Grape varieties cannot change their spots
The world of wine is no more equal than Manhattan, Paris, Mumbai or Johannesburg. Some grapes set out with lesser prospects than others: they can grow in the same environment, enjoying the benefits of the same terroir, land up in the same cellar — even age in the same barrels
— and never stand a chance of a 100-point score.
Consumer prejudice plays a role: if someone offered you a rosé claiming it had a Robert Parker 100-point score you would be dubious — like when your 10-year-old comes back from school and tells you that one of the boys in his class has been given a Ferrari in which to learn to drive on the family farm.
This used to be the fate of chenin blanc — the workhorse grape, great for solid, reliable easy-drinking whites, but nothing destined to tempt the descent of heavenly choirs from celestial spheres. Nowadays, flights of angels hover over the Cape’s old Chenin vineyards, hoping for the first sip of the new season’s nectar.
There’s a long list of cultivars facing the 100-point glass ceiling. Seriously — can a clairette blanche ever be as good as a chardonnay, a carignan as interesting as a cabernet? Between the variety and the judgment, as Eliot might have said, falls the shadow: what makes the idea of a 100-point score normal for some varieties, and outrageous for others?
Almost 40 years ago a civil case in the Western Cape division of the supreme court attempted to unpack the question of what exactly was a “noble cultivar”. Stripped of all the other issues in dispute, the one attribute that achieved consensus was the idea of potential complexity. This in turn was linked to the concept of age-worthiness — the development of secondary and even tertiary characters during the maturation cycle.
In terms of these criteria, cabernet, pinot, chardonnay and Chenin certainly qualify. There’s a hung jury for merlot and a verdict of “no” for sauvignon blanc. It can age, it can even gain a little polish with time in bottle, but it doesn’t transform: it’s not an ugly duckling one day and a graceful swan the next.
This doesn’t mean that it’s not capable of delivering wine that perfectly pairs with certain dishes, or is the most quaffable beverage for an afternoon on the deck. Producers who seek greater complexity than the variety offers are compelled to apply interventionist techniques to add dimension and palate weight. So they work the lees or age the wine in barrels.
But these strategies don’t deliver evolutionary complexity. At best, they add interest and perhaps buff away the brashness.
This being so, it’s hardly reasonable to expect a sauvignon to come to market with a score deep into the 90s: there are obviously gold medal candidates and this would suggest that 95 (and perhaps a little more) is certainly attainable. But 99 or 100 — I think not.
I’ve just reviewed my notes on all the sauvignons sampled (blind) over the past three months (hardly peak season in terms of sauvignon availability).
Out of the 30 or so wines judged, several achieved the 90 point threshold: both the Harry Hartmann’s — Stellenbosch and Elