The Rise of Bordeaux Style White Blends in South Africa

Wednesday, 21 February, 2018
Malu Lambert
The South African white blend is a chameleon. Shifting its techniques and components it can be an elusive thing to pin down. There's the blanket term 'Cape White Blend', which is generally used to describe Chenin Blanc led blends made famous in the Swartland. Rounding off these wines are usually varieties such as Viognier, Roussanne, Grenache Blanc and Chardonnay.

These wines have been massively successful ever since Eden Sadie's Palladius 2002 breathed life into the category. Standing in the shadows  of this is the Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon blend, which gets designated as a Bordeaux-style white blend. The style was invented in the Graves sub-region of Bordeuax and the whites have largely been dismissed by the wine drinking community (the exceptions hail from the Graves-Pessac-Leognan region).

Here at home, sauv-sem blends are also under-appreciated - but that's not due to lack of quality, that we have plenty of. This was showcased at a vertical tasting last year at Jardine of Tokara's Director's Reserve White from 2006 to 2015, presented by the winemaker of those vintages, Miles Mossop.

"I think the category will remain a niche market and that's the beauty of it," says Mossop. "These wines are difficult to get your head around if you are introduced to them for the first time, especially in the ultra-premium category. But once people who want to understand great wines better, taste them more and more often, they tend to fall in love with them. However they are never really going to become everyday drinking wines. This category will grow organically, especially once everyone realises how long these wines can mature. They can display amazing complexity and richness with ability to age. As long as the oaking, if any, is done carefully."

Mossop, one of the forerunners of the style on SA soil, and certainly one of the most awarded for it (the Director's Reserve rakes in the accolades), released the first vintage in 2004. He says while travelling he was inspired by Chateau Carbonnieux (from the Pessac-Leognan region) as well as "Andre van Rensburg's [of Vergelegen] early barrel-fermented sauvignon blanc which later included semillon, which then went on to be dominated by semillon.

"I also tasted many terrible barrel-fermented blends of this style - which inspired me to try ad get this right."

 

Getting it right of course has a lot to do with where the grapes are grown. For Tokara the Sauvignon Blanc is planted at the highest - and coolest - point of the property. The soils are less rich and are naturally cropped making for a lower yield. The canopy allows for more sunlight, which Miles explains is important for this style of wine. "We don't want green flavours. The site also gives fruit with great acidity, which is crucial to the type of wine we want to make." The Semillon is planted just below the Sauvignon block on a slightly warmer southwest slope.

Site is everything when it comes to making a successful sauv-sem blend. Heavy-handed winemaking techniques can often turn these wines dull and lifeless. The key lies in capturing the purity of fruit and supporting this with oak and lees work. This is something winemaker Trizanne Barnard knows well and sources grapes for her Reserve range from vineyards in Elim, a coastal hamlet battered by sea winds on the southernmost tip of Africa. Currently on the  2016 vintage of the Trizanne Signature Wines 'Reserve Sauvignon Blanc/Semillin' she states that the Elim ward has a 'very cool ripening season, ideal for Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon with diverse soils ranging from sandstone, to cold laterite and broken shale, ensuring low yields and imparting minerality, depth and structure to the wines of this area'.

Carving up the coast to Cape Point Vineyards on the southern peninsula, the vineyards here are planted with just Sauvignon and Semillon. The grapes come together in a few wines of varying percentages, but the most famous of these is the Isliedh (currently on the 2016 vintage). A blend of 84% Sauvignon Blanc and 16% Semillon, the Semillon portion was fermented in clay amphorae.

Understanding the variances of vintage is important when deciding on what percentages to blend. According to winemaker Riandri Visser: "Semillon becomes quite rich with age, which is why I prefer to use more Semillon in cooler vintages to add body and texture. In warm vintages I prefer to add less Semillon, beacuse I would like to highlight the Sauvignon Blanc acidity. If you understand the growing season and you know your vineyard, you know what needs to happen in the cellar to be able to showcase the vintage."

The best wines in this category invariably comes from maritime vineyards or those with high altitudes, making it no surprise that producers in areas such as Constantia, Darling, Durbanville, Elgin and Elim are leading the pack in this category.

In Constantia, winemaker Justin van Wyk of Constantia Glen says that this style of wine 'is less about the pyrazines, racy aromatics and acidity and more about the elegance, restraint and balance.'

"People who don't enjoy payrazines in wine also typically don't enjoy the acid that goes with it. These blends have the mellowing effect of the Semillon anf the slightly warmer barrel fermentation than that of the typical stainless steel making of Sauvignon Blanc, which creates more glycerol, body and roundness."

The Constantia Glen TWO 2017 has 32% of Semillon in the blend. "Our aim is to create a wine that is textured and complex and use a variety of vessels, all 600L in size, but they range from new French oak through to 8th fill, as well as small components of Austrian and acacia oak. Most recently we have also started using clay amphorae. The idea is to add texture and mouthfeel with slightly oxidative winemaking, but not to overwhelm the wine with oak," says van Wyk expounding on his winemaking process. "Since Semillon is a variety with a much lower acidity, we depend on the acidity of the Sauvignon to carry the wine, while the Semillon provides rounded texture, mouthfeel and fantastic ageing potential."

Peter-Allan Finlayson of Gabriëlskloof up on a hill in Botrivier has added another, more historical, slant the sauv-sem blend. Gabriëlskloof has just released the Magdalena (2016) as part of 'The Landscape Series'.

"The idea with the Magdalena is to make an authentically South African version of the Bordeaux white blend," says the winemaker. "To do this we use our top Sauvignon Blanc vineyard, but we also bought in 32-year-old Franschhoek Semillon. Using the older vine Semillon gives us a piece of the puzzle that is an important part of the South African wine history and also adds interesting textural components that younger vines and newer clones don't give. Winemaking wise, the only addition we make is a little sulphur before bottling. We try to keep the process very simple by pressing the juice into old barrels and clay amphorae and allowing for a wild yeast fermentation."

On how to drive the category forward Finlayson elaborates: "Winemakers approach this blend with serious intentions and hence make serious wines that need time in the bottle to develop. I don't think the strategy should be to change this approach, but rather try and educate wine drinkers on how these blends age and the incredible quality they offer when they have been allowed to mature".