31 January 2025

WoTM - Heron’s Nest 2020

 

My Wine of The Month for January is a Cape Blend, Heron’s Nest Cabernet Sauvignon/Pinotage 2020, WO Western Cape.




My Wine of The Month for January is a Cape Blend, Heron’s Nest Cabernet Sauvignon/Pinotage 2020, WO Western Cape.


The label is coy; it doesn’t name the producer or the component proportions. But the A Number belongs to S A Pritchard who is the owner of Clos Malverne in Devon Valley. Clos Malverne’s flagship wine is Auret which is a Cabernet Sauvignon/Pinotage blend, but as that is more expensive in the Cape than I paid for Heron’s Nest in the UK I don’t think they are the same wine, but it’s one made in a similar way from bought in grapes. 


It’s a very enjoyable wine; the Cabernet calms down Pinotage’s exuberance and the Pinotage gives fruit and sweetness to the Cabernet. Thoughtful winemaking shows – there were no shortcuts as they used the basket presses  beloved by Clos Malverne and aged in French Oak barrels. I’d buy more, unfortunately for me they quickly sold out. 




01 January 2025

100 Years of Pinotage

 


2025 is the 100th anniversary of the planting of the first Pinotage.


In South Africa’s autumn, at the beginning of 1925, Professor Abraham Izak Perold picked grapes from a Cinsaut vine whose female flowers he’d fertilised with Pinot Noir pollen the previous spring.


He planted seeds from those grapes in the spring of 2025. While all the subsequent vines had the same parents they were not identical. Most were unsuitable for use as commercial grape vines, but one was, and it was named Pinotage after its parents, Hermitage being the South African name for Cinsaut at that time.


It took time for grape farmers to plant the new variety, but early growers started winning wine-show awards with their Pinotages.


However the public had to wait until 1961 for the first commercially available Pinotage, a 1959 vintage released by Stellenbosch Farmers Winery under their Lanzerac label.