vintage can quite rightly be considered young. Yet youth is such a fine time to express greatness. Here and now, when exuberance, prescience, and hope lie over the wine like sparkling pearl shards, and its heart beats with vigour and pulse.
The nose has a lot going on: a wet, tangible cloud of scents that recall wilderness, red-fruited morsels, and tilled stony soil – the tough kind that gives plough-horses shin splints. It is heady, and it is perfumed, and it is dizzily intoxicating in a way that makes one feel wanton and deeply happy, the kind of feeling that has you making plans you had not expected to make.
One has to drink deep, for this wanton feeling requires it. The wine is taken in a draught because you have seen it, you have smelt it, and now you want it all – and as Mr Gekko said in the film Wall Street, “greed is good”.
What I find in the Black Label 2023 – and I have had all the vintages – is that this wine exudes luxury and grace and style the way Kate Winslet conveys shapely eroticism: a scent of Chanel No. 5 and the kind of alluring, illicit smile that would make a Bellville dominee break an NG church window with his inherited sixth-generation family Bible.
Kate Winslet
On the palate and all the way to the finish, the wine has a palpable plushness, a densely woven yet featherlight silk frond bearing flavour, brightness, and distinctive aura. Tannins are finely knotted and meticulously strung, but not to a nervy, edgy tightness. Flavours are restrained yet resounding in their measured tones: black cherries stored at room temperature to draw out sugar that runs alongside acidity; fig paste folded onto a warm slate slab in a Moroccan market veiled in the early morning Mediterranean mist; warm tar and mulberry compote.
Deeper, there is something fleshy and savoury in the wine. Take a large slab of sirloin, salt it well, and place it in a cooler for three days. From the flesh emerges a liquid, slightly unctuous – salt and iron with a smattering of blood. This, too, finds its way into Kanonkop Black Label 2023, a wine that needs no exterior defining, because it – always – defines itself.
With its centenary as a wine grape celebrated this year, a laudable focus falls on the early Pinotage pioneers. It’s well known by now that Lanzerac, the brand once owned by Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery (SFW), was the first to release a commercial Pinotage wine – Lanzerac Pinotage 1959. The Stellenbosch estates Kanonkop and Bellevue are often credited for their early plantings of Pinotage (in fact, the grapes for that first Lanzerac came from Bellevue). But a deeper interest in this history led me to ask a different question: Which South African wine estate was the first to bottle Pinotage under its own label?
Concerning its wine activities, Lanzerac was only a brand at the time of the first bottling under the marque’s label owned by SFW. That initial 1959 Pinotage was, thus, made and bottled at SFW’s large corporate cellars. Nothing to do with the Lanzerac wine entity of today. So, who were the original, independent estates that farmed Pinotage out of personal conviction and produced the wine in their own cellars?
As it turns out, there’s an unsung hero in the history of Pinotage: Delheim estate in Stellenbosch’s Simonsberg region. Delheim made and bottled its first Pinotage in 1960 just a year after Lanzerac’s debut – possibly making it the first estate to release a Pinotage under its own name. (Copious research has not led to finding other Cape farms producing Pinotage bottled under an own label as early as 1960. But as with the record-keeping of Cape wine, you never know.)
This came as a bit of a surprise to me, as Delheim is more often associated with, firstly, the formidable personality of its late owner and winemaker, Spatz Sperling, and secondly, with its classic Grand Reserve Bordeaux-style blend and the highly acclaimed Edelspatz late-harvest sweet wine. But Pinotage, which still forms part of Delheim’s offering today, was actually one of the estate’s key varietals during Spatz’s time.
Victor Sperling, Spatz’s son, who now runs Delheim along with his sister Nora Thiel, confirms that Pinotage and Spatz were as synonymous as bratwurst and mustard.
