WOTM - Bellevue Houdamond Pinotage 2009

My Wine of the Month for April is this beautiful full-square classic Pinotage from Bellevue Estate.I should really be keeping this as it will age perfectly but I just couldn’t resist opening it.

It’s Bellevue Estate’s ‘Morkel’ re-badged as Houdamond for Marks & Spencer.

 

 

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France Approves Pinotage

Pinotage is one of five 'foreign' varieties that have been approved by  L’Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin (IFV) for growing in France to produce wine. The Institute says that Pinotage

"makes deep coloured wines, powerful and fruity with aromas of blackberry and plum. Pinotage is well suited to the production of rosé wines."

The other  newly approved varieties are Nebbiolo, Nero d’Avola, Saperavi and Touriga nacional.

Source: www.vignevin.com/recherche/materiel-vegetal/centre-de-selection/varietes-inscrites.html


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WOTM - Spencer Bay Pinotage 2007

Wow! Beautiful nose, powerful ripe berry fruits, smooth and sleek, yet with good structure. This is a wine that makes you stop and pause after you take a sip and just stare at the glass to wonder how they managed to get so much flavour in one glass.

Winemaker’s Reserve is the premium label from Namaqua, well known for the bag-in-box wines.

This is a delicious and most enjoyable wine. A most worth Wine of the Month for March.

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New use for an old fermenting tank door at Namaqua's winery

Kanonkop Pinotage for Easter Lamb

Suzy Atkins, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, 14/3/2013, recommends Kanonkop Pinotage 2010 as  'a huge treat with lamb this Easter' in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph.

Article here.



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Pinotage "making a comeback" in NZ

John Hawkesby writing in The New Zealand Herald today says 

Pinotage used to have a following in the 70s but was elbowed out of the way by other reds. Now it's making a comeback and, if you like touches of pepper and a gamey “splash in the glass”, this could be your new favourite.

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WOTM - De Waal 2001 Pinotage

February’s wine of the month is the stunning De Waal 2001 from Uiterwyck Estate’s “Top of the Hill” vineyard. 

This vineyard is home to the oldest Pinotage vines in the world, so the wine is liquid history. The vines grow as bushes on a gently sloped low hill with a large spreading wild-fig tree right on the summit, visible for miles. The tree offers shelter from the sun to farm workers who sit under it while eating their lunch.

I’ve always thought “Top of the Hill” wines needs time to show their best, and with 12 years age I think it is at the start of a long peak. Tannins have smoothed, fruit has lost the precocity of young Pinotage and become sleek. The wine is similar to an aged claret but with more fruit  and the underlying sweetness typical of Pinotage. 

Lovely stuff, and sadly my last bottle.

Food and Beverage World Rates pinotage

Food & Beverage World’s annual California Wines of the Year Competition has red wine categories for Cabernet, Bordeaux blends, Pinot, and Rhone. Everything else is judged in Other Reds. This year Other Reds places a Pinotage in its top three, after two Zinfandels.

It’s yet another award for Loma Prieta winery’s 2010 gold-winning ‘Karma Vineyard’ Pinotage, and it is great to see Pinotage getting recognition in competition with other California varieties.
 

Pinotage budwood for grafting has arrived
 at Loma Prieta from the nursery

Loma Prieta is unable to keep up with demand for their Pinotage and owner Paul Kemp tells me he is grafting over the rest of his estate vineyard to Pinotage this year, and will also be increasing production by another 20 tons from the Karma Vineyard in Lodi by grafting over 3-4 more acres to Pinotage.

“Like in a poker game, it looks like I am all in on Pinotage,” said Paul. “The key with Pinotage is to get people to try it and then the wine sells itself.”

Wine from the new vines will not be on sale for five years as it takes at least three years before new vines can be harvested and then Paul ages his Pinotage for two years in oak barrels before release. However, as he is currently sourcing grapes from three vineyards in addition to those on his estate he has been able to double the number of shipments available to members of Loma Prieta’s  ‘Pinotage Only’ wine club, the first in America.  

View at sunset looking over Loma Prieta's estate vineyard
and down to the Pacific


 

 

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WOTM - Wildekrans Osiris Pinotage

My wine of the month for January is Wildekrans ‘Osiris’ Barrel Select 2008. 

I bought it for 125 Rands from Houw Hoek Farm Stall, which is on the N2 road in the section after Sir Lowry’s Pass and just before the road descends from the mountains down to Bot River.   

