Grape expectations - Cape Wines - Lifestyle Features

Date: 28/07/2002
Author: Cape Wines - Neil Pendock

Neil Pendock looks at 350 years of Cape wine-making and detects a new spirit of optimism.

In the great scheme of things, Africa got off lightly with the arrival of the Dutch at the Cape three-and-a-half centuries ago. When Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, the locals met him bearing gifts of tobacco and fruit which he reciprocated with syphilis and other diseases.

The colonising of North America had its moments, as any remaining buffalo or member of the "first nations" will tell you, while the first fleet of convicts which settled Australia would have landed in the Cape, but for the strenuous efforts of the citizens of Cape Town.

The Dutch came initially as hoteliers and would-be proprietors of a "Tavern of the Seas" . Being of good farming stock the burghers came well prepared and immediately planted crops: wheat for bread, barley for beer, and vines for wine, which makes the SA wine industry one of the oldest in the New World.

Cape wine has pretty much hidden its light under a bushel ever since, leaving the field open to Johnny-come-latelys in California and Australia to develop a thriving export industry. Publicity is part of the problem. In the World Atlas of Wine, the latest magnum opus to spill from the keyboards of the Torvill and Dean of UK wine, Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson, SA gets a four-page treatment as compared to 100 for France, 26 for the US and 14 for Australia.

Until the Platters (Erica and John of wine guide fame) do a reverse Greta Garbo on the local industry in the form of a long-awaited book on African wine to be published later this year, the best bet for literary oenophiles is to borrow an out-of-print copy of 300 Years of Cape Wine, written by C Louis Leipoldt and published back in 1952.

But while Leipoldt is fine for Huguenots and colonial exports, he had left the stage before the wine revolution of the 1960s that saw SA change from being a nation of brandy drinkers to enthusiastic consumers of Tassenberg and Lieberstein, which in its day was the biggest-selling wine brand in the world. South Africa in the 1960s went through an incredible 28 million litres of the stuff a year and it comprised a third of the entire local market.

One look at the many hundreds of labels available on the shelves of an average bottle store will show you just how much the industry has changed.

One of the most obvious changes is the reinvention of the Nederburg Auction. Held for the first time in 1975 and opened by the then Minister of Agriculture Hendrik Schoeman four years in a row, after which that unlikely oenophile and Minister of Police and Prisons, Jimmy Kruger, took over, sanctions-busting was an unarticulated subplot.

This year's auction saw a definite attempt by corporate sponsor Distell to get the event to "wash its face". On the revenue side, charges for producers offering lots were stiffly upped from the previous 18% of hammer price to 24%, while costs were trimmed back: guest numbers were well down and for the first time in memory, crayfish tails did not feature at lunch.

It's unusual to hold a wine tasting in a sauna. In spite of the 30+ degree temperatures inside the Pinotage Pavilion at Nederburg in April, Rust en Vrede owner Jean Engelbrecht was in a good mood. The occasion was Cape Wine 2002, the industry's biannual taste-and-tell which invited foreign wine writers and buyers to the Cape .

The reason for Engelbrecht's good humour was his photo appearing in Wine Spectator, the leading US wine publication. Featured in that magazine's list of the top 100 wines for two years in a row, R&V is a firm favourite with the US wine media, although SA exports per se have yet to find favour with the American consumer, with the US taking a paltry 2% of SA exports.

But that may all be about to change. Perhaps the most influential foreign journalist at Cape Wine 2002 was Frank Prial from the New York Times. Under the sunny headline: "a bright note from SA", Prial summed up his two weeks at the southernmost tip:

SA Sauvignon Blanc came in for rave reviews: "the Cape currently produces some of the finest Sauvignon Blancs in the world", which was yet another nail in the credibility coffin of those local judges who trashed the 2001 vintage at several high-profile tastings last year. André van Rensburg's Vergelegen Reserve was Prial's favourite, judging by his comment, "a few producers in the Loire Valley might compete with this wine, but no one else - certainly not in California", while Neil Ellis and Durbanville Hills also came in for praise.

Local hero Pinotage and SA's most common varietal Chenin were sideswiped, with Prial reporting that wine makers are furiously trying to "develop a new, more attractive Pinotage-style wine". Chenin must "take a back seat" to Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, although the wines of Ken Forrester and Morgenhof "just might bring some respectability and a bit of lustre to poor Chenin Blanc".

The spotlight was turned on Abri Brüwer's Springfield Methode Ancienne Chardonnay with the comment, "if ever there was a white wine worthy of the 'cult' designation, this is it", while the Chardonnays of Danie de Wet (in particular the d'Honneur brand) Rustenberg (Five Soldiers) Hamilton Russell, Warwick and Delaire all got the nod.

Cap Classique was "an unexpected treat" with Graham Beck and Cabrière Estate a feature. "None of these wines are going to knock Krug's Clos du Mesnil off its well-deserved pedestal, but they will give lots of lesser Champagnes serious competition."

Overall, the industry got a hearty pat on the back for its "remarkable optimism about the future" in spite of the problems of "serious unemployment" and a "painfully weak currency". Prial detected "a new spirit, an eagerness to meet the world, not with defiance and resentment but with the pride that comes from building a new nation", and noted that this
spirit is maximised in the winelands. Judging by his article, Cape wine is being welcomed back by the rest of the world with open arms.