by Lafras Huguenet
There’s something deeply suspicious about wine ranges named after dead people. They tend toward the maudlin, the reverential, the sort of hushed-tone hagiography that makes you want to drink beer out of spite. But the Delheim Iconoclast, named for the farm’s late pater familia Spatz Sperling, who moved mountains for Cape wine, is different. This wine is no memorial. It’s a middle finger to convention veiled in a cloak of vinous brilliance, which is rather more respectful than a bronze plaque.
The 2024 Versed Vines is the first white in this Iconoclast range, which until now has been the exclusive preserve of reds. This matters. In South Africa, white blends are the wallflowers at the dance, the overlooked middle children in a family and the motley mongrel dog everyone says they like, but don’t want to buy. But fantastic white blends are there, certainly, quietly doing interesting things in corners, but few are willing to write home about them.
What we have here in the Delheim Iconoclast Versed Vines is Riesling, 35% of it, leading from the front like the Red Baron after a bratwurst-breakfast, followed by Chenin Blanc at 34%, because this is South Africa and Chenin is legally required to show up, eventually. Then there’s 16% Muscat d’Frontignan, which sounds like a French railway station but tastes considerably better, plus Sauvignon Blanc and Colombard making up the numbers. The exact percentages are provided with the sort of precision that suggests someone was actually paying attention, which is rarer than you’d think.
The critical detail is this: every grape comes from Delheim Heritage vineyards of 35 years or older. Not the vigorous young plantings pumping out fruit like teenagers on energy drinks, but proper old vines, the gnarled veterans that have seen droughts and good years and probably several changes of local presidents or Madonna husbands. Old vines don’t shout. They whisper. And you have to lean in to hear them.
Roelof Lotriet, the Delheim winemaker, describes creating this blend as entering “unknown territory with a blank page,” which is either admirably honest or the sort of thing you say when you’re not entirely sure it’s going to work. Each variety spent nine months in oak, long enough to develop character without turning into a parody of itself, then he threw them all together and hoped for coherence. Which is essentially how all the best things in life happen.
In the glass, the wine is the colour of late afternoon light through wheat fields, assuming you’re somewhere that still has wheat fields and late afternoon light that isn’t obscured by smog. The nose is where things get serious. There’s peach, certainly, ripe white peach, the kind that drips down your chin and makes you look undignified yet happy, plus pear and apple doing their dutiful thing. But underneath, there’s minerality. Wet river stone. Oyster shell. The sort of earthy complexity that makes you realize this isn’t fruit juice with ambitions, it’s something that understands where it came from.
The first sip is like being introduced to someone at a party who turns out to be genuinely interesting rather than just loud. There’s weight here, texture, the kind of presence that suggests the wine has opinions and isn’t afraid to share them. The Riesling provides the backbone, proper German-style structure without the residual sugar that makes your teeth hurt and bulges your lederhosen, while the Chenin adds that distinctive waxy quality, like biting into a perfectly ripe William pear. The Muscat whispers rather than shouts, which shows admirable restraint for a variety that usually behaves like someone who’s discovered perfume for the first time.
What’s remarkable is how everything holds together. This is a five-variety blend, which on paper sounds like committee-designed chaos, but in practice feels inevitable, like these grapes were always meant to be together. The fruit is bright without being shrill, the oak is present without being obtrusive, and there’s a through-line of acidity that gives everything a focused honesty, like a particularly astute accountant at a creative agency.
The Iconoclast range is only made in exceptional vintages, which is wine-speak for “we don’t bother when the grapes are mediocre,” and frankly, more wineries should adopt this policy. The 2024 qualifies, apparently, which means Stellenbosch had a good year and Lotriet’s winemaking was on song. Both are achievements worth celebrating.
This is wine that demands food. Not because it needs the company, but because it deserves a proper conversation. Something with butter. Something with cream. Something that respects what the wine is trying to say without drowning it out. Grilled line fish with lemon. Roast chicken with tarragon. The sort of food that doesn’t try too hard, that lets ingredients speak for themselves.
The South African wine industry has spent decades trying to prove itself, trying to be Bordeaux or Burgundy or anywhere other than what it is. The Iconoclast Versed Vines 2024 doesn’t bother with that exhausting performance. It’s unapologetically South African: old vines, clever blending, the confidence to do something different because different might actually be better.
Spatz Sperling challenged the status quo. This wine, named in his honour, does the same.
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