Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville put in a commanding performance in this year’s Prescient Sauvignon Blanc Report with three of its wines taking top 10 spots in this competition organised by leading South African wine review website Winemag.co.za.
With the 2023 Prescient Sauvignon Blanc Report attracting 91 entries, Diemersdal secured places on the Top 10 rostrum with its Sauvignon Blanc Reserve 2022 and two wooded wines, namely The Journal 2022 and The Journal 2021.
Diemersdal Reserve Sauvignon Blanc and The Journal 2022 were both rated at 94pts, while The Journal 2021 garnered 93pts.
These wines are not unfamiliar to winning ways in terms of wine competitions. Diemersdal Sauvignon Blanc Reserve 2022 took a Top 10 spot in last year’s FNB Sauvignon Blanc SA Top 10 Competition, while earlier this year The Journal 2022 won a coveted Platinum Award in the Decanter World Wine Awards in London.
Thys Louw, sixth generation owner-winemaker at Diemersdal Estate, says he is especially pleased that two diverse styles of Diemersdal Sauvignon Blanc achieved recognition at the Prescient Report, with both unwooded and wooded wines taking Top 10 places.
“Diemersdal Sauvignon Blanc Reserve is a pure expression of unwooded fruit from our farm’s highest vineyards at 400m above sea-level, while The Journal is made to a more complex Sancerre-style with fermentation and aging done in 600 litre barrels,” says Louw.
Louw says that Diemersdal's commitment to dryland viticulture plays a major role in the consistent quality of the estate's wines. "There is no irrigation on our farm, and never has been – except for lawns and flowers," he says. "Vines live better and are more in-tune with their natural environment when they only have rainfall to rely on for water. For us it is all about the vineyard, and it is the vineyard that makes the Diemersdal Sauvignon Blanc Reserve as well as The Journal."
While The Sauvignon Blanc Reserve is visceral variety expression, the oaked The Journal Sauvignon Blanc is a nod to Louw’s love of the wines of Sancerre in France, the ancestral home of Sauvignon Blanc. 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 and 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 the 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 and greater recognition for Sauvignon Blanc as one of South Africa’s leading wine offerings with an eager international market.