L'Avenir and Writers Block in Jukes' Top 50

Matthew Jukes just published Top 50 South African wines includes two Pinotages, Flagstone Writer's Block 2006 and L'Avenir Grand Vin 2006

Matthew is author of several wine books and wine correspondent for the UK's Daily Mail national newspaper.

Of the 2006 Flagstone Pinotage he says

The most expressive Writer's Block ever has me gushing thank goodness. Seamless, hedgerow and boot polish notes bombard your palate and there isn't a touch of unwanted earthiness in sight.

L'Avenir's premium Grand Vin 2006 elicits

With almost Barolo-like, enigmatic flair, this distinguished Pinotage stalks your taste buds one by one, converting every one in its path to its cause.

In the UK Writer's Block retails at £15 and the L'Avenir Grand Vin is an eye-watering £26.

The Top 50 is on Matthew's releaunched web-site at http://www.matthewjukes.com/?p=224 athough a coding error is preventing display at the time of writing (hint, use view source)

Winemaker Ben Dugdale talks about Pinotage (video)

Ben Dugdale is winemaker at Karikari Estate, New Zealand's most northerly. He showed me around the estate in December 2008 (see my report here) but I didn't have the bandwidth while travelling to upload this video of him in his Pinotage vineyard

In the video he talks about growing Pinotage and why he is planting some more. The berries are small and green because this was filmed in December. They'll be ready for harvesting soon.

Ben uses the following terms:

Veraison - that is when the grapes ripen and change colour to black

Brix - is a measurement of sugar in the grape. A finished wine will have an alcohol level a little over half the brix reading. So when Ben measures 24 brix thats teling him those grapes would produce 12.5-13% alcohol by volume.

Saam Pinotage for Red Nose Red

Red Nose Day is a major bi-annual fund raising event for Comic Relief in the UK. The red nose refers to a the bulbous scarlet facial appendage worn by clowns and was adopted as a symbol by the professional comedians who started Comic Relief in 1985.

The wine business has always been an active supporter, in the past running a parallel ‘wine relief’.

For 2009' two Red Nose wines have been launched, both sourced from South Africa’s Saam Mountain Vineyards near Paarl. Red Nose White is a Chenin Blanc and Red Nose Red is a Pinotage blended with some Shiraz (an ancient French cross between Dureza and Mondeuse blanche).

Red Nose Red Pinotage/Shiraz 2008 is a tremendously attractive wine with a scented nose, brimming with ripe loganberry fruit flavours, and an almost jammy sweetness.

Tasting notes for the wine from Jancis Robinson MW and Tim Atkins MW read "This hearty and full bodied red brims with goodwill, bramble perfume and raspberry fruit. Drink with friends and partner it with anything you feel like eating."

But I think my friend Andy Barrow over at Spittoon has really nailed it. Andy likens the wine to picking blackberries in hedgerows. I went blackberrying last summer and and he has it spot on.

The wine costs £4.99 in UK supermarkets of which £1 goes to Comic Relief. But don't think of this as a bargain basement £3.99 value wine. Importers Bibendum reckon that, without the donations of those involved in producing the wine it would be priced above £6. "SAAM, Erbin and Multiprint provided wines, capsules and labels respectively at cost, while JF Hillebrand, Quinn Glass and all of the retailers are working at reduced margins," they say.

At not extra cost, Red Nose wines come with an art work by Damien Hirst. The label is a Hirst work titled A Red Nose, being a raised shiny red circle on a dull matt grey background. The label on my wine easily peeled off, so get a frame and you can have a Hirst work on your wall. Much better than a pickled shark :)

Good wine, designer art and charity, all in one £4.99 bottle. Rush out and buy.

M'Hudi on BBC-tv

When I wrote last year (see here) about M’hudi wines and my chat with Oupa Rangaka, I mentioned that Oupa was being filmed by a television company.

Now the results are due to be shown on BBC-tv's digital channel BBC 4 in March in a three part series features different aspects of the wine business including London wine merchants Berry Bros and Rudd and Chateau Margaux.

The final programme, titled 'The Future', to be shown in March, travels to South Africa to talk to Oupa at M’Hudi and Mark Solms of Franschhoek winery Solm’s Delta .

