/ 19 April 2013

Cabernet franc polishes up Cape’s burly blends

A good combination: The Mvembe-Raats MR de Compostella.
A good combination: The Mvembe-Raats MR de Compostella.

Bruwer Raats is a big man and in the old days he used to make big, burly wines for Zorgvliet and Delaire. But now he crafts some of the Cape’s most refined wines from the red Bordeaux varieties, notably cabernet franc. Not to mention — which I won’t any further — some very good chenin blancs.

Cab franc is still rare in South Africa as a monovarietal wine, compared with the ubiquitous cabernet sauvignon and merlot, but ahead of malbec and petit verdot. This quintet makes up the major red grapes of Bordeaux, but most popular of all, here, in the tradition of the great French wine region, are blends of varying combinations of those ­varieties.

South African winemakers have a wonderful love affair with the concept of blending, especially this Bordeaux blend. In “New World” winemaking countries, single-variety wines generally have the most prestige, but not here.

In the Cape, there’s often a determination to include all five varieties, as did the first local version, ­Welgemeend 1980 (or so pioneer Billy Hofmeyr thought; he later learnt that his petit verdot was something quite other).

Now more than a few estimable wine names even allude proudly to quintuple inclusiveness, including De Toren Fusion V, ­Gabriëlskloof Five Arches, Raka Quinary and, less whimsically, Constantia Glen Five (while Haskell IV has four and ­Chamonix Troika a mere three).

Raats Family Wines does run to a blend, a cab franc-dominated one called Red Jasper. The 2011 version, recently released, is a good, serious, but already happily approachable wine, well priced at about R130.

Even better, and a real bargain to my palate and mind, is the Dolomite Cabernet Franc 2011 at little more than R100. It is firm but elegant, with a red-fruit character and some of the fragrance associated with the best cab francs, but only the merest hint of the cabernet franc leafiness that not all appreciate (I do).

The Dolomite serves as a “second wine” to the more structured Raats Cabernet Franc 2010 (R350) and will, I hope, be drunk while the grander wine, in some cool dark retreat, gathers its considerable elements together and resolves them in higher harmony. It’s compelling enough now, but in five or more years, will be even more impressive. No one in the Cape does this variety as well as Raats.

An old winemaking friend of Raats, Mzokhona Mvemve, has teamed up with him to produce, under a separate label, the Mvemve-Raats MR de Compostella. The 2011 Stellenbosch blend is one of those that includes all big five Bordeaux grapes, with cab franc (of course!) taking up a little more than half the bottle. It’s pricey, approaching R750, but don’t hang about if you’re tempted: there’s not a great deal of it about, and the wine is acquiring something like cult status along with an international reputation.

It is repute well earned. While Compostella is no wimp (there is alcoholic and tannic power as well as forceful, ripe, red-fruit flavours, and it could be a fraction drier), it combines intensity with a genuine finesse that pushes it to the classic side of things rather than the side of fruity, showy modernity.

But do give it some time to attain the full complexity and harmony it has the potential for. That, rather than immediate gratification, is what one is investing in when splashing out on wines like this.