Blind tastings show Cape wines hold their own in global arena
Two blind tastings held a few days apart in late January served to reveal the extraordinary versatility of the Cape winelands. The one — conducted at Journey’s End — focused on several red and white wine categories. The second was hosted in Johannesburg by Wines of Elgin and was an exercise dealing solely with chardonnay.
The Journey’s End property lies at the eastern side of Somerset West, adjacent to Sir Lowry’s Village on the one side and Vergelegen on the other. As the crow flies, it’s perhaps 5km from False Bay, with southeastfacing vineyards running up the Schaapenberg.
It was bought in the mid1990s by the UK-based Gabb family — whose claim to fame was a wine range named “Kumala”, which had become the Cape’s first international high-volume brand (and in due course the first of many multinational takeovers). In the halcyon days that followed the end of isolation, Kumala was largely responsible for SA becoming the number four wine supplier to the UK.
I was never in much doubt about the potential of Journey’s End. Many years ago, I tasted the range for the Platter Guide and proposed the chardonnay for a Five Star award — which it won. This was a real achievement, in those days there were fewer than 40 such accolades annually.
The Gabbs live in the UK and are involved in the hospitality business there. Unsurprisingly, most of what is produced in their Somerset West cellar is exported. As a result, and despite its location adjacent to some of the Cape’s most prestigious properties, Journey’s End is largely unknown in our market.
Rollo Gabb is obviously keen to rectify this. A high percentage of the country’s best wine properties are foreign owned, and almost all of them enjoy a real presence here.
Putting together a series of tastings to show how his wines perform against well-known, high-end wines in the same categories is clearly part of a strategy to fix this.
The exercise involved four flights — two whites and two reds. Each included a Journey’s End current release, several benchmark Cape wines and, in three of the four flights, a suitable European wine.
The results were pretty convincing: I gave the estate’s Ad Infinitum Sauvignon my highest score, and its Destination chardonnay and the Cape Doctor Bordeaux blend my second-highest scores in their respective classes. Only the Syrah disappointed. Since the line-ups included classed growth Bordeaux and two of the Cape’s most celebrated cabernet-based reds, as well as Grand Cru white Burgundy and a Jean Louis Chave Hermitage, no-one could argue that these were results achieved on handicap.
The same outcome — Cape wines more than holding their own in a blind tasting with international benchmarks — was repeated at the Wines of Elgin tasting two days later. There was an additional — and potentially more important — factor at play here: the Elgin wines were more evidently products of cool climate sites than the burgundies against which they had been pitched. It’s certainly not unimaginable that in time Elgin could rival the
French home base of pinot and chardonnay.
There’s often talk about the effect of global warming on even the most celebrated appellations of the Cote d’Or. By way of example, here’s Julia Harding MW, writing for JancisRobinson.com. “The white wines of Burgundy may be more under threat from global competitors. This seemed even more pointed in a riper vintage such as 2022 where some whites lack the precision and mineral edge that has traditionally distinguished them.”
There were several standout wines at the Elgin tasting. Richard Kershaw’s Clonal Selection 2020 edged out a delicious Beaune Greves 1er Cru 2020, as well as a very fine Paul Cluver Estate chardonnay 2020 — class winner at the 2022 Trophy Wine Show. The Oak Valley Groenlandberg 2022 came within a point of the topscoring wines. Given its ageing potential, it’s certainly worth seeking out. While you’re out there shopping, add the Highlands Road 2020 and the Boschendal Elgin 2020 to your trolley.