“My father arrived from Germany at Delheim in 1951,” says Victor. “In his memoirs, written in 2005, he mentions that the farm was already experimenting with Pinotage winemaking in the 1950s. As far back as I can remember, Pinotage was always part of the Delheim story – something my father regularly discussed with friends like Frans Malan of Simonsig and Niel Joubert of Spier. When my sister and I took over, Pinotage was deeply rooted in Delheim’s DNA, both in terms of vineyard plantings and our wine portfolio.”
Reading through Spatz’s colourful memoirs, Pinotage crops up repeatedly. In fact, when he proposed to Vera Reinarz in 1965 – just two weeks after meeting her and barely five years after the first commercial Pinotage release – he did so over two glasses of Delheim Pinotage.
Those early Delheim Pinotage labels are particularly interesting in that they described the wine as a “Burgundian type,” meaning elegant, refined, and all the noble descriptors typically associated with Pinot Noir from Burgundy.
Roelof Lotriet, Delheim’s cellar master, believes that when he arrived at the estate, there was already a strong ethos around careful and respectful handling of Pinotage to avoid producing heavy or overwhelming wines.
“Tasting Delheim Pinotages from the 1970s and 1980s, I realised the approach here aligned with my own outlook on the cultivar,” says Lotriet. “It’s a complex red grape: it ripens early – long before other cultivars – and in the cellar, it ferments at a runaway pace. If you don’t handle it properly, it can get away from you, leading to high alcohol levels and harsh tannins.”
“I think Spatz Sperling understood all this from the beginning. I’d heard of him as a wine legend, mainly for his personality, but if you look at his writings and winemaking practices, he was a true pioneer in everything he did.”
Another major factor that undoubtedly helped Spatz and his successors master Pinotage was Delheim’s terroir. With Kanonkop as a neighbour, there’s clear proof that this is prime Pinotage country. Weathered granite soils 240 meters above sea level, and ideal sunlight exposure make it a natural home for the grape.
Delheim’s flagship Pinotage is Vera Cruz – named by Spatz in tribute to his wife, Vera. According to Roelof, making great Pinotage begins with meticulous grape sorting, to avoid off-putting flavors.
Victor and Vera Sperling with Nora Thiel.
“We walk through the vineyards and discard subpar bunches right there, then sort again at the cellar,” he says. “The destemmed grapes go into open fermenters, where fermentation begins rapidly – as is typical for Pinotage – and can be over in just a few days.”
Then comes the wood aging, a topic that still divides winemakers and critics. One camp believes Pinotage should be given generous new oak to help it shine and leave a lasting impression. The other argues that too much new oak masks the grape’s complex, layered character.
Roelof says Delheim has always leaned toward larger barrels for Pinotage aging and limited use of new oak. “We use 300L and 500L barrels, only about 35% new wood. The goal is to hit that sweet spot where the oak gives the wine multi-dimensional presence without overshadowing the grape’s subtle essence,” he explains.
Today, Roelof and his winemaking team are experiencing a renewed interest in Pinotage’s potential as South Africa’s signature grape, thanks to the wide range of stylistic interpretations emerging. Even Eben Sadie – arguably the country’s most famous and fashion-forward winemaker – has recently started working with Pinotage.
This revival can only yield positive results. After all, in the 8 000-year history of wine, a century is but a short tendril.
It was a crisp autumn afternoon in Beaune, the capital of Burgundy, France and the world’s most revered wine appellation, and strolling the ancient cobble-stone streets I came upon a smart shop named Fromagerie Hess. A dense, acrid aroma hit me as I entered, gazing at the rows of cheeses of various shapes, sizes and colours, the variety of which can only be found in France.
At the back of the long narrow space was a section dedicated to wine, together with cheese the other consumable most vividly associated with all good things from the Gallic nation. This area beckoned, and upon browsing the bottles of wines from Burgundy and Bordeaux, Italy and Spain, a familiar label came into sight. It was a bottle of Kanonkop Pinotage.
I had scarcely noticed it when a tall lean man in a white jacket asked whether he could be of assistance. Upon telling him that, like the Kanonkop wine I too was from South Africa, the man looked at the bottle and nodded, in broken English stating that this was a good wine.
