Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville underscored its quest for greater complexity in the farm's Sauvignon Blanc offering by being one of only four South African producers to win a top-scoring Platinum Award at the Decanter World Wine Awards held in London.
The Platinum recognition went to Diemersdal The Journal Sauvignon Blanc 2022, a wine inspired by winemaker-owner Thys Louw's infatuation with the Sauvignon Blanc wine from Sancerre in France.
The Decanter World Wine Awards is deemed one of the world's largest and most important wine competitions. This year 18 250 wines from 57 countries were entered and judged by 236 leading international critics.
The Platinum-awarded The Journal Sauvignon Blanc is the optimal offering in Diemersdal's extensive range of wines made from this variety that has found an ideal home on Diemersdal's cool-climate Durbanville terroir. It is a grape cultivar Louw admits has led him on an eternal quest for greatness in Sauvignon Blanc.
"A wooded Sauvignon Blanc from selected parcels on Diemersdal, The Journal was inspired by my visits to Sancerre, to me the ancestral home of the variety," says Louw. "New and used 600l French oak barrels are used for fermenting and aging the wine for 11 months. Just as I find in the wines from Sancerre terroir, judicious wooding in the right barrels enhances the vivid expression of Sauvignon Blanc growing in the right pockets of soils exposed to an ideal climate. And this, as the record shows, we have on Diemersdal."
As in Sancerre, The Journal Sauvignon Blanc is kept at a cool temperature of between 10°C and 12°C while in barrel, ensuring that wood influence adds structure and complexity of flavour to the wine without overpowering it with over-eager oaky traits. Louw says that when oaked correctly, Sauvignon Blanc is capable of delivering some of the most refined and elegant white wines in the world, and he believes this category has a stellar future for the South African Sauvignon Blanc offering.
"The commercial success of - mostly unwooded - Sauvignon Blanc in being South Africa's top-selling white varietal wine over the past two decades has caused the cultivar's crisp, fresh and easy-drinking accessibility to dominate its identity," says Louw. "Consumers identified this as the primary characteristic of Sauvignon Blanc, and winemakers were happy to make an appealing unwooded, uncomplicated style because the consumer demand for this was a given."
Louw says that Sauvignon Blanc's potential to make some of the world's great white wines, as shown by Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé in France as well as in countries such as Austria, Italy, America and – of course – New Zealand, is now also being increasingly recognised by Cape Sauvignon Blanc producers.
"Skin-fermenting, lees-contact and various wooding regimes are being deployed by more-and-more local Sauvignon Blanc winemakers, the successes of which are gaining in recognition, which Diemersdal is proud to be a part of.
"This more patient and craftmanship approach to the variety unlocks totally different nuances than those found in unwooded Sauvignon Blanc, with palate-weight, minerality and beguiling tertiary characters coming to the fore in this more attentive style of winemaking."
Louw says that the Platinum Award at the Decanter World Wine Awards for Diemersdal's The Journal, as well as the general growing offering of wooded Cape Sauvignon is a portent of greater things to come in this leading category of South African wine.
"I honestly think South Africa is heading into a new era for Sauvignon Blanc," says Louw. "The commercial success of the variety among consumers, as well as the critical acclaim it has accrued over the past 20 years, has provided a solid foundation for what is to come. The Cape has shown an abundance of regions with the terroir suitable for providing a diverse spectrum of quality Sauvignon Blanc fruit, and for this the country has received substantial international recognition – not only from the critics, but the market as well. When New Zealand saw a poor crop in 2021, international buyers clamoured to fill their orders with South African Sauvignon Blanc."
The next chapter in the evolution of Cape Sauvignon Blanc will include the increased focus on stylistic complexity.
"Geographical expression provides an exciting base for our country's Sauvignon Blanc offering to take-off into the next level," says Louw. "With further collaboration between producers and the motivation to create a greater range of sophisticated, complex and stylistically adventurous Sauvignon Blancs, I foresee the country's future offerings from this established and world-famous variety looking very different and far more diverse than currently is the case."