The Vancouver International Wine Festival is a wonderful opportunity to meet the principals of many wineries and discuss the wine, how they are made, how they mature, and new directions for the wineries. I gritted my teeth, took 2 days off from the office, giving my secretary instructions to advise clients trying to find me that I was on a study session, and headed out to study for all I was worth. There are more than 500 wineries in South Africa today, and I was keen to add some new and interesting finds to my list of old stand-bys.
This year the featured region was South Africa, and for me, the first event was a 9 AM tasting of Cape wines with a seminar on the regional variations and differences. Prices where indicated are Canadian dollars.
2004 Ken Forrester Petit Chenin – soft sweet melon nose didn’t make one expect the very dry high acidity wine you experienced on palate. This wine showed a mineral aspect that was much more Loire than California. The only give-away in a blind tasting would be that it was richer in the middle than a typical French Chenin, yet with none of the awkwardness of many Californian examples. $20
2004 Springfield ‘Life from Stone’ Sauvignon Blanc – OK, get over the New Age sort of name, and you find another great white wine – no cat’s around this one, but a gooseberry and flint nose, silky smooth in the middle, finishing crisply. I HAD to pick up some of this for future blind tastings, to see if people would be fooled into thinking it a well made Sancerre. The vineyard for this wine is composed of 75% quartz, and they had to learn how to plant – ending up with jack-hammers to punch enough of a hole in the stony soil to lodge the young vines. They harvest 3 times, – to get a green component, then for body, and finally for ripe aromas and sugar, then blend the 3 batches together. They say that they get a better result than simply harvesting all of the fruit at the same time.
2002 Stellenzicht Semillon Reserve – this was also impressive, though at about $38 a bit lower on the QPR totem pole. Given full malolactic fermentation and lots of new oak, it ends up showing a soft oily nose, was soft on the palate, full flavoured with good length and significantly lower in acidity than the previous wines.
2004 Bellingham Maverick Viognier – a relatively new varietal in SA. Mango and lime nose, and a pretty tasty wine with lots of flavour that lingered. They soak on the skins to add character and although this wine has some RS (about 8 gm/l) it comes across as only very slightly soft rather than sweet.
2000 KWV Cathedral Cellars Triptych – into the reds, with a blend of 36% cab, 24% merlot, and 40% shiraz.. This wine was purple, with a chalky nose. Sweet entry, with lots of immediately apparent oak, well balanced. It drinks well now. $25
2003 Winery of Good Hope Vinum Cabernet – fairly intense warm ripe fruit nose, soft tannins, good structure and acidity – needs some time. I suggested that they advertise by selling T shirts saying “I’m a WOGH†but for some reason they didn’t think it would be a good idea.
2002 Graham Beck Old Road Pinotage – this is their top end wine, made in relatively small amounts (800 cases) from an ‘old vines’ vineyard (1963). Dark, with an earthy, smoky nose, a hint of mint on palate, the wine still tough and feisty, needing time, and very dry at the end. I am not a big fan of this grape, an ill-conceived cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, but this was a decent example.
2001 Vergelegen Flagship Red – 76% cab sauv, 20% merlot, 4% cab franc. A capsicum nose, good balance with a nice sweetness in midpalate, medium length and tasty now and for the next 5 years or so.
2001 Delheim Grand Reserve – Delheim makes a lot of average quality wines, but their reserve wine has always been excellent value. I worked my way through a case of the excellent 1990, only to find that it was just hitting stride as I finished it off at about 10 years of age. The first one was made in 1981. This one is 98% cab sauv, and 2% merlot. Plum and vanilla nose, the nose a bit reticent (better when I retasted later in the open tasting sessions) high initial acidity masks the moderate levels of tannin. Good wine, needs time. I went out and grabbed a few of these, with a resolution not to drink them too soon.
2002 Fairview Jakkalsfontein Shiraz – killer little wine from the people that make Goats Do Roam (they’ve added a Goats Do Roam in Villages to their line recently). Very dark wine with intense warm shiraz nose, tons of fruit and extract, very good but needs time. Great fun to bring this to an Australian Shiraz tasting some day. They crop at 3.5 tons per acre, use 18 months o f new French oak, and their winemaker has worked at Chapoutier, so Oz probably wasn’t what they were specifically aiming at. Like some of the Chilean examples, this lands somewhere between the Rhone and Australia in terms of style.