Here’s to the red, white and pink.
Chances are, by the end of the past century, the average real man of the appropriate class had finally got round to eating quiche — but did he drink rosé? Nah.
A tenth of the way through the next century and probably he does, even if it’s only on occasions when there’s nothing else available except coffee Pinotage. Nearly everyone downs the stuff, judging by the number of rosé labels there are these days, though a lot of it goes off to Britain, where sunset-coloured wine helps them compensate for sunsets mostly the colour of slate.
But many South African men don’t venture beyond brandy and Coke yet, or the seductive brand security of fancy whisky if they want to be smart. And many wine-conscious ones still think they should supplement a beer diet with red plonk rather than pink or white.
That’s fine; enough of the rest of us can see the summer sense of chilled, dry, coppery-pink wine. Strenuously avoid, though, the girly sweet rosé that sadly still occupies a lot of supermarket shelf space and tell some resistant man (if you can be bothered to) that wines such as Buitenverwachting blanc de noir, Solms-Delta Lekkerwijn or Grangehurst Cape Rosé Blend are really light red rather than pink.
But even more voluminously, the great achievement of the Cape wine century thus far is white.
Many South African Sauvignon Blancs now are of such style and quality that they’re persuading even those of us who were doubters in 1999 that
Sauvignon can make interesting wine. Though we still tend to think that Chenin offers better value and some Chardonnays are just that much finer and grander.
But it’s hard to believe that the millennium came drunkenly in without the great white blends that are becoming a South African signature. Vergelegen White made its debut in 2001 — the forerunner and still among the best of the refined blends based on Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.
We had to wait a year longer for Sadie Family Palladius, with which was launched a uniquely South African style that is generally based on Chenin Blanc (plus two or three other varieties, such as viognier).
Both wines now have dozens of competitors and followers — many expensive, many not: White Pearl, from Black Oy-stercatcher, a winery in Elim near the southernmost tip of Africa, is less than R70 a bottle and a great buy in the Vergelegen tradition. Quite a bit cheaper, Goats Do Roam White is an excellent example of the other style, most associated with the warmer inland areas such as the Swartland.
Eben Sadie, internationally acclaimed maker of Palladius and the brilliant red Columella, was only setting up shop 10 years ago. Others too. In fact, this has surely been the most remarkable 10 years in South African wine history, since the first harvest just 350 years ago. If only socioeconomic relations in the winelands would just catch up with wine quality.
Progress can be ambiguous. An alarming vinous trend of the decade was the insidious infiltration of the wine bar by the coffee shop. In 2001 Diemersfontein bottled its first wines, made by the (deceptively!) charming Bertus Fourie. Fourie soon earned the nickname ‘Starbucks” for his exuberant Pinotage, which, through ingenious manipulation of oak staves in the fermenting tank, acquired strong mocha aromas that everyone loved.
KWV poached Bertus to make its own hugely successful version, Café Culture (grumpy Diemersfontein briefly looked ludicrously likely to sue Bertus for taking ‘its” recipe). These days he’s making yet another coffee Pinotage, called Barista, and all around are others with dreadful names like Cappupino.
Now other varieties are trying to escape winemakers and accountants bearing toasted oak staves: the past month or two has seen the
emergence of Vrede en Lust’s Mocholate, made from Malbec, and famous port producer Boplaas has used port varieties Tinta Barocca in its Tinta Chocolat.
And still (nearly) everyone loves them, though the cognoscenti tend to sneer. And Fourie smiles
winningly on his way to the bank and says that it’s a great way to introduce new people to the sensual subtleties and infinite variety of wine. Soon they’ll move onwards and upwards, he’s sure. To rosé
perhaps? And then to dizzying heights and delights.
I hope he’s right and if you’re not interested in wine and reading this out of sheer holiday boredom, I can recommend Barista as the best of the bunch (not cheap at around R50), happily confident that you’ll have moved on to real wine by the end of 2010.
for our review of the year and the decade in lists and multimedia. Books, movies, photos and politics — it’s all here.