Beyond the £10 supermarket bottle and far, far beyond the offerings from the 1990s, there’s a world of Pinotage to explore and some very fine examples indeed. Chat to a group of South African winemakers, as I did recently, and you’ll hear that the subject of Pinotage comes with very strong opinions – and emotions. Some say it should be dark and robust; some say it should be light and bright. Whatever the expression, one gets the sense that Pinotage is – at the heart of it all – about pride.
The late Michael Broadbent MW is credited with introducing the "burnt rubber" description to the masses after a visit to South Africa around 30 years ago but where did this smoky, acetone-like note come from? "When you taste a bad Pinotage, please know it’s not the variety. It’s either the site or the winemaking," says Abrie Beeslaar, winemaker at Kanonkop.
Pinotage was planted in a lot of unsuitable places when riding the 1990s red wine-making wave. As a crossing of Cinsault and Pinot Noir, it thrives in cooler climes, rather than in the heat. Winemakers who were new to making red wine (white grapes used to rule the Cape) treated Pinotage like Cabernet Sauvignon and, as well as growing it on inappropriate sites, they over-extracted the grapes and leaned heavily on oak. Team those things with a warm fermentation, which stressed the yeast, and you ended up with an aroma evocative of car tyres skidding and spinning on sun-baked tarmac.
"Twenty years ago, we didn’t actually know how to make Pinotage; we didn’t know how to cultivate it," says Debbie Thompson, winemaker at Le Grand Domaine. "You were getting flavours of banana," she says with a scrunched-up nose. "Poor Pinotage being exported was – and is – really bad for South Africa."
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