Managing Director Malmsey Rangaka (left) & Oupa in their vineyard

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Inniskillin's Pinotage - heavy palate of red fruit

"You’ll be reading a fair bit about Pinot varieties over the next few weeks, as we get closer to wine fest time. First off the bat,Pinotage, a red wine grape originally bred in South Africa, where it is the signature variety.

Here in B.C., Inniskillin’s Discovery Series includes a slightly spicy Pinotage that boasts a heavy palate of red fruit, with a nose of cherry, raspberry and prune. A few layers of toasted vanilla lead the nose to a nice finish. Match with rich pastas, braised meats or savoury stews.

Anya Levykh writing in Vancouver's Metro News 22 January 2009, item titled The Many Sides of Pinot: Pinotage

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Such is fame ....

The Pinotage Club has been active on the web since 1997, and it comes near the top of any Google for Pinotage, so it was rather surprising to read in wine-writer Eric Asimov's New York Times of 20 January 2009 that I’ve yet to find a hard-core pinotage fan club.


Eric Asimov has just discovered South African wines and he's impressed with the Cabernet Sauvignons, but he thinks that increasingly its producers are focusing on cabernet sauvignon. Err?? Surely red-wise the new focus is Shiraz?

Eric says of the South African wines that their track record is slim. We don’t know yet how these wines will age, thus dismissing 350 years of continuous wine production.

Since he gets so much so wrong, how much reliance can be placed on his opinion of Pinotage as a distinctive wine that is made virtually nowhere else in the world, but almost nobody likes or wants that wine?

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Wither Hills Pinotage

Wither Hills, in Marlborough’s Wairau Valley, is the answer to ‘guess who is growing this Pinotage’.

But they are not making any Pinotage wine. A short row of Pinotage is one of an exhibition at the entrance to Wither Hills intended to demonstrate to vistitors most of the varieties being grown in New Zealand.

It was instructive to me to see how much smaller the berries were than those I had seen just a week before on the North Island. Grape vine flowering here can be a week or more later than in the North.

Today I leave New Zealand from Christchurch on the South Island to fly to Melbourne, Australia to see relatives before heading home via Singapore.

New Zealand has been really enjoyable, the wine is all of excellent quality and my only regret is that they do not make more of Pinotage.

I'd like to thank Sue Courtney of www.wineoftheweek.com for her lovely welcome to New Zealand and all the assistance she has given during my stay in her wonderful country.

Kerr Farm P’06

While I didn’t get an opportunity to visit Kerr Farm on this trip to New Zealand I found a bottle of P’06 in a wine store. This is the 2006 vintage Pinotage of which I’d tasted a sample in 2007 with Jaison Kerr at his vineyard. (see here)

P’06 is medium dark ruby red with a subdued nose and restrained fruit. It’s a bit flat in the mid-palate but finishes well with mulberries and tangy spices. The tannins are soft and there are no rough edges. The wine is already throwing some sediment. Overall it is a well made red wine in a Bordeaux style, ideal with dinner.

And there's good news from Kerr Farm. Sue Courtney reports that the old Pinotage vines there seem to have rallied after being attacked by Lemon Tree Borer moths and that the vines are going to live to

fruit another day.

Marsden Estate 2000

Here’s a rare one; an eight year old Pinotage from Marsden Estate in KeriKeri in the Bay of Islands near the top of North Island. The winery is named after Reverend Samuel Marsden who planted New Zealand’s first vineyard by the coast in the Bay of Islands.

The back label suggests this wine will cellar from two to five years and we’re already three years past that date. The wine is pale red turning to brick and it doesn’t have too much bouquet. There are sweet fruit flavours, although they’re fading and the wine has all the characteristics of smooth aged claret. Pleasant, but it is time to drink up.

Marsden Estate 2004

Here we’re in the recommended cellaring range and indeed this wine appears to have a lot of life left in it. The colour is dark garnet with a red rim. It is rather classy; nice fruit balanced by gentle tannins with some dusty blueberries flavours and a creamy finish. This is a very drinkable and enjoyable wine.

Many thanks to Ben Dugdale for arranging the opportunity for me to drink these wines.

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Guess Who is Growing this Pinotage.

