2009 Vintage is the Best

Judging for the 2011 Top 10 Competition has been taking place this week. Neil Pendock is judging again and he blogs "In several years judging the ABSA competition, these 2009 wines are the best I’ve ever tasted."

He was less impressed with the previous days wines from 2006, 7, 8, 10 and 11 vintages.

The judges are photographed in what looks like an attic and there is no sign of the sophisticated desktop scoring computers introduced some years ago when I last judged.

I don't have much 2009 myself except for a case of the Fairview 2009 that was a Top 10 winner last year which I ordered from the winery.

Pinotage is "an easy sell" in the USA

An interesting response by Ezanne Gouws, Ernst & Co marketing manager, to Neil Pendock's question about marketing SAf wine in the USA

I get the "what makes your wine industry unique?" question a lot, and Pinotage is right up there with boerewors, Nelson Mandela and World Cup Rugby champions. That's why Argentinian malbec does so well in America, because it is an Argentinian calling card. My American customers know South Africa produces a wide variety of quality wines, but so do many other countries. But what makes us unique is Pinotage.

I actually start off by offering my customers a chance to taste a good red wine without telling them what it is. After I have identified it for them and told them the Pinotage stories, it's an easy sell. It's not brain surgery, but it works every time.

Read the full article in in SAf's Sunday Times here

P & O’s Pinotage Picks

Michael Olivier and Neil Pendock (P & O) recommended 45 Pinotages in their new People’s Guide 2010. (see review posted yesterday). Four of them are singled out to receive Coup de Coeur (blow to the heart) awards. They are

Zonnebloem 2007 (under 50R) which is described as “Elegance and excitement, big yummy, coconut there too. Delicious aftertaste.” Neil adds that “there was cooing around the room when we tasted this wine.”

Beaumont 2006 (50-100R) – “Bright fresh, sweet cherry nose. Plums and vanilla – finishes dry.

Bellevue Morkel 2007 (50-100R) – “Smoky coffee. Big chewy fruit and toasty vanilla with a long and lingering finish.”

Clos Malverne Reserve 2007 (Over 100R) – “Chocolate mint crunch. Sweet chocolate, some banana and plums.”


The omissions are intriguing. No Kanonkop, Ashbourne, L’Avenir Grand Vin, or DeWaal Top of the Hill. Beyerskloof Reserve is included, but not its cheaper standard bottling, although in the book Michael calls that “one of the great wines of South Africa.” Two coffee’n’chocolate Pinotages are there – Diemersfontein and Café Culture – accompanied by swipes at the ABSA Top 10 competition for ignoring them, but Bertus Fourie’s Barista and Boland’s Cappuccino are left out. Stellenzichts second label Hill & Dale makes it but not Stellenzicht’s multi-award winning Golden Triangle.

I have just got to get that Zonnebloem to see if it makes me coo.

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The People's Guide 2010 -- Book Review

Columnist and fearlessly outspoken chronicler of the wine industry Neil Pendock has become increasingly critical of the popular annual Platter Guide for its policy of tasting wines ‘sighted’, in other words reviewers see the label of the wine they taste. Pendock’s feud with Platter is so deep that he cannot now mention its name without using the prefix ‘sighted’.

“It was time I had to put up or shut up,” he told me, handing over a hot-off-the-press copy of his new ‘People’s Guide 2010’. For this review Pendock together with Michael Olivier and a small team tasted 1200 wines unsighted over six days and selected 561 recommendations. The book’s cover claims ‘blind-tasted wines are honest wines.’


The paperback book is most attractively designed and printed in full colour with a photograph of every bottle, and stripes with coloured backgrounds giving an initial tasting note with additional comments from one or more of the judges complete with a ‘Did You Know’ odd fact and technical details of appellation, alcohol and sugar levels.

Wines that particularly impressed the judges are awarded a Coup de Coeur (blow to the heart) and given an entire page to themselves.

Wines are not rated; they are described “using plain language rather than scores out of 20 or 100 or awarding stars. After all, it’s about writing, not arithmetic and best is a matter of personal opinion.”

