The Best Chardonnay I have Ever Had.

Nederburg have done it again and walked away with yet another award for one of their wines.

The Nederburg Winemaster’s Reserve 2006 has just won the Lexus Shiraz Challenge Award for 2008.

Now this win and the indeed the wine is significant in a number of ways, some of which I will list for you now:

• A big producer, producing award winning wines in large volumes (great, great news for the industry)
• The wine retails for only R50 - making it very accessible
• Romanian Oak was used in the aging process imparting “an aromatic character and cinnamon and clove flavours” - very interesting indeed.
• The largest proportion of the grapes for the wine came from eight-year-old vines in Philadelphia (north of Durbanville, off the N7 en route to Malmesbury) - I have never even heard of this region before.

Well I’m off to the shops to find me a bottle so that I can report back on how good it is.

Well done to cellarmaster Razvan Macici and his team for completely transforming Nederburg into an award winning estate again.

All we need now is for those large volumes of wine to find their way onto the supermarket shelves of foreign lands to seriously lift the reputation of everyday drinking South African wine to the level it deserves.

Website : Nederburg

Perhaps I was a little too hasty in blanketing my harsh opinion over the whole of Pinotage’s reputation - although I do still believe in some of the points I was trying to make.

Anyway the real point here is that my faith in Pinotage has been restored by one solitary bottle of wine consumed over the weekend:

Camberley Pinotage 2005

Big, bold and as sweet as a caramel treat pudding. This wine is rich in all respects : a nose of honey glazed roast ham followed by a sweet, dark fruit palate and finally a long bitter sweet finish. An opulent wine that pretends to be nothing but a provocatively powerful Pinotage.

My affinity with Camberley is well known and I absolutely love their wines. I remember tasting this wine in their tasting room before buying it and being completely blown away by the caramelized condensed milk nose. With a little aging, that overriding quality has now melted into the wine to reveal soemthing a little more complex and balanced.

It’s all sold out as is their 2006 but let this serve as a high alert : GET THE NEXT VINTAGE as soon as you can because it will be sold out before you can blink an eyelid.

Website: Camberley

Today is the 90th Birthday of Nelson Mandela - Happy Birthday Madiba!

Madiba has come to respresent so much for the people of South Africa - but most of all, he is a ray of hope and integrity that like a rainbow appears as if by magic and adds a special touch to everything in it’s presence.

Read about his life here

As soon as I feel human again I am pretty sure wine consumption and discussion will begin again.

The only thing I can accurately report on now is the wonder of myprodol, corenza and sinutab.

Chat soon.

“Unlike other hot, arid southern hemisphere countries which have mostly eradicated their archaic pongs, South Africa has yet to tame its peculiar, savage, burnt rubber and dirt odour.” (taken from her TimesOnline article)

My first reaction was - “the b*tch! what does she know - we’ll show her!”

Then I calmed down and thought about it for a bit (and it’s been quite a while now) - which is a good thing because usually I get hot headed, get my thoughts all twisted and say all the wrong things.

I watched the resulting retaliation’s and offers of support unfold in the media and also tried to find and identify this ‘acrid’ smell in some wines myself (I’m still looking).

I then remembered what my old man exclaimed the other day and what has now become his favourite exclamation about wine here in South Africa : this smells of dope!!

So my conclusion is this: if he can smell it and the fact that there is so much debate around the issue - there must be some truth to it all.

The important thing here for me is that we use the accusations in a constructive manner to improve our wine output.

So I was comforted to read that WOSA have taken the accusation seriously and have commissioned a “hi-tech scientific investigation into the causes of the distinctive ‘burnt rubber’ aroma.” (Read Here)

I hope that they find what they and we are all looking for : a cause and a solution.

“Hard research on a soft topic shows that terroir doesn’t matter (except for the price) and the opinions of wine ‘experts’ don’t help predict a wine’s long-term value.”

Read more : Wine economics and economical wine - Vox

“The controversial conclusion from this article is that technological choices affect quality far more than natural endowments, including terroir, the effects of which on wine quality is negligible…”

and

“They have estimated an average Parker effect of 2.80 euros per bottle of wine.”

Read more: Oenometrics - Andrew Leigh

It’s hard to argue with economic research but the findings do a ruin a few things don’t they!

So what’s all this fuss about terrior then - is it really a load of bollocks? What do you think?

“A compound in red wine may ward off a variety of medical conditions related to aging, providing heart benefits, stronger bones and preventing eye cataracts…”

Read more here: Red wine ‘new fountain of youth’

Well, I’ve had a glass of wine every day this week which by all account means I’n getting younger by the day!

I was excited about the prospect of tasting some of the top examples of Pinotage in the country - I have always been optimistic about Pinotage and it’s potential as a stand alone varietal.

Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, but this optimism was all but destroyed and removed from my South African soul last night.

The wines on offer were DULL. They showed absolutely no imagination or progression in style; they lacked complexity,and potential and basically they were all over the show. I’m willing to bet that if they were able to talk in an interview, not one of the bottles would be able to tell you who they were, and what they were trying to achieve in the next five years.

All in all and to put it plainly - I thought the wines were rubbish and their performance failed to persuade me to buy a solitary bottle.

It honestly pains me to highlight the above because I was so damn excited about the evening and the wines on offer but something is going wrong here.

I think it boils down to the following - the wine makers have no idea how to harness the potential of Pinotage. Some are attempting this and that, others are hitting the right notes here and there but in general most are way off the ball. It appears that there just isn’t a general consensus on how Pinotage should be made and/or the preferred style to adopt.

I am sure that there has been plenty of discussion around the topic but I don’t think everyone has arrived at a sound conclusion. Don’t ask me how it should be made - I have no idea - but what I do know is that we not getting it right yet.

There’s a lot of work to be done and I really hope we identify how to best make Pinotage and all start adhering to those standards and learning’s.

From my experience Beyerskloof get it right and so to do Kanonkop. So what is it that they do right? Is it that Pinotage shouldn’t be a serious wine - like Beyerskloof’s standard offering? Or, is the real potential in creating serious, well crafted examples like Kanonkop? Perhaps it’s that we as consumers need to change our mindset and lower our expectations?

Either way we need to figure it out.