“I am surprised,” I said, “that here, in the heart of this famous French wine region, you keep a bottle from South Africa.”
He shrugged his shoulders, as if the statement was foolish and he was bordering on emitting a reprimand.
“We keep the great wines from the world in my shop,” he replied, “and from South Africa, a good Pinotage is a great wine.”
Had my French and his English allowed for a better level of communication, I would have added another aspect of Pinotage. Namely that the wine is also something of a miracle.
For here in 2025, a year marking 100 years since the Pinotage grape variety began after that famous experiment where Abraham Izak Perold crossed two red cultivars – Pinot Noir and Hermitage (Cinsaut) – to set the Pinotage ball rolling, it is apt to note that the journey the grape and the wine has taken from then until now has been nothing short of remarkable.
Looking at the legacy of wine in the world, which began some 8 000 years ago in Georgia in Eastern Europe, most of the known and recognisable grape varieties have histories going back centuries. Such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Burgundy, Bordeaux’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Riesling in Germany and Spain’s ubiquitous Tempranillo, to name a few. Yet, in South Africa, Pinotage was only first thought of a century back, with commercial vineyard plantings taking root in the 1950s. As a commercial wine, Pinotage came to being for the first time in 1959. And now, some 66 years later it is an established and recognised part of the global wine conversation, not only being talked and written about as a wine synonymous with South Africa, but also for the distinctive flavour-profile it offers, as well as the proven and internationally acclaimed quality thereof.
Yes, for a grape variety and its wine to be born and to go on to achieve all this in what is but a blink of the eye in terms of the world’s wine culture, is surely miraculous.
But even miracles are not immune to critique and controversy, and here I’d say that South Africans, especially, have been too hard on Pinotage in terms of its merits as a noble grape variety. Local wine writers and winemakers still like to quote those British wine “experts” who visited the country three decades ago and turned-up their noses at Pinotage, stating the wine reminded them of “rusty nails” and “nail-polish”.
Fact is, that the Brits’ self-appointed wine expertise have always had it in for wine varieties made in the so-called New World of America, Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa. Australian Shiraz was termed “hot and alcoholic” and smelling of “burnt caramel”. Californian Chardonnay, again, was “big, blousy and tasted like bread-and-butter pudding”. And if you wanted heartburn, a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was a sure way of bringing it on.
Fortunately, Pinotage has dropped those initial naysayers, going on to prove itself on the world stage as a variety that when grown under the right conditions and in suitable soils, and in the hands of the right winemaker, is capable of making world-class wines. This Beyers Truter already proved back in 1991 when as Kanonkop winemaker he won the Robert Mondavi Trophy for Winemaker of the Year at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London. With a Kanonkop Pinotage 1989 – a vintage that came only 30 years after the very first bottled Pinotage, namely a Lanzerac 1959.
Leading critics from around the world have subsequently handed-out trophies, golden accolades and sensational 95pt-plus ratings to various South African Pinotage wines, ensuring that Pinotage’s time has, truly, arrived.
Abraham Izak Perold, Pinotage creator.
This is good for South Africa as a wine-producing country, too. Pinotage might have found its way to the winelands of California and New Zealand – even Israel – but no other grape variety is as associated with the Cape and to South Africa as is the variety than Perold gave birth to a century ago. It is unique, and those who drink and follow wine, well, they like unique and they like different in a world where they are spoilt for choice.
Today, more countries produce more wine than ever before. From Denmark to Canada, China to Lebanon, bottles are being added to the marketplace from every corner of the globe. Consequently, consumers have never been able to so many different wines, from so many different countries, as they are now. With such an abundance, wine-buyers the world over look to a wine-producing country they might not be familiar with, and the first thing they ask is: “What makes the wines from your land unique?”