Gourmet blogger Douglas Blyde of Intoxicating Prose posted a comment asking “Please may we have another picture of a vineyard to guess its location?”

So here it is.

My question is -- which winery is growing this Pinotage?

Some clues. I have been in New Zealand for the past month or more and this picture was taken on 31 December 2008 in the grounds of a major New Zealand winery which is famous, especially in Britain which is a major importer, for Sauvignon Blanc wines.

If you know anything about NZ wine you’ll recognise the winery name; we’re not talking about some garagiste winery you’ve never heard of.

But the winery does not list a Pinotage varietal among its wines, so you’ll find no help on winery websites. The size of the grapes in the picture may give you a clue as to whether we are on the North or South Island, and that in turn may indicate the region.

It’s a near impossible question, so don’t hold back – have a guess and have a go!

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Delheim's Rose - 'A New Favourite'

"A new favorite .......... is this pinotage rose made by Delheim in South Africa. Still lively from the 2008 harvest, it has a spot-on balance of bright berry sweetness and a refreshingly crisp finish that pairs well with light foods. At $11.99, it's a fair price for a mid-winter's sip of Stellenbosch sunshine in a bottle. " -- Craig Laban in The Philadelphia Inquirer 4 January 2009

Te Awa’s Outrageous and Opulent Pinotage

Outrageous and opulent -- a taste feast. That is the Pinotage promise on Te Awa's restaurant wine list and who could resist it? The winery adds that ‘this is a statement Pinotage in the world of conformity and mediocrity’.

Never one for conformity, we had a glass of 2005 Pinotage poured while we pondered what meal to order. There was some confusion as we discussed our choices. When the waitress took the first food order it sounded interesting but I couldn’t find it listed on my menu and after swapping menus the reason became clear. We had been given similar but different choices.

Similar problems with the wine. The first glass was showed a wine whose fruit was masked by tannins and had a green stalkiness. I couldn’t detect any obvious fault and wondered if the bottle had been opened too long but I was assured it had been opened that very day. I sloped off to the tasting counter to taste another glass but that was the same. The wine was not undrinkable, just not very forthcoming.

Another glass was poured with the meal, this time from a new bottle and it was like a different wine. Fruit forward with restrained tannins. A softly sweet bouquet and a rather classy firm wine. It was a like a car revving its engines while the brakes were on. You could just taste a hint of galumphing Pinotage flavours wanting to burst forth but they were kept firmly in check.




As to the reason for the difference in the wines; the winery suggested either the heat of the day (it was very hot) affected the wine or it was affected by TCA. This had occurred to me, because at low levels TCA suppresses fruit flavours, which is why I went to the tasting counter to taste another sample. I didn’t then know that when a wine is ordered by the glass at TeAwa wait staff take an opened bottle from the tasting counter to pour at the table then return it. So when I went to try another glass I was in fact tasting from the very same bottle. We’re pretty sensitive to TCA and didn’t detect it in the wine.

Te Awa Estate is in Hawkes Bay (you’ve probably guessed by now that I am in New Zealand) and its vineyards are planted on the famous Gimblett Gravels. The gravels formed the bed of the wide Ngaruroro river that flowed over here until 1867 when an earthquake lifted the land and the river diverted. The ground consists of metres of flat oval grey gravel stones with pockets of sand, soil and silt all deposited by the river over aeons.

TeAwa, whose name is derived from Te Awa o te atua which means 'River of God' in Maori, has seven 300 metre long rows of Pinotage, about 2,100 vines planted in 1994 in an area unsuitable for Pinot Noir. Jenny Dobson made the 2005 and all TeAwa’s previous vintages and she has a real soft spot for Pinotage. Unfortunately Jenny’s time at TeAwa came to an abrupt end earlier this year (she is now at nearby Unison Vineyard) and it will be interesting to see what her successor will make of this non-conformist variety.

“Pinotage is our cult wine which has devoted followers,” they told me at the winery. But they have no plans to plant any more. They’re keeping it a cult.





This is one of the Pinotage rows at Te Awa. You can see the Gimblett Gravel stones under the wines and see that they’ve cleared the canopy to expose the young green grapes to sunlight and air. If you’re visiting TeAwa and want to see these Pinotage vine the rows are about halfway along on the left of the driveway, just after a small gap. They are rows numbered 456 to 662.