We found we were stopping there more and more to have a delicious lunch in their restaurant, buy delicious farmers bread hot from the oven and their Portuguese style custard tarts. You can also buy the home-made salad dressing used in the restaurant. 

And always to browse in their wine shop which is strong on local labels.

There’re usually some wines to taste with an attendant who will follow browsers around pointing to various wines and telling you that they are “good”. 

This wine has a standout label with a golden image of Osiris which catches the light, and just as impressive, though  more subdued, is a Pinotage Top 10 winner sticker. Osiris has been dropped from the label of later vintages

I visited Wildekrans many years ago when Bartho Eksteen was the winemaker, but he moved on a decade or so ago and I believe the winery has been greatly renovated since then. I must make a point of visiting it next time I am in the Cape.

Anyway, this wine is fresh and full of rich silky ripe fruit flavours with a good structure and long finish. 

And, sadly, that was my last bottle.

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Top Pinotages 2013

Top Wine SA has just released their annual rating of Top Pinotages.

TOP PINOTAGE - 2013 CLASSIFICATION

• Diemersfontein Carpe Diem Pinotage
• Kaapzicht Steytler Pinotage
• Kanonkop Pinotage
• L'Avenir Pinotage
• Môreson Pinotage
• Rijk's Pinotage
• Simonsig Redhill Pinotage
• Spier Private Collection Pinotage
• Stellenzicht Golden Triangle Pinotage
• Windmeul Pinotage Reserve

Top Wine SA, edited by leading wine writer and  journalist Mike Froud, collates scores awarded to South African wines by independent blind tasting panels around the world, mostly as part of international competitions,  to find which wines are the most successful.

Top Wine SA also produces a annual list of South Africa’s most highly rated wineries. See this and the Top wines for other varieties and wine types here.

Thanks to Mike Froud and Top Wine SA

Lettie Teague Re-evaluates Pinotage

Lettie Teague writes about wine for the Wall Street Journal. She is on record as saying that she ‘despises’ Pinotage. 

In her latest article she tastes 24 wines.  She mostly finds what she was expecting 

“Sure enough, there were aromatic clouds of rubber tire wafting from many of the wines. There were some wines marked by pleasingly smoky, earthy notes as well—altogether, seven didn't announce themselves as ‘Pinotage’ but simply as good wines made well.”

Those seven are:

Aaldering 2009

Beyerskloof Diesel 2009

Durbanville Hills  (no vintage given)

Fort Ross 2007 (California)

House of Mandela (no vintage given)

Kaapzicht Steytler 2008

Simonsig Red Hill 2009

She also gives thumbs up to Warwick’s Cape Blend she names as Three Ladies.

House of Mandela is a negocient label owned by Nelson Madela’s children. There’s no information on the website about who makes the Pinotage. 

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Pinotage in 2012

2012 saw Pinotage consolidating its position in the world of wine. We reported it growing commercially in Switzerland, Maryland USA and Queensland, Australia, also on an experimental basis in Ohio, USA. Virginia planted more, as did California, although the status of the oldest vineyard there is unknown after the owners, Steltzner, sold their Napa Valley winery. 

Meanwhile, California's Loma Prieta winery 2010 Pinotage was festooned with a dozen gold medals and decided to graft over a Pinot Noir vineyard to Pinotage.

Decanter awarded its best red varietal over £10 Trophy to Bellingham Pinotage 2010, and Barkan had double success when their Pinotage won the Grand Champion Trophy for the Best Israeli Wine in Competition and Best Kosher Israeli Wine at the Terravino Mediterranean International Wine and Spirit Challenge.

Leading international mail-order wine merchant Laithwaites launched an own label £65 single vineyard Pinotage made by  Flagstone which was criticised by journalist Christian Eedes as maybe “a little too perfect”.

Diemersfontein winery brought their popular Pinotage on Tap  festival to England for the first time and were rewarded with a stunningly beautiful summers weekend without a cloud in the sky.  

A rapt audience heard about and tasted Pinotage at my presentation to the American Wine Society annual conference in Portland, Oregon.

Flagstone and Aaldering both launched white Pinotages, entering the category invented by Mellasat whose Enigma has for years had the market to itself.  

During the year I drank many great Pinotages and tasted many more. I was going to list my ‘most memorable’ or ‘wines of the year’  but there are too many. So I’ll just capriciously mention one that got away – the beautiful Houdamond 2009 (Bellevue Estate, rebadged for UK Marks and Spencer) that was served at my wine tasting club’s annual dinner and dance. M&S branches were cleared by club members days afterwards and I managed to get only a few bottles and now have just one left. 