South Africa has a simple answer: Pinotage. It is here at the Cape, from the mountains of Stellenbosch to the valleys of Paarl and Franschhoek; from the cool maritime climates of Durbanville and Constantia, to the sprawling vineyards of the Breedekloof and Robertson, and between the renosterveld-clad koppies of the Swartland, here Pinotage was born and here it shows it belongs. This is where generations of winemakers have harmonized the grape with its natural environment, making Pinotage wines, the unique flavours and characteristics of which prove that its place is here.
But the minds, hands and the souls of the men and women turning the grapes into wine have as profound a role to play in the legacy and the advent of Pinotage as the individual parcels of Cape geography to which the vineyards are rooted. The traditional saying is that wine is made in the vineyard, but as the late great winemaker Duimpie Bayly used to retort: “When I am told wine is made in the vineyard, I have to remind the audience that one must remember that no horse has ever won the Durban July without a jockey.” And of course, this is true. It takes skill, intuition and understanding of the vineyard and its fruit to transform Pinotage grapes into wine exuding the traits of its place of origin, whilst at the same time offering that evocative red wine complexity in the glass for which it is known.
Each wine is, obviously, a unique individual. But what Pinotage has done over the decades is to inspire winemakers to each make their wines to a style, to a distinctive signature of taste and structure harnessing the grape’s red-blooded individualistic character. And this is the delight, that under the banner of one cultivar, Pinotage, one finds an astounding diversity, a spectrum of enticing red wine variation that, whilst diverse and of multitude, each speak of a discernible Pinotage DNA.
So, Pinotage can be a big wine. Of which Beyerskloof Diesel Pinotage is a statuesque example. This wine, from the home of aforementioned Beyers Truter can be termed a show-stopper as in its making all steps are taken to optimise the variety’s penchant for showcasing a full-bodied depth and unapologetic decadence in its power and unrestrained opulence.
To bring these features to the fore, these grapes of Stellenbosch origin are picked at a stage of complete ripeness. The berries are transformed to open-top fermenters where the magical process of fermentation begins, with sugar transformed into alcohol. To extract tannin, taste and colour from the purple-black Pinotage skins, the intoxicating batch of grapes and juice is punched-down every two hours during the five-day fermentation period, the regular mingling of the skins and juice drawing the essence of the fruit into the fermenting wine, ensuring concentrated completeness.
Once fermented, the wine is removed from the skins and placed in casks of new French oak barrels for a period of 21 months, allowing the wine to be exposed to the tightly-grained wood surface for almost two years, during which tannins are sculpted, flavour enhanced and the wine obtains a polished succulence.
This, Beyerskloof Diesel, is Pinotage at its most Pinotage. Showing that despite its parents – the Pinot Noir and Cinsaut grapes – having relatively light and ethereal personalities, Pinotage itself is capable of presenting itself in a wine of grand scale with a commanding presence.
It is all gorgeous, of the unmissable kind. Aromas of autumnal dark fruit waft from the glass, filling the space around it with fragrance and wilderness. Once tasted, it is unforgettable. Not only for the sheer weight of its presence, the density complemented by a silkiness on the mouth, but for the way it carries tastes of prune and blackberries together with that characteristic brush of fynbos and slight savoury edge of charcuterie.
That a Pinotage style deemed as “classic” comes from Stellenbosch’s Lanzerac winery is no coincidence. After all, the first bottled Pinotage in the world was under the Lanzerac label (1959), although in those days of yore Lanzerac was merely a wine brand belonging to erstwhile Stellenbosch Farmers Winery. Today Lanzerac, situated at the foot of the Jonkershoek Valley, is a commended and functioning winery in its own right, one still committed to the grape variety that ensured its name in the annals of South African wine history.
