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Sunday, November 25, 2012

MICHAEL GREEN’S WINE NOTES #268



Adoro, Latin for “adore”, is not a very familiar name among South African wines but its highly distinctive products are now becoming better known.

Adoro is a wine firm at Stellenbosch that does not own vineyards but buys grapes from various regions for vinification in its cellar. Its winemaster, Ian Naude, and viticulturist, Lucas de Kock, argue that this enables them to buy the grapes best suited for their wines.

It is associated in business with the BenRiach whisky distillery in Scotland, in which two South Africans, Geoff Bell and Wayne Kieswetter, have a financial interest.

Adoro was established in 2004 and its latest product is as unusual as the story of the cellar itself. It is called Adoro Natural Sweet Mourvedre, and it is a type of dessert wine that is not fortified with spirit and is not aggressively high-alcohol.

The wine was developed specifically as a complement for cheese, and it goes very well with cheese platters, with dessert, or on its own. Made with mourvedre grapes from the Swartland region north of Cape Town, it is a rather fruity red wine that is not particularly dry or sweet. Alcohol volume is 14 percent. Mourvedre is a red wine grape that has its origins in Spain and France. It is widely grown in Australia and California, but plantings in South Africa are very small.

When our private wine group sampled the Adoro Natural Sweet Mourvedre recently we thought it had a very unusual and pleasant taste, full and rich without being cloying. It comes in an elegant, tall, slim 500 ml bottle. The cellar price is R109 a bottle (phone 083 630 3794). It will soon be available in KZN liquor shops, probably at a slightly higher price.

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I have been acquainted with them for many years, but Welmoed wines are perhaps not as well known as they should be.

The Welmoed cellar is at Stellenbosch, on a farm dating back to 1690. The name means “Courage”, and it stems from the fact that the first owner, a retired mercenary named Jacobus van der Heyden, spent some time in a dungeon in the Cape Town Castle after refusing to retract criticism of the then governor of the Cape, Willem Adriaan van der Stel. His admiring neighbours spoke about his courage, and the Dutch word welmoed was conferred on his farm.

A friend of mine, retired Supreme Court judge John Broome, gave me a bottle of  Welmoed Chenin Blanc 2012 with the comment that it was remarkably good value. It is indeed. He paid R30 for it in a Durban supermarket, and it is a chenin of very good fruity quality, with apple and citrus flavours and a refreshing, crisp character. Alcohol volume is 13,5 percent.

Welmoed is owned by an organisation called The Company of Wine People, which was formed in 2006. It produces a range of ten white and red wines, and they all offer very pleasant drinking at reasonable prices. – Michael Green