HOW TIMES have changed since the days when wine lovers regarded Alvi’s Drift as a producer of sweet Muscat – a good one, but little else from the Alfalfa estate and dairy farm. Decades later, they still offer a lovely dessert wine, however the Worcester outfit has become known mainly for good-value reds and whites at around R100 a bottle
Read moreKLEIN KAROO Chenin Blanc of note, from one of the ambassadors for the region Louis Le Sueur van der Riet. Small batch, hand crafted, very limited quantity and one of the Top 3 in Winemag’s 2024 Prescient Report for which 75 expressions of the variety from various parts of the Cape winelands were reviewed. 95 points and selling for less than
Read moreTHERE WERE 75 single-variety South African Chenins submitted for assessment in Winemag’s 2024 Prescient Chenin Blanc Report, with 49 rated 90-plus and three of these regarded as particularly outstanding, worthy of 95 according to the panel’s 100-point scoring system. However, their favourite among the top three, the Best Overall: Flagstone Paradigm Chenin Blanc 2023. This from a producer in the
Read moreSOUTH AFRICA’S Chenin Blanc is such a strong category and getting stronger, pulling ahead of France, with over 40 wines receiving particularly good reviews from the top panels internationally during 2023 to date. Delights from Paarl, Wellington and the Breedekloof, Stellenbosch and the Swartland, Durbanville, Bot River and Franschhoek. One of the country’s ‘signature’ varieties, and highlighted in red are
Read moreFROM JANUARY to August 2023, the top panels of wine experts judged some 700 of South Africa’s finest to be at least high silver or gold medal standard. Of these, around 140 were considered 96 points or higher, Best in Class, Top 10 or 12, worthy of grand gold, platinum or master awards, trophy laureates, competition winners or Wines of
Read moreAS THE 2023 Chenin Safari was winding down, with the final leg of the six-week challenge just around the bend, who would be strutting their stuff at the festival in Franschhoek come Saturday 10 June, one wondered. Some of South Africa’s top Chenin producers put their hands up, including a couple whose wines have such good track records as to
Read moreAMAZINGLY, at the time of writing, it was still not yet sold out. At under R100, the most keenly-priced of the 28 top-scoring Chenin Blancs and Chenin-driven blends in a panel-tasting of 223 South African bottlings reviewed for the international Decanter Magazine. This is one of the bargains of the year, with an interest value that had Masters of Wine
Read moreELGIN is best known for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc… Merlot less so. Chenin Blanc even less so. Yet Elgin Merlot and Chenin are what Cape wine producers excelled with most at the 2022 Global Fine Wine Challenge, hosted in Sydney, with the competing nations including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. In previous years, South Africa
Read moreIT WAS ‘all’ about Alheit at Strauss & Co’s ‘Young Guns’ wine auction. Well, Crystallum got a look-in with their Pinot Noir, but otherwise the attention of the big spenders was focused mainly on the Chenin Blancs of winemaker Chris Alheit – he who is based on the Ridge in Hemel-en-Aarde between Hermanus and Caledon but who sources his grapes
Read moreA NUMBER of things come to mind on perusal of the 2022 Standard Bank Chenin Blanc Top 10 Challenge results. One is how many of the top wines originate in old vineyards, four of which include vines over 50 years old. Another is the depth of quality shown by the leading producers, some of them shining with Chenins other than
Read more“CHENIN BLANC is famously versatile, and it would be wrong to say that any one style prevailed among the top performing wines,” said Winemag editor Christian Eedes in the 2022 Prescient Report, compiled after the assessment of 82 entries from 61 producers in the Cape winelands. “Chenin is South Africa’s most-planted grape, and it is amazing how well it works
Read moreSJOE! The Trophy Wine Show got it so right when they honoured the 2019 Thokozani Cabernet Franc as Discovery of the Show in 2022. Best value gold medallist in South Africa’s premier wine competition, open to wines of all categories, this beauty from the Diemersfontein cellar in Wellington was also top of its class at the National Wine Challenge (SA)
Read more2022 HAD ALREADY got underway when Decanter (UK) announced the names of their Wines of the Year 2021. Experts around the world and on the Decanter team nominated those wines that had impressed them most during the year to October 2021, and these were then re-assessed by a panel comprising three of the publication’s judges: Master of Wine Michelle Cherutti-Kowal,
Read moreSOME AWARDS carry more weight than others, and there’s something to be said for a wine that ticks the boxes for a number of top tasting panels. Over 1500 South African wines were highly rated around the world in 2021, and the following are the white wines among them that received the most glowing reviews of the year – Chardonnay,
Read more2020 IS THE NINTH vintage of the Field Blend from Stark-Condé, the fruit coming from an unusual vineyard on a slope close to the stream at the bottom of the Oude Nektar farm in Jonkershoek Valley, Stellenbosch. The block has various soil types and is planted to a number of different white grape varieties – whereas most blocks of
Read moreDAYS IN ADVANCE of launching the 2022 edition of their book and presenting awards for their choice of Wines and Wineries of the Year, the publishers of Platter’s South African Wine Guide teased followers by divulging the names of their 5 Star laureates – 234 of them, each considered to be ‘Superlative, a South African classic’. However, also disclosed on
Read moreHOW ABOUT THAT! Less than a month after the 2020 Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin in DGB’s Bellingham portfolio was included among South Africa’s Top 10 Challenge winners, it went on to score 95/100 at the International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) in London. The 2020 Donkiesbaai Steen from the Guardian Peak cellar is also a multiple award winner, having received good
Read moreCAN YOU BELIEVE IT! Just after a case of Alheit’s 2017 Radio Lazarus sold for R34 140, i.e. R5690pb, a single bottle of the 2018 vintage sold for R25 036, followed by a bottle of the 2012 for R6449… Whether or not whoever paid over R25K thought he or she was buying one or six bottles of this wine
Read moreCONSISTENCY is a wonderful thing, as is the emergence of new stars and the resurgence of others. It would be surprising should Stellenrust and DeMorgenzon not feature among the Top 10 in the annual Challenge staged by the Chenin Blanc Association of South Africa, sponsored by Standard Bank. Ditto two other Stellenbosch cellars, Kleine Zalze and Ken Forrester –
Read moreAT THE VERY heart of the South African winelands, Stellenbosch was founded in the year 1679, and harking back to its roots, so to speak, ‘Stellenbosch 1679′ is the name of the new tier of wines introduced by one of the most successful co-operative cellars in the district. The Chenin Blanc was first to catch the aficionados’ attention when it
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