Michael Fridjhon, writing in Business Day over Christmas, notes that New World wineries with an established track record get less respect than fashionable newcomers. 

So let me respect two long established wineries.  In the past couple of days I enjoyed Uiterwyk Estates DeWaal ‘Top of the Hill’ 2006 and Kaapzicht Estate ‘Steytler’ 2002. Both were ripe claret in style, four square and linear. Steytler's back label suggests a drinking window of up to eight years after vintage but this wine is just delicious ten years on. ‘Top of the Hill’ is a single vineyard bottling from the oldest Pinotage vineyard and at six years the wine is still a youngster.

Enjoy a Pinotage Packed 2013!

Cheers

Peter May

IWSC & Cape Blend WInners

Congratulations to all at Kaapzicht Estate for winning the 2012   Abraham Perold Trophy for Pinotage at the International Wine & Spirit Competition with Kaapzicht Estate ‘Steytler’ Pinotage 2008, of which the judges said:

Opaque with bright purple rim. Intense nose packed with ripe berries where raspberry features strongly along with plum and prune. Big and burly in the mouth with a load of new oak. Lots of spice. As big as it is it has fine balance and well ordered tannins. Approachable now yet has lots of potential over next six to ten years.

 

Congratulations are also due to the three winners of the 2012 Absa Cape Blend Competition

Beyerskloof Faith 2009

KWV Perold Tributum 2010

Windmeul Reserve Cape Blend 2010

 

 

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Visiting Fort Ross Vineyards, California

Fort Ross Vineyards are just north of the Russian River where it flows into the sea. After a few miles of driving along the twisty coastal highway, Route 101, with its distracting dramatic coastal scenery, and going around hairpin bends where the road is shored up against slippage you come to Meyers Grade Road, which surprisingly is a better road to drive on than the main coastal highway. There’s a small sign on Rte 101 pointing to wine tasting 3.5 miles along the road, and that is Fort Ross.

The property is large, a hundred square acres, spread over the top of the high hills. After entering by the Fort Ross sign you drive along a narrow path, through an electric gate and past a pond to the tasting room on the edge of a steep drop.

The smart building was opened just three months before we arrived and is managed by the affably professional Damien who pours with panache.

I met owners Linda and Lester Schwartz, transplants from South Africa, who had also transplanted Pinotage bud-wood direct from South Africa, rather than acquiring vines from commercial nurseries. This process took five years of quarantine before they could start to plant.

Lester drove me to see the vineyards, through forests thinning because the once dominant Tan Oak trees are dying of a virus. On steep slopes are clearings where Lester planted his vines. He’s had to terrace the steepest hills and some of the vineyards reminded me of those lining the Rhine in Germany.

The vintage has passed and the leaves are golden yellow. Here and there is a  bunch of Pinotage grapes left by the pickers and now wizened. We chewed them and experienced a sweet jammy flavour. There were also grapes from a second flowering, green at the time of harvest, and now ripe but dismissed by Lester as no good. But they did taste good to me.

At the top of one hill is a reservoir. Lester wasn’t allowed to place it lower down where it would collect run-off water, but can only collect what rain falls into it. Which seemed to be a lot.

We were promised far distant views from the highest peak but as the car strained up a near vertical dirt track between vines we saw clouds moving rapidly in the trees on surrounding hills and within moments the sun had vanished and visibility closed in. We had to descend before rain made the tracks unsafe.

Back in the tasting room, which has great coastal views when clear of clouds, we tasted three Fort Ross Pinotages. The wines are made by Jeff Pisoni, of Pisoni Vineyards and Winery but not here at this building which is too remote.

Linda told me she only releases her wines when she considers them ready. 2007 is the most recent vintage; also available is 2005 and 2006. Linda says Pinotage is tannic and needs time for the tannins to soften.

2005 – Just released. Soft, very soft with a gentle spiciness

2006 – Tad sharp edge to it and a tannic finish, I’d give it little more bottle age.

2007 –  Mature nose but this is fruitier spicier with brighter tannins. Fort Ross kindly supplied their 2007 vintage for my Pinotage seminar at the American Wine Society conference where it received many compliments.

It was great to meet Linda and Lester after communicating with them over  many years via email and to taste their Pinotage at last after reading so many complimentary reviews of them. 

I want to return during summer and see the views from the top of the vineyards and drink more Fort Ross Pinotage..

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