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.