So inclusion in the book is the recommendation – and almost 50% of the wines tasted were. 76 wines were awarded a Coup de Coeur, (That is around 6% compared with 42 (0.5%) Five Star wines out of 8000 rated in Platter.

So how does the People’s Guide compare with Platter? Platter attempts to rate every South African wine giving a necessarily cryptic tasting note and a rating from zero to 5 stars.

The Peoples Guide uses ‘plain language rather than scores’ and yet the tasting notes are brief in the extreme. Whereas Platter is limited by space, even when a full page is dedicated to a Coup de Coeur wine its description can be as short as six words, for instance Two Oceans Pinot Noir 2007 is summed up as “Wham. Intense sour cherries, smooth fresh.”

However this is a different guide. There are also exuberant food matching comments from ex-restaurateur Michael Olivier which range from “a pasta-sorta wine” (De Grendel 2006 Merlot) to “would go with Karoo Muisies, little liver cakes wrapped in caul fat and cooked over coals” (Long Mountain Reserve Pinotage 2007). Other tasters add in their comments from succinct to wordy plus those intriguing ‘did you know’ quirky facts.

There are signs of a rush to get to print with several typos and one entry being repeated in its entirety, and I wondered whether “Pinotage nose with plums and berries” was an accurate descriptor for a Sauvignon Blanc.

But minor quibbles aside, this is a good looking, readable and interesting book which doesn’t claim to be comprehensive but if you choose your wine from its recommendations you won’t be disappointed.

Here’s hoping Pendock & Olivier can keep it going for the next 30 years!


The People’s Guide 2010:
navigate the winelands in a shopping trolley
by Michael Olivier & Neil Pendock with Anibal Coutinho
99 Rand
304 pages including advertisements.
Published by Whisk Publications
ISBN 978-0-620-44882-6

"Pinotage is too Cheap and too young"

Pinotage is too cheap and too young, says Neil Pendock in his blog at South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper.

After attending a tasting of Stellenzicht's 'Golden Triangle' Pinotages going back to 1998 he found that "one thing was clear: Pinotage improves with age. 2006 is current release (a reasonable R65 a bottle) but on the evidence of this vertical tasting, should be left to its own devices for a decade to develop complexity."

"for Pinotage to ever compete on a level playing field of marketing spend and consumer attention, the price gap will have to be addressed. Do producers lack confidence in Pinotage that it must trade at a substantial discount? Lower retail prices for Pinotage when compared to Cabernet and Shiraz make a telling point," he says.

Neil's grand idea is that a Pinotage Bank be established by ABSA, the sponsors of the Top 10 Competition. The Bank would buy up supplies of Top 10 winning wines in order to age them for at least a decade before releasing them for sale. This was restaurants and wine lovers would have access to matured Pinotage.

It was the oldest of the Stellenzicht Pinotages that inspired Neil. The 1998 vintage "was pure Burgundy with barnyard, bruised strawberries and biltong (and that was just the “b”s) while the ’99 was a subtle symphony of elegance and finesse."

But I thought the 2006 was drinking pretty darn good when I had it earlier this year - my review here.


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Pendock's Six P's

Leading South African wine writer Neil Pendock has become a wine maker. He writes in his Johannesburg Sunday Times blog "Having bought Lemoenfontein, a modest wine farm on the Paardeberg, last year, I decided to make the most traditional wine I could from ancient bush vine Pinotage grapes growing on the farm’s steep slopes. The wine was fermented using wild yeasts and matured in third-fill French oak barrels."



Neil is exhibiting a barrel of this wine at a 6th Sense art show during annual conference of PRISA (the PR Institute of Southern Africa), which this year has as theme Communication – the Sixth Sense.



"We’ve decided to call it 'the six P’s'", he says of his wine. " The first five, arranged alphabetically are Paardeberg, Pendock (the artist), Perold (the pioneer who produced Pinotage by crossing Cinsault with Pinot Noir), Pinotage and PRISA. The final P is a pee, the ultimate end-state of the work once it has passed through the body."