Kari Kari Estate _New Zealand's Most Northerly Pinotage

KariKari Estate is New Zealand’s most northerly. Located at the tip of the Kari Kari Peninsula the winery offers views over its vineyards to the sweep of the Pacific Ocean below breaking on a long white sand beach. Planting started with ten acres in 1998 when the land was purchased by US financier Paul Kelley. The property also contains a beef farm, golf course and villa accommodation at Carrington Resort. A further ten acres of vines has since been planted including Pinotage.



Winemaker Ben Dugdale said “at the end of this peninsula we are effectively island 21 kilometres from shore and have own weather usually missing the storms we can see back there on the mainland. Winds come straight across the sea and we’ve now planted windbreaks. Salt spray can be a problem – its our equivalent of frost damage and if salt gets on the tips or young flowers it burns them just like frost does.

Ben had lined up all of KariKari’s Pinotages.



2003

This was the first Pinotage vintage at KariKari and just three barrels were made. It is soft and warm with gentle cherry flavours and some acid and tannins on the finish. No rough edges, pleasant mature light red wine, not noticeably Pinotage.

2004

This was made by Ben’s predecessor Kim Crawford and was the first vintage from the young Pinotage vines. Mid red colour, dry, light bodied with some dry tannins on the finish from American oakand reminded me of a ‘luncheon claret’. It’s a pretty wine.

2005

Ben’s first vintage at KariKari has a denser colour than the previous and a more complex nose. There’s dark cherry flavours and a dry finish. It’s a delightful wine. Ben said he used French oak for maturation but he during fermentation he bled off a little of the juice which he put in a heavy toasted American oak barrel to finish its fermentation before blending back with the rest. “It gives quite a blast, I wanted to see what happened,” he said. “But I felt it detracted a bit from where I wanted the fruit to go, so I didn’t repeat the experiment.” The previous two had screwcaps but Ben converted to Diam technical corks from this vintage. “I prefer them for aging reds,” he said

2006

Dark garnet, Pinotage nose, good balance with restrained berry fruits, a touch of mocha and tang of soft grained tannins on finish. “I didn’t use any fining agents on this, but I removed some acids. It is still quite tight and needs some years,” says Ben.


2007

This was a tank sample, it is due to be bottled in January ‘09. Good colour interesting nose offers coffee and coconut. There is some serious sweet fruits, it is plumy and spicy with black pepper and tannins kicking in on the black palate. “The key difference with this,” said Ben, “is that we got two and a half times as much fruit in 2007 than before. I was going to remove fruit but the vines were fine, not stressed or unbalanced.” Ben used a little egg white fining to remove some tannins.

2008

This was a barrel sample. It had a most unusual and attractive nose like a scented honey. “Manuka honey,” said Ben and he went to the winery restaurant and returned with a pot of Manuka honey. Manuka is a local bush with white and pale mauve flowers and honey produced from them is prized and is a potent antiseptic. Kari Kari’s Pinotage vineyard is bordered on two sides with Manuka hedges which were in flower when we went to it.

There’s lots of sweet red berry fruits on the palate, some lavender and tannins. This wine has more ‘oomph’ and it is more intense than earlier vintages and it’s pretty amazing. “I think this would be perfect with smoked snapper with a dribble of Manuka honey,” Ben said.

Ben let this vintage ferment naturally using wild yeasts. “With wild yeasts we’re getting closer to a sense of place and I think it’s worth cracking on with it,” Ben told me. He will take it out of barrel in February ’09.

Ben is pleased with Pinotage, “to my mind it has a good future …. but it needs a PR campaign.” He has not tasted many South African Pinotages and would like to put up his Pinotage against the South African’s in the Top 10 competition where he thinks it has a good chance.

Ascension Rings its Pinotage Bell

Ascension Winery, in New Zealand’s Matakana wine region, was just closing for the day as Sue Courtney and I drove up at 5pm but they stayed open for us to taste their 2007 ‘Bell Ringer’ Pinotage.


This is quite a different style from the 2006 ‘Parable’ which I tasted last year. It is more beaujolais like, light bodied with soft raspberry fruit flavours and 12.5% abv. This style is popular locally and the wine sells well.

