MICHAEL GREEN’S WINE NOTES #261

Seven red wines, including some unusual items, were presented by Dennis Banks and Vanda Davies when our private tasting group met at their home at Durban North.

The tasting was “blind” - we had information about the wines but did not know the order in which they were poured - and identification was difficult. The wines were all of good quality, and most of them were unfamiliar to us.

There were two examples of cabernet sauvignon, two of shiraz, and three of blended wines.

Have you ever heard of a wine called Euphrosyne, or one called The Tin Mine? Well, we tasted them and liked them very much. In fact,

The Tin Mine red was placed first in our scoring. It comes from the Zevenwacht estate at Stellenbosch and is a shiraz-dominated blend that includes grenache and a cultivar called primitivo, which comes from southern Italy and is much the same as the zinfandel grape widely grown in California. We had the 2010 vintage. The wine is a dark colour, fruity and with strong concentrated flavours. Retail price: about R55.

Euphrosyne was one of the Three Graces in Greek mythology, a goddess representing beauty, laughter and happiness. It is an appropriate name for a wine, even if it is a bit of a mouthful (as indeed is the wine itself).

The wine is produced by a cellar at Stellenbosch called Women in Wine. This is a company that was formed in 2005 by a group of 20 professional black women (the term black is used here in its broad sense).

The main mover in this enterprise has been Beverly Farmer (another appropriate name), who took a degree at Stellenbosch University, worked in communications for the KWV, and formed the Women in Wine company with the help of other women with links to the Cape winelands. The object is to make good wine and to empower women, especially those working in the Cape wine industry, and the company now produces six different wines: cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinotage rosé, and two blends, cabernet/shiraz and chardonnay/chenin blanc.

We tasted its Euphrosyne Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2008. It turned out to be a full-bodied wine with plum flavours and a touch of mint, with some tannin still showing. Very drinkable now, but it seemed to be the kind of wine that would mature further in the bottle over the next few years. I thought it was a credit to a very new producer. Price: about R90.

Thembi is another unfamiliar name. Thembi and Co. is based at Paarl and is owned by another woman entrepreneur, Thembi Tobie. The cellar was established only four years ago and is another empowerment initiative. We tried the 2011 vintage of Shembi Shiraz. It had the peppery, spicy characteristics of shiraz and was a generally attractive wine. Price: R50.

Boland Kelder of Paarl, one of the biggest producers in the Western Cape, has a “strategic partnership” with both these empowerment initiatives, Thembi and Women in Wine, and has given them assistance as part of its social responsibility programme.

Vondeling is a winery at Paarl owned by a British financial services company. It produced its first wines from its own grapes seven years ago and there are now 11 Vondeling labels. We sampled the Vondeling Baldrick Shiraz of 2011. We felt it was rather a subtle wine with a purple colour, a floral aroma and a range of fruity flavours. This wine is aimed, partly anyway, at the wine enthusiasts of the London gastro pub movement, which is why it was named Baldrick, after a popular character in the Black Adder television series. It should do well in South Africa, too. Price: R50.

One cabernet and two blended reds with far better known names completed our tasting list.

The First Lady Cabernet Sauvignon from the Warwick estate at Stellenbosch is named for Norma Ratcliffe. Her late husband Stan Ratcliffe bought the Warwick farm nearly 50 years ago, and she herself became one of the Cape’s most distinguished winemakers.

We tasted the 2010 vintage of The First Lady, a beautiful, opulent, classy wine which was much admired by our group. Price: R60. The blended reds were Guardian Peak Frontier 2010, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz and merlot, a complex, ripe, rich wine from Stellenbosch, R60; and Kaapzicht Bin 3, 2009, also from Stellenbosch, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and pinotage, top quality, like the others.

All these wines had a high alcohol content, 14 percent or more. They are to be sipped, not gulped down. – Michael Green