Friday, 23 February, 2018
Wines of South Africa, Angela Lloyd
Valdiguié. No, I hadn’t heard of this obscure or "rather ordinary" (as Jancis Robinson describes it in Wine Grapes) variety from South-West France until I tasted it recently under the Wilson Foreigner label, a Californian project between David Wilson and South Africa’s Chris Alheit. Valdiguié is most definitely an alternative variety.
As is Grenache Blanc in South Africa, though far from ordinary. The variety covers just 110 hectares of the Cape’s roughly 98 500 ha of wine grapes, producing a handful of varietal wines (it’s increasingly popular in white blends); its potential was highlighted when Chris Williams’s The Foundry Grenache Blanc 2015 was awarded White Wine of the Year in the 2018 Platter guide. A coup, when you consider it was up against the more extensively planted, mainstream whites, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc.
Why did Williams, who also produces a Roussanne (75 ha under vine) and Viognier (822 ha), choose these alternative varieties? ‘On my 1994 visit to the Rhône, I experienced the wines’ warmth with freshness, perfume without sweetness, spice without pronounced earthiness and generosity of flavour from fruit concentration rather than alcohol,’ he enthuses. Noting the similarity of climate and granite outcrops with the Cape, he sought them out as they became available.
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