The Pinotage Effect

There's a lot of Pinotage activity on the web this week.


On the elevated realms of Robert Parker's wine discussion forum, Port guru Roy Hersh likens aged Pinotage to southern Rhones. He has just opened a 1999 Beyerskloof Pinotage.


"It is not one of those ungodly wines that those who hate Pinotage would turn their nose up at. In fact, most people do not age their Pinotage ... unless they know any better. Having tried 20-30 year old examples (in country) I know that some ... can and do become beautiful old wines, but obviously there are not many that do.

At just 7-8 years old, this wine is showing beautifully and I'd say at about peak performance. It would still drink well 5+ years from now too, but I don't think it will ever be better than it is today. It is showing a dark crimson color with a clear edge and no signs of maturity in terms of its appearance. The nose is dapper, with a smoky and spicy scent initially but the subtlety wears off and it literally explodes with leather, pine resin and a plum earthiness that is gorgeous (if you like the style). It is closer to the aromatics of a So. Rhone wine than what most people think in terms of as So. African ... no less Pinotage.

On the palate it shows great viscosity and the heavy weight is as plush as a deep pile carpet. This is fun to roll around the mouth and we have half a bottle left to enjoy with our steak dinner in a few minutes. But already the prune, tobacco, meaty flavors and clay come to the fore. I don't normally use clay as a descriptor for a flavor profile ... but I think that those 4 ppl. on this BB, that enjoy aged Pinotage know the note I am describing. I have to take a look at the alc. % but there is no signs that this is out of synch. In fact the delicious fruit and acidity are singing already and this was not even decanted!"



Another person in love with Beyerskloof is an anonymous lady who blogs under the name 'Classy Rump', although I wonder what her unlucky husband thinks. She sent him out to the farmers market to buy a shoulder of lamb which she slow cooked in Port. She says "Drank Beyerskloof pinotage, one of my absolute faves, - went perfectly with the spicy lamb. Lovley. Had intended giving Hubs one of my special BJs to cheer him up but crashed out and woke up side by side on the sofa hours later like a pair of tinned sardines."


And on the UK wine forum, Richard Ward tried Charles Back's Pinotage-Viognier, 2005, Paarl, 14.5% on a Tesco supermarket half price offer -

"F*** me - this tastes exactly like Musar!! A eureka moment - a pinotage I actually like, with a velvetty texture and mouthfeel, soft earthy aromas and (surprisingly given the 14.5% alcohol) no astringency on the finish. I don't know if it's the addition of 4% Viognier which has helped it, or if it's just really well made, but this is superb. No jamminess, no medicinal notes, no beefy/smokey flavours - just a really deep yet soft and well rounded wine. Tasted blind I would have sworn it was Musar. I was literally blown away by this wine - I've never tasted a pinotage like it. 91pts."


And, ahem, (well there are Pinotage wines featured in it), over at wine.co.za Neil Pendock gave an enthusiastic review of my book Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape" and says "Wine pundit for the Observer, Tim Atkin may list “never trust a person who collects wine labels” in his enumeration of the Top 25 Wine Truths, but in the case of Peter May I’m prepared to make an exception. He’s been a judge on the ABSA Top Ten Pinotage Competition and so must be as squeaky clean as a Stelvin screwcap. And on the basis of this collection of wine oddities, even screwier."

No Comment :)

Meerkat Pinotage

I wondered how long it would be before the popular Meerkat would appear on a winelabel. Now Welbedacht winery has introduced Meerkat Chenin Blanc and Pinotage. Neil Pendock said of the maiden vintage 2005 " This juicy Pinotage offers you the sensual extravaganza of mocca chocolate, sweet plums and soft vanilla."

I am indebted to Werner Rix of Wine Routes of South Africa www.wineroutes-sa.co.za for news of these wines in his regular newsletter, which also contains the titbit that Domein Doornkraal have produced a sweet blend of Pinotage and Tinta Barocca which they named Pinta.

Good name - but I can foresee amusing confusions with visitors from Britain where Pinta means a pint of milk.