The wild bush vines of Swartland

Excuse me if I’m a little vague. I just got back from a very exciting trip to South Africa. The travel time back from Cape Town Airport to my own front door was something like thirty-six hours, and that was after a full day of touring vineyards and tasting. I haven’t even had a chance to download the pictures from my camera yet, so what you get here is what I just happened to have on my phone. As you can imagine, my body is still on South African time, and when I sleep I still dream I’m in the hills of Swartland. But here are the basics, and I’ll be going into more detail in future blogs.

My trip was centered round Cape Wine 2012, which is a very large trade show that showcases the wines of South Africa. In attendance were on and off-premise buyers, sommeliers, masters of wine, wine writers and other wine media from all over the planet, as well as Brad Lewis, our Director
of Wines at ABC, and I. In the evenings there were scheduled wine dinners in which we got a chance to sample some of the local food and taste even more wine, as well as network with wine people from all over the world. After Cape Wine finished we had a few days of traveling to the various wine regions, getting a sense of the lay of the land, being welcomed generously into the homes and farms of owners and winemakers, and, of course, tasting more wine.

It was my first visit to South Africa so as you can imagine it was a major learning experience for me. I must say I was amazed at the quality of so many of the wines we tasted. South Africa certainly has come a long way in terms of quality in a very short time. What’s more I was very happy to see a sense of regional identity coming to the fore. When I first tasted South African wine back in the late’80s it was just that – South African wine – and generally rather indifferent at that. But now we don’t just think of South African wine, we think of definite regions and terroir – we think of Stellenbosch and Paarl and Franschhoek and Swartland and even Bot River. This is a very important step forward in developing great wines of international standard.

    
 

Vineyards overlooking the ocean at Cape Point

As for the wines themselves, well, the general perception is that South Africa’s strongest suit is in their delicious white wines – sauvignon blanc and chenin blanc in particular. While there is some
truth to this general perception I would also like to advocate many of the red wines we tried. Their Syrah (or Shiraz depending on the taste of the winemaker and in some cases the vintage) and their Cabernet Sauvignon was often very impressive. Much to my surprise, South African Pinot Noir was a force to be reckoned with. Even more surprising was a lot of their delicious cinsault and mourvèdre.

What about pinotage, that difficult to understand cross between pinot noir and cinsault that was
developed in South Africa in the 1920s, and as a wine can be all over the board in both flavor and quality? Well, I’ll definitely be going into that in future blogs. For the moment let me settle myself back into being in America again and collect my notes and thoughts for future, less bleary-eyed, blogs. See you in two weeks!

Bill Stobbs, ABC Wine Supervisor

Follow me on Twitter @abcwinebills