WHAT to take away from Winemag’s 2020 Prescient Report on South African Sauvignon Blanc… For starters, editor Christian Eedes and fellow tasting panel members Roland Peens as well as James Pietersen of Cape Town merchant/cellarer Wine Cellar are among those who generally regard the Bordeaux-style blends and Wooded Sauvignons as
ANOTHER interesting line-up of wines from that ‘heartbreak grape’. To think that there are so many Pinot Noir producers in South Africa! And kudos to Elgin-based Master of Wine Richard Kershaw, the only winemaker to place among the winners of both the inaugural Top 5 competition associated with the country’s Pinot
IT WAS WITH the announcement of the 2020 Absa Top 10 Pinotage Competition winners imminent that the Pinotage Association released the names of the Top 5s in their Perold Absa Cape Blend and Pinotage Rosé competitions. It was in the midst of KWV tweaking the positioning of their wine named
ONCE AGAIN, France was awarded the most (12) ‘Best in Show’ medals (pick of the platinum medallists) at the UK’s international Decanter World Wine Awards with entries received from Bordeaux, Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence and the Loire. Italy claimed second place with eight of the 50 wines considered the best
TAKE IN THE VIEW of Lothian Vineyards and you may well think you’re somewhere other than Elgin. The hills and mountains around the edge of the ‘basin’ are a giveaway that you’re in this beautiful part of the Cape winelands once more often associated with apple farming, but the
WHAT a lovely line-up of champions in the Standard Bank Chenin Blanc Top 10 Challenge. Not one from a cellar in the Swartland, Bot River or Paarl in 2020… But hey, two wines from Worcester winery Alvi’s Drift, a first-time winner in this competition convened by the Chenin Blanc Association of
EDGEBASTON is the name of his wine farm on the slopes of the Simonsberg, but Finlayson is the name that most people in the know associate with top winemakers in the Cape winelands. Of course, he’s not the only one: his father Walter was once cellarmaster at Blaauwklippen and then
IT’S ARGUABLE that at under R100 a bottle, if you’re weighing up South Africa’s various wine categories, Sauvignon Blanc generally offers best value-for-money. Sure, there are now very few top Sauvignons in the SA Wine Classification at this level, price wise. However, at the time of writing, five of the
STELLENBOSCH and the Cederberg are where South Africa’s grand gold medallists at Mondial 2020 originated. The 2019 Stellenbosch Vineyard Selection from Chenin champions Kleine Zalze, the flagship Cabernet Sauvignon from the 2017 vintage of David Nieuwoudt’s Private Cellar in the Cederberg and the Cape’s 18 gold medallists did the country
IN THE WORDS of auctioneers Strauss & Co, reflecting on their September 2020 online sale of beauties produced by South African Young Guns: “Notable highlights from the fine-wine session included the handsome prices achieved by the Riebeek-Kasteel winery Porseleinberg for its Syrah vintages… Other noteworthy results include Alheit’s Magnetic North
DE GRENDEL, Iona, Kershaw, Lothian, Shannon… The Top 10 in Winemag’s 2020 Prescient Pinot Noir Report include a number of vintages from South African cellars with a history of good reviews in this category, most of them WO Elgin. On the other hand, most of the notables absent from the report,
MULDERBOSCH was a pioneer of wooded Chenin Blanc in South Africa. The style quickly gained a following and today many, if not most of the leading wines from this variety so widely planted throughout the Cape have spent time in barrel. Although, the Steen op Hout (Chenin on Wood) from
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