“THEY STOOD toe-to-toe with Hawke’s Bay and Margaret River [of Australia] and all but the finest Burgundy [of France]”. High praise indeed from the panel that assessed 128 South African wines for their Chardonnay report in the May ’25 issue of the UK’s Decanter Magazine. The wines were submitted by
HOW ABOUT THAT! First, that the Pinotage Association put the Grand Pinotage “project” to the test in a blind tasting of the 2019 vintage conducted by Gilbert & Gaillard, based in France. Second, that one of the wines involved rated higher than any Pinotage has done before at a G&G
IT’S HAPPENED again… And no doubt once more there will be naysayers, people who can’t believe their eyes and ears, and yet… The humble, big-volume Douglas Green Chardonnay from the Wellington cellars of DGB has won gold and placed among the Top 10 in the 2025 edition of Chardonnay du
THERE ARE wines that impress occasionally with this and that vintage, then there are those that please on a fairly regular basis, and then there are those wines that make you smile big time pretty much every time you open a bottle, whatever the year it was made in. The
THE TOP-RATED wines in the 2025 edition of Platter’s South African Wine Guide – scored 98/100 – are the Cap Classique sparkler Cipher Blanc de Noirs 2018 from the Elgin cellar of Charles Fox, the Wild Horseshoe Sauvignon Blanc 2023 from Diemersdal in Durbanville and the 2022 Shiraz from Saronsberg,
CONTRARY TO what some people might think, certain wine producer trophy laureates at the mega International Wine & Spirit Competition in the UK are determined less according to the quality and interest value of the wine and more according to the producer’s response to a questionnaire covering a range of
OF THE 36 South African gold medallists chosen from nearly 7000 wines entered in the 2024 International Wine & Spirit Competition (UK), three went on to win trophies, with two of them going to the Vilafonté cellar in Stellenbosch (vineyards in Simonsberg-Paarl) and one to the Perdeberg cellar alongside the
THE DOUBLE GOLD winners at the 2024 Veritas Awards have disclosed what the competition organisers will not… Apart from presenting the Vertex trophy for the most highly rated of the double gold laureates, the powers that be at South Africa’s biggest, longest-running wine show stop short of distinguishing between the
OF THE 61 entries from the 48 producers who submitted their wines for assessment in the 2024 Prescient Cabernet Sauvignon Report published by Winemag.co.za, 28 rated 90 points or more on a 100-point scale. However, only eight wines scored 93 or 94 and not one of South Africa’s Cabs on
NOT MANY wine producers have access to vineyards in the Elandskloof valley of the Overberg district, Western Cape. Anthonij Rupert Wyne of Franschhoek is one of them, and the Chardonnay grapes from Johann Rupert’s Altima Estate just north of Villiersdorp make for a winner under the Cape of Good Hope
THE VARIETY is “in an exciting phase,” said Sauvignon Blanc South Africa chair RJ Botha during the association’s 2024 Top 10 awards presented at De Meye Wine Estate in Stellenbosch. The cellarmaster at Kleine Zalze, Botha commented that the six wooded versions among the winners “showed the winemakers’ craftmanship in
OVER THE YEARS, it’s been one of South Africa’s most highly rated blended red wines – not only according to experts at the Veritas Awards but also those at the Decanter World Wine Awards (UK), the Perold Cape Blend Competition (SA) and Platter’s SA Wine Guide, to name a few.
