In 1976 a now-legendary tasting in Paris saw upstart Californian chardonnays and cabernets trounce their aristocratic and apparently unassailable French equivalents. Today’s overpriced cult wines and self-confidence in California flow from that event and all New World wines have in fact benefited from the space it opened up.
Such comparative tastings are now common and results challenging established supremacies are noted unworriedly at the smarter end of the wine world. (Analogously, does it affect the chic branded appeal of Gucci or Vuitton when some unknown offers demonstrably equal quality?)
No, but there’s room for interest and underdog satisfaction — as there was recently in Cape Town at Jörg Pfützner’s Big Five tasting, when Kanonkop Paul Sauer came up against one of the proudest (most arrogant, even) names in Bordeaux: Château Mouton-Rothschild.
That pairing had been preceded by the white wines I discussed previously and a look at another grand Bordeaux, Château Cheval Blanc, alongside the local Raats Cabernet Franc. Apart from the cork-tainted 2007 Cheval (its excellence still struggled nobly and not ineffectively to show itself), that was not a serious contest, although the Raats was far from disgraced. But its ripe sweetness and power, sometimes uneasily combined with a touch of green austerity, were no match for the cool and complex elegance of the Bordeaux.
Of Mouton and Paul Sauer, we tasted the 2004 to 2001 vintages, then leapt back to 1995. Initially, it was not obvious which was which (they were tasted in vintages pairs but ‘blind”, and in random order), especially given that Kanonkop is one of the most classically oriented local Bordeaux-style blends, whereas Mouton has responded to American-driven demands for plush ripeness.
But, with concentration, patterns started revealing themselves. There was, indeed, a little more fruit sweetness on Paul Sauer with its rich savouriness and it tended to show more oak, though this imbalance might be resolved with time. For me, Mouton’s tannin and acid structures were just finer, its presentation silkier and more elegant.
On the basis of that interpretation I identified most correctly — but fell into my own trap with the 2002s. That vintage was not great in either Bordeaux or Stellenbosch, but was notorious here. When one of the wines sampled was sumptuous and vibrant with youthful life and the other more evolved and altogether less harmonious, I assumed the superior one was Mouton. Wrongly so.
The 1995 Kanonkop was excellent — it has always been a magnificent wine and will be so for a good few more years. It was the second vintage in which I thought it outclassed the Bordeaux. The Mouton 1995 sells for about R3 000, incidentally, as does the 2004 vintage (about half of what the 2005 costs). Paul Sauer is released at about R300.
The final match of wines was Sadie Family Columella and one of the more modern, riper-styled, oakier wines made from syrah (shiraz) in the northern Rhône appellation of Hermitage, Chapoutier Le Méal, from 2004 to 2007. The great achievement of the Chapoutier was to reveal its vineyard origins unfailingly through flavour and structure, even when riper than it needed to be. Columella showed, with finesse and a resolute lack of jammy power, why it is one of the best reputed local wines — the fine 2004, still youthful, was for me only a touch off the Chapoutier 2005; for some it was the favourite.