Lanzerac Pinotage is made from grapes grown in the same Jonkershoek Valley, the beautiful part of mountainous pastoral winelands through which Stellenbosch’s famed Eerste River runs. In the cellar the grape-berries are not manually punched down as is the case with Beyerskloof Diesel, the exposing of juice to those ripe grape-skins instead being done with pump-overs, committed every four hours of the fermentation period. This refined approach to winemaking is furthered by winemaker Wynand Lategan’s choice of barrel fermentation. Here a diverse selection of barrels is chosen in which the wine is to embark on a 15-month slumber, namely barrels of virgin new oak, as well as casks previously used for one or two seasons to age wine. These used barrels have a lighter grip on the wine’s structure, allowing the opening of the doors to emit brightness and fruit-purity.
Lanzerac Pinotage is one of those Pinotages proving that elegance is one of the variety’s features, a mannered nobility that must have been at the forefront of Perold’s mind when he toyed with the idea of creating a new South African grape variety for the world.
This wine has a clarity and focussed fruit-core, with red-currants and damson allowing a lift, a perkiness to prod through the sensual cloak of coiled muscular tannins. Balance and poise are discernible as tannin, acidity and sugar combine with presence and structure in a wine which one not only drinks, but experiences.
An unbridled delight of the Pinotage industry is seeing the younger generation of winemakers showing an infatuation with this variety, and it is in their hands that the future of the grape lies. True, the foundations were laid by the pioneers who aimed to bring the deeper weight and gravitas of the grape to the fore with intense extractions and aging in – or a component of – new wood.
But there is, as with all wines, space for a renewed focus to complement and to build on the deep paths trodden by the more mature school of approach, and this is opening-up a whole new field of appreciation for the Cape’s beloved home-grown variety.
One of these younger gunners is Jolandie Fouché, owner of the wine brand named Wolf & Woman which includes a Pinotage wearing a new cloak of understatement allowing the spectacular tapestry of fruit elements to display themselves in a superlative wine.
Wolf & Woman Pinotage is made from old vines, 50 years and more, grown in the Swartland region and the winemaking is of the subtle less-is-more kind. Instead of fermenting her Pinotage for five to six days with extracting taking place regularly, Wolf & Woman’s wine is kept on the skins for two weeks, with only one extraction daily. For maturation, large 500 litre and 300 litre barrels are deployed – all old, used wood – the wine spending eight months in their casks. Then, before bottling the wine is placed in concrete tank for a month to gain further refinement.
The result is a Pinotage that has grabbed the imagination of wine critics and commentators as one of the new-wave wines underscoring the fact that the future of Pinotage is in good hands. At only 12.5% alcohol, Wolf & Woman has a delicious crunchy succulence with tastes of juice-laden cherries and plump plum, a wine that caresses the palate with a riveting, racy freshness, yet presenting enough deftness on the palate to ensure its presence is never fleeting, never forgotten.
As Pinotage heads into its next century, its future looks as illustrious and brilliant as the wine’s miraculous past. In fact, it has only just begun.
Much has been said of the first commercial Pinotage bottled in the world, namely Lanzerac 1959, a brand back then having nothing to do with grapes grown and wine made at what is today Lanzerac in Stellenbosch. Rather, this bottling was under a brand owned by erstwhile Stellenbosch Farmers Winery.
So, which independent wine estate would have been the first to make and bottle a Pinotage? Turns out that, according to records to our disposal, this honour goes to Delheim on the Simonsberg, Stellenbosch who released a Pinotage from the 1960 vintage, one year after the Lanzerac label.
“My father, Spatz, arrived on Delheim from Germany in 1951, and in his memoir written in 2005 he talks about the farm already experimenting with Pinotage in the 1950s,” says Victor Sperling, Delheim Director. “As a youngster, ever since I heard there being spoken of wine by my father and his friends, and once I began getting to know the Delheim vineyards, Pinotage was one of the primary grape varieties in the Delheim narrative.”
Pinotage features prominently in Spatz Sperling’s memoir. There was the irreverent side when in 1966 he was “inspecting the filling tank, balanced as usual somewhat precariously on top of a building trestle, when a flaw in the support structure (and the additional weight?) caused the sudden collapse of the pyramid.
“The tank fell down, the vintner (Spatz!) nearly broke his neck, and the wine came tumbling after! Hundreds of gallons of Pinotage streamed out of the cellar, into the sluice and down the mountain.”
And in 1965 when Spatz decided to propose to Vera Reinarz in the Delheim garden barely two weeks after meeting her, the wine of choice accompanying Spatz’s proposal was a crystal glass filled with his Delheim Pinotage.
The initial Delheim wines bearing the Pinotage label included a reference to the bottle contents as “Burgundy type”, and according to Roelof Lotriet, Delheim cellarmaster, this refers to the farm’s goal to, from the outset, express the refined elegance in the Pinotage variety.
“Tasting the Delheim Pinotages from the 1970s and 1980s it is apparent that the mindset in the Delheim cellar has always been a gentler, less-is-more approach to Pinotage,” says Lotriet.
Early years on Delheim: Nora, Vera, Spatz and Victor Sperling.
“One must remember that when Delheim was making Pinotage in the 1960s and 1970s the variety was very much a work-in-progress, having only been planted for winemaking purposes since the 1940s and 1950s. The cultivar’s distinct features differing from other red varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, include early ripening and a propensity to ferment quickly.
“These traits must have been new to winemakers back then. Each producer would have had to define an own approach or use the advice of your neighbours. It would, however, appear that from early on Sperling understood that Pinotage required a gentle approach when fermenting to avoid harsh tannins and flavours from the skins, as well as the judicious use of wood.”
Delheim’s flagship Pinotage today is the Vera Cruz Pinotage made from a vineyard planted in 1996 on oakleaf soils comprising decomposed granite with a pronounced clay component.
“Vera Cruz is the flagship, simply because it is made from our best Pinotage vineyard,” says Lotriet. “It is set on a south-west facing slope, 240m above sea-level and is exposed to ideal sunlight radiation as well as cooler breezes from the south-east in summer.”
Sorting the ripe grapes already begins in the vineyard before harvest where substandard fruit is removed. And upon arrival at the cellar, the berries are once again inspected to ensure only the healthiest unblemished grapes are allowed to enter the vinification process.
Bunches are de-stemmed and the grapes placed in open-top fermenters. Natural fermentation kicks in, and after a day the fruit is inoculated with a selected yeast strain.
“Pinotage ferments like the clappers and the wine can pick-up heat during the process,” says Lotriet. “We keep the temperature at a mild 26°C, while doing gentle punch-downs and pump-overs during fermentation for a softer, more discreet extraction of tannins and flavours from the skins.”
Once fermented dry, the wine is drawn from the skins and placed in a combination of 300l and 500l French oak barrels, 35% of which are new and allowed to age for 18 months.
“By using larger barrels with a greater ratio of wine to wood we avoid intense oak influences, such as aggressive tannins, while giving the aging wine the correct amount of exposure to the magical nuances of oak maturation.”
Delheim cellarmaster Roelof Lotriet.
The other Delheim Pinotage, in the Family Premium range, is made from three vineyards planted on a site slightly lower than the Vera Cruz vineyard. The grapes from the various vineyards are vinified separately and aged for 18mths in older French oak before being blended to the final wine.
“I have noticed an upswing in the popularity and appreciation of Pinotage over the past decade,” says Lotriet, “and I think this is primarily due to the fact that winemakers have realised that treating Pinotage like a Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz in the cellar makes overdone wines, suppressing the elegant complexity the variety is capable of expressing. At Delheim, the combination of sites that were truly made for growing Pinotage, as well as the legacy of treating the grape with respect through a deft hand in the cellar, allows us to offer a distinct and very refined expression of South Africa’s home-made red grape variety. A variety not only a part of our country’s heritage, but of Delheim’s, too.”
Last time I looked, the offering of South African wines was running to over 8 000 different units varying in prices, styles and types of packaging. That is a hell of a lot of wine diversity in a country only making 4% of the world’s wine, but this also gives one an idea of the plethora of wine brands available to the local consumer.
It was time to go in, right to the heart of the Stellenbosch Mafia. Guy who wrote the book about them, Pieter du Toit, well he reckons the local mobsters hang out at a joint named De Volkskombuis, pretty hard to pronounce for two New York wiseguys like me and Frankie the Juice. But nothing a little google-translate ain’t sorting out. Volks the kombuis and go volks yourselves, too.
Mari Branders, Diemersdal winemaker with the 8th Absa Top 10 Pinotage Trophy.
Durbanville wine estate Diemersdal staked a place as one of the most successful producers in the history of the annual Absa Top 10 Pinotage Trophy awards by this year raking in its eighth Top 10 trophy. The Diemersdal Pinotage Reserve 2018 was selected as one of the Top 10 winners in this year’s prestigious competition, which was held for the 23nd time attracting 161 entries.
“The Absa Top 10 Pinotage Trophy is one of the most sought-after red wine trophies for any South African winemaker, and winning it for the eighth time is a true privilege and honour,” says Thys Louw,” owner-winemaker at Diemersdal, which was also the only Durbanville winery to win a Top 10 this year.
“It just feels better each time you hold one of these trophies, an award you don’t take for granted. The number of quality Pinotage producers is increasing at a rate of knots as more winemakers discover the magical qualities of the grape and its ability to express the sites of our country’s best wine regions.
“Winning an Absa Top 10 in this environment of quality wines makes it very special. I’d like to congratulate every other Trophy winner, finalist and entrant for what they are doing to make Pinotage an extraordinary red wine category which is one of the showcases of the South African wine industry.”
Pinotage has a long history in Durbanville and on Diemersdal specifically. Some 50% of the grapes for the Diemersdal Pinotage Reserve 2018 originate from the property’s 44 year-old bushvines, the balance sourced from vines 20 years younger.
“Dryland farming on clay and shale soils and the maritime influence all add to the structure of the wine which is characterised by a formidable backbone complemented with bright fruit expression,” says Louw. “We aim for sturdiness in the wine, but elegance and refinement are non-negotiable.”
After harvesting the grapes were fermented in one ton open wood-fermenters for four days at 26-28ºC. The cap was punched through every three hours. 100% MLF completed spontaneously in 225L French oak barrels. Wood maturation was done over 16 months, also in 225l French, of which 60% was new.
“The cellar and vineyard teams have embraced Pinotage as one of Diemersdal’s key red varieties, and it is their understanding of the grape from the vine to the bottling of the final wine that enables us to make a Pinotage showing true quality,” says Louw. “And more importantly, this eighth Absa Top 10 Trophy has shown the quality to be consistent.”
South Africa looks set to become home to the largest urban wine vineyard in the world. This is if President Cyril Ramaphosa’s vision of a brand-new city built in the country is realised. During his recent State of the Nation Address, Pres. Ramaphosa suggested it was time to build such a new modern city in South Africa. But besides featuring shiny skyscrapers and sleek bullet-trains, the new city is also to host a vineyard from which various wines are to be made.
Having recently flown half-way around the world – literally – it was astounding to see the presence of one specific South African wine label at every stop. From Cape Town International, the frenetic bazaar-like space of Dubai Airport all the way to Auckland, New Zealand a bottle bearing a white label with the words The Chocolate Block was encountered in nearly every wine store.
I am standing 400m up on a mountain overlooking the town of Stellenbosch, Table Mountain lurking in the distance. The steep slopes are covered with vines, as are those on the other side of the Jonkershoek Valley. Directly below, the white-washed old buildings of Lanzerac hotel and winery sparkle in the midday sun. I brace myself for the wine maker’s viticulture insights, notebook poised for words on soil types, harvest yields, vine-spacing and average daytime temperatures.
“Over there,” says the wine maker, Wynand Lategan, pointing away from the vineyards to the town. “That’s where I was born, right there in Stellenbosch Hospital.”