Sue Courtney’s tasting note says:
Ascension 'The Bell Ringer' Pinotage 2007
Beautiful light crimson-purple red. Savoury, smoked meat and bacon notes on the nose with rustic wild cherries.Lovely clean savoury flavours, bright and tasty with a silky mouthfeel, juicy cherry and blueberry fruit and a hint of chocolate. The smoky oak from the nose comes through and the finish is distinctively Pinotage gamey. Seems to have taken a different direction from recent previous vintages. It has a lighter touch.


Ascension’s owner Darryl Soljan (pictured) says that Pinotage does every well at Ascension. He has two acres that he planted here in 1996 but Darryl and the Soljan's involvement with Pinotage goes back much earlier with other vineyards and wineries owned by the family.

Many thanks to Sue Courtney, columnist with the Rodney Times and publisher of www.wineoftheweek.com/

Pinotage Pronunciation - how do you say Pinotage?

I have been using Feedjit for the past few months on this blog. If you scroll far enough down you’ll see the Feedjit Live Traffic Feed panel on the right side.

It shows the country and the link that visitors come from and any search term they used to find The Pinotage Club.

One of the most common searches is for Pinotage Pronunciation and this post from September 2005 is found.

I thought that I should post every now and again specifically to answer the questions people are interested in, so let’s start with Pinotage Pronunciation.

The correct way to say Pinotage is with a short ‘i’ sound, exactly the way you say pin when talking about drawing pins or pins-and-needles. The tage part is pronounced to rhyme with ‘large’, so put them together you get

Pin no targe

What about all the websites that tell you that the Pin of Pinotage is pronounced Peen? Wrong, each and every one of them! They’ve obviously never heard the word spoken in its homeland of South Africa and they are thinking of the way the French say Pinot Noir. Now, it is true Pinot Noir is one of the parents of Pinotage, but Pinotage is not a French variety. It is a South African variety and the South African growers call it ‘Pinnotarge’ -- never ever peeno.

And for final proof, as if any should be needed: Graham Beck Winery’s lifestyle Pinotage is simply labelled as ‘Pinno’.

Gary returns to Pinotage

April last year v-blogger Gary Vaynerchuck took a good look at Kanonkop Pinotage 2004 which he raved about (see here)

This December he's returned to Pinotage. This time he's looking at three less expensive brands, Nederberg and two names new to me, False Bay and Lion Hunt. The episode is here



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The People Vote for the People's Pinotage

Diemersfontein’s coffee and chocolate Pinotage scored a resounding hat trick of victories at major wine shows in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg during 2008.

The public was asked to name the best red wine on show at WineX Cape Town, WineX Johannesburg and at the Mercury Wine Week in Durban, and in each case the majority chose Diemersfontein Pinotage. The wine was also the biggest seller by volume at WineX Johannesburg, where fans backed their votes with their wallets.

WineX director Michael Fridjhon said the Best Wine on Show has become “a meaningful barometer of the style and variety most sought after by the country’s premium wine consumer”.

“That a discerning set of wine consumers in our three biggest cities have rated our Pinotage ‘the best Red Wine’ is the most wonderful accolade that all of us in the team at Diemersfontein could wish for,” says David Sonnenberg, the third generation owner and founder of Diemersfontein wines.

“It is my impression that Winex and Mercury patrons – while certainly there to have a good time - are also pre-occupied with tasting a large range of wines in order to discover and benchmark their favourite varietals and blends from among the SA wine industry’s diverse and excellent Estates. So we are especially appreciative of the public’s endorsement in these instances.”

The popular support for the Diemersfontein Pinotage has surged since it was first produced in 2001 and it has been dubbed “The People’s Pinotage” by respected wine writer Neil Pendock after he conducted a consumer survey.

Diemersfontein's Pinotageis the only South African wine to have its own birthday party. Every year Diemersfontein successfully hosts Pinotage on Tap events – considered to be the winelands’ favourite party - in the Cape and Gauteng to celebrate the release of a new vintage in the company of the wine’s ever-growing legion of fans.

“So many customers write to us very generously and lyrically about the wine – from very experienced and regular wine drinkers to those just starting out on the wine journey. It appears to have bridged many people into a love of red wine and Pinotage in particular. We are delighted that our wines seem to give so many South Africans a lot of pleasure,” says Sonnenberg. And not just South African's -- the wine has a cult following in the UK where it is stocked by Waitrose and woe betide them when they run out.

To celebrate the trio of victories, Diemersfontein is planning a series of fun food and wine evenings across the country. The events will give fans the opportunity to enjoy the wine with exceptional food produced by some of South Africa’s leading chefs

November's Newsletter

November's newsletter has been emailed out. You can download it by clicking on the front cover image, left.

To be placed on the newsletter mailing list send an email to peter (at) pinotage (dot) org

Please note the new header above. This was designed by Sharief Kamish in South Africa to whom I am very grateful. Sharief also designed the header for The Cru blog

Kanonkop's Abrie Beeslar is International Winemaker of the Year

Abrie Beeslaar, (pictured right) winemaker at top Pinotage winery Kanonkop Estate, is the International Winemaker of the Year it was announced at the International Wine and Spirits Competition's (IWSC) gala award ceremony in Londons last night.

Kanonkop also received the Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande trophy for the best blended red wine with its Paul Sauer 2003, as well as the Dave Hughes Trophy for the Best South African Producer.

"It has been a historic year for Kanonkop and it is truly an honour to have been able to share in the winery's successes," Abrie said. "To be awarded this accolade as the world's best winemaker for the year is an honour one never even dreams about, so the award has simply not sunk in yet.

"But I do know that the success belongs to the whole team working in the cellar and vineyards, as well as those who promote our wines throughout the world. But nothing equals the importance of nature with which we are blessed on Kanonkop. It's the soil and the climate that produces the grapes for the wines I am able make to the kind of quality that we are lucky enough to receive this kind of recognition for."

Abrie also added that he sees this award as recognition of South Africa's potential to compete with the best wine producing countries in the world.

"This is the third time that the award has gone to a South African winemaker and should once more prove that our wines are at home with the best in the world."

Abrie's award comes at the end of an outstanding year for Kanonkop. It was the first wine-farm to receive the Château Pichon Langueville Comtesse de Lalande trophy for a third time. And locally Kanonkop was recently named Wine Producer of the Year by the 2009 Platter South African Wine Guide.


Thanks to - www.wine.co.za

Pinotage in the Papers

"Give the Cape’s indigenous workhorse Pinotage some tender loving care in a vineyard and winery and even at this price level you can be rewarded with a fat, ripe, spicy, inky mouthful," says Jane MacQuitty in the Sunday Times. She's reviewing Tesco's own label 2008 South African Pinotage from Swartland Winery at an attractive £3.63.

Jane MacQuitty upset many South Africans earlier this year when she damned their top red wines, so well done Swartland for finding favour with her at the lowest price level.

Daniel Rogov, writing in Israel's Haaretz newspaper about the latest releases from Barkan Winery, finds their 2006 Pinotage Reserve "Dark but somehow not glistening garnet toward purple in color, showing near-sweet tannins and berry, plum and currant fruits. In the background constant notes of earthy minerals and tobacco. On the finish fruits rise along with both the flavor and aroma of cloves. Drink now-2010. NIS 69. Score 87".

In the Jerusalem Post, Ofer Zemach says of the same wine "Much like the Pinot Noir, the Pinotage is a wine that really benefits from some breathing time. It takes its time in the glass to tease you with its aromas before revealing its full bouquet. The grapes for this wine came from a vineyard in Tel Tzaif in the Judean foothills. Aged for 12 months in oak barrels, the wine has excellent structure with firm tannins and good acidity."

Finally, this piece from Melissa Priestley writing in Edmonton News got my attention:
"You may have also wondered at the multitudes of other grapes bearing “Pinot” in their name. Could there be a connection, you ponder? Indeed, this phenomenon is more than a coincidence — Pinot Noir is prone to genetic mutation. Darwin would have loved this grape, as it has been spawning bastard children for millennia — Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meunier, and many others all trace their ancestry to that bitch of Burgundy. Even Pinotage, South Africa’s signature variety, calls Pinot Noir mom (daddy being Italy’s Cinsault — must have been quite the party)."

Indeed :)