MICHAEL GREEN’S WINE NOTES #212

Distinguished Warwick Trilogy and screwtops make better closure than corks.

For the past 25 years the Warwick estate at Stellenbosch has been one of the Cape’s major producers of top-quality red wines, its flagship being the distinguished Warwick Trilogy, which is the classic Bordeaux blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot.

This consistently fine wine, first bottled in 1986, is in the news again: it features, at number 46, in the international Top 100 wine list for 2009 compiled by the American magazine Wine Spectator. It scored 93 points out of 100, the joint highest score ever for a South African Bordeaux blend.

Wine Spectator, which is said to be the world’s leading wine magazine, has four criteria for choosing its Top 100: quality, volume, price and an “X-factor” which it defines as “excitement, the ability to stimulate and surprise …a wine that is different”.

Warwick Trilogy has also achieved success in another American magazine, Wine Enthusiast, which placed it fifth in its Top 100 wines in 2007, the highest position ever given to a South African wine.

Trilogy has a strong, luscious bouquet and a taste of ripe prunes, raspberry and blackberry, with hints of chocolate and nuts. It is available in South Africa and retails at about R180 a bottle

The Warwick estate, on the slopes of the Simonsberg above Stellenbosch, was given its name century ago. After the Anglo-Boer war Colonel Alexander Gordon of the Warwickshire regiment bought the farm and named it Warwick as a tribute to his regiment.

It was bought in 1964 by Stan and Norma Ratcliffe, who planted cabernet sauvignon vines and sold the grapes to wholesalers and other wineries. Eventually the Ratcliffes built a cellar and began making their own wine in 1984.

Today the farm is still a family affair. Stan and Norma’s son Mike, a graduate of wine marketing at Adelaide University, is managing director of the winery and his sister Jenny, a Cape Wine Master, is the farm’s brand ambassador in Gauteng.

Warwick produces seven whites, five reds and two whites. One of the reds, a 100 percent cabernet sauvignon wine, is called The First Lady after Norma Ratcliffe. Another, a red blend, is called Three Cape Ladies, after Norma, her daughter Jenny and her grand-daughter Eve Ratcliffe.

The Ratcliffes have sponsored young black winemakers on exchange programmes to France and the United States and have helped the estate’s workers to own their homes.

******************* ***************** ***************

The cool Elgin area is known for its white wines, and one of the estates there, Oak Valley, has produced a quality blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon which it calls OV 2007.

This wine retails at about R120 a bottle, and I was interested to see that it uses a screwcap closure, as does the Oak Valley sauvignon blanc 2008, which sells at about R75.

There is plenty of evidence that screwtops make a better closure than corks, especially for white wines that are not made for many years of maturation. Nevertheless there still does seem to be some prejudice against them among traditionalists who think that screwtops are used for cheap wines and corks for expensive wines.

The use of screwtops for Oak Valley wines of this price and quality should do something to dispel that wrong thinking. – Michael Green