Before our private wine tasting group met
recently the hosts, Dennis Banks and Vanda Davies, promised us “something
different”.
This turned out to be a tasting of port and
other dessert wines. Port is a splendid drink, originating in the Douro valley
of northern Portugal. It is the most famous of all dessert wines, heavy, sweet
and delicious. It is made for
after-dinner sipping.
To sample eight bottles of port and similar
wines before lunch called for a certain fortitude on the part of our tasters,
but we gladly accepted the challenge and sipped cautiously at wines ranging in
alcohol content from 12 per cent to 21 percent (compared with the 10 to 14
percent of most dry wines).
The eight wines were all products of the
Western Cape and they covered a wide variety of styles and flavours. Cape
ports, to use the technically correct title, have improved greatly in general
quality over the last 25 years, and our scoring of the wines tasted “blind” (we
were given descriptions but did not know the order in which they were served)
was consistently high.
Top mark went to a celebrated Cape wine
that is not really a port but a late harvest dessert wine: the Klein Constantia Vin de Constance, 2000
vintage. The Klein Constantia estate has produced this wine over the past 25
years as a kind of tribute to famous Constantia sweet wines that had a big
reputation in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jane Austen wrote in one
of her novels: “Constantia wines have
tremendous healing power on a disappointed heart”.
This 2000 vintage of Vin de Constance, made
from Muscat de Frontignan grapes, has an orange-gold colour, floral aromas and
rich, spicy flavours. Alcohol volume is 14 percent. I can’t give an exact price
for this vintage but it would be expensive, about R500 a bottle, maybe more.
Second place, in our judgment, was shared
by Nuy White Muscadel 1982 and Kanu Kia-Ora 2006. Nuy is a cellar in the
Worcester area and its White Muscadel is regarded as a classic South African
dessert wine. This too was a gold colour, with an aroma of marmalade, cinnamon
and dried peach, with honey flavours on the palate. Alcohol: 17 percent. Good value at about R50 a bottle.
The Kanu winery, named after a mythical
African bird, has a cellar and vineyards at Stellenbosch. The exotically named Kia-Ora has a bouquet of
apricots, pineapple, honey and almonds, and a full, rich flavour. It is made
from chenin blanc and viognier grapes. Alcohol is 11.5 percent. Price: about R90. Kia-ora is a Maori term
from New Zealand. It means “be well”,
informally “hello”.
An unusual item was the Adoro Natural Sweet
Mourvedre, made from a red wine grape that is grown in France and California
but is a rarity in South Africa.
Off-sweet.
The other wines tasted were true Cape
ports, among them: Groot Constantia Vintage Port 1986, a blend of shiraz and
tinta barocca, velvety, fruity; Allesverloren Vintage Port 2008, berry and
spice flavours, from the oldest estate in the Swartland wine district, alcohol
a formidable 21 percent; Boplaas Chocolate Vintage Port 2010, from Calitzdorp,
the name tells you about the dominant flavour; and Boplaas Cape Pink Port,
rose-petal pink with a strawberry aroma.
When the identity of the wines was revealed
at the end I thought I had done rather well by correctly guessing six out of
the eight. However, three of the other tasters had eight out of eight correctly
identified. Quite an achievement. –
Michael Green
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