Ten years ago, something very exciting happened on the London wine scene. The wine trade crammed into the concrete basement of a Soho record shop to taste an array of wines from a crowd of about 40 hitherto unknown producers from South Africa. These Cape new-wavers had been assembled by Robin Davis and Damon Quinlan of wine retailer Swig. As Quinlan puts it now, “We’d been increasingly aware for 10 years or more that a new breed of (mostly) young winemakers were making incredible wines, often from lesser-known regions and old vines, that hadn’t until then been recognised for their potential.” They are all winemaking superstars now but back in September 2015 most of them were showing their wines to British palates for the first time.
Two more similar tastings were organised, the third one in 2019 being so popular that Quinlan recalls, “The venue wasn’t big enough for everyone that tried to attend — the first, and possibly last time that a UK trade tasting event had had to operate a ‘one out, one in’ door policy!”
A sense of community is a hallmark of South African winemakers, especially prevalent among these new-wave producers. So when wine buyers Mark Dearing of Justerini & Brooks and UK-based Master of Wine Victoria Mason came up with the idea of doing a 10 Years On blind tasting of their 2015s, they were met with enthusiasm from the South Africans — even if not all could provide 10-year-old bottles.
As a result, 16 of us wine professionals spent a day in May in Berry Bros & Rudd’s well-upholstered cellars tasting blind 78 2015s grouped in 12 suitable flights. The aim was to see whether the wines had aged well — rewarding evolution being recognised as the hallmark of quality in a wine, even if today’s wine drinkers tend to seek more immediate pleasures.
The exercise was a success. The great majority of the wines were still in good shape and the 2015 versions of the ones listed here were downright delicious. Such unexpected disappointments as there were, were generally the result of faulty stoppers. Admittedly, wine professionals tend to be pickier about even mild infections of TCA, the compound associated with mouldy corks, than most consumers but the overall failure rate of 30 per cent would be unacceptable today. Fortunately, wine producers are now much more aware of the need for serious quality control of stoppers.
As usual for South African wine, with the caveat that some corks let the wines down, the whites outshone the reds, with those of Swartland, the hot, dry farmland with myriad old vines well north of the traditional wine centre of Stellenbosch, shining particularly brightly. The region was virtually “discovered” by, and became synonymous with, the new-wave wine producers, although it was old-timer Charles Back of Fairview who first saw Swartland’s potential for fine wine.
Chenin Blanc is the country’s most-planted grape variety and features strongly in its unique Old Vine Project certification scheme. The Swartland Chenin flight and that of white blends, in which Swartland Chenin was often a component, were the two most consistent and exciting of the entire day.
There’s a strong argument that in South Africa, there is a much wider range of styles and flavours of Chenin Blanc than there is in its homeland the Loire.
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