14 March 2009

Reyneke's Pinotage is "Another classic"





"I also hugely enjoyed Johan Reyneke’s superb Pinotage 2005 (£12.50), again biodynamic, a deep ruby red from Stellenbosch in South Africa, with a gorgeous smell of creamy black cherries and plums, chocolate and spice and then backed up by silky smooth tannins. Another classic."
-- Helen Savage, writing about ethical trading in Newcastle's The Journal on 13 March 2009 .

I am delighted to learn that Reyneke's Pinotage is available in the UK. Johan Reyneke, pictured above, was the first farmer in South Africa to convert to Biodynamism and it was his Pinotage vineyard that was the first. The results from that trial were so impressive that he turned went competely over to biodynamic farming.

Almost the entire entire production from that small Pinotage vineyard has been earmarked by US customers, so much so that Johan was hard pressed to find one bottle for me when I visited him.

UPDATE:
But the 2005 vintage is [UPDATE = NO LONGER] available from Ethical Superstore at http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/ethical-fine-wines/reyneke-pinotage-stellenbosch-south-africa/ at £12.50 a bottle.
Despite the wine still being listed as "In Stock. Available for despatch tomorrow" and accepting an order from me for 6 bottles, it seems they have only one bottle in stock A brief phone message was left with someone else in my house that "the Stellenbosch wine" is unavailable. They could not tell the name of the wine and since I have a number of wines on order it wasn't until a got an abrupt email from them saying "Order Status:Cancelled" that I knew. There was no apology, no nothing, just "Order Status:Cancelled".

Ethical Superstore was set up in 2006 by Vic Morgan and Andy Redfern with the manifesto help the ethical consumer “Buy What You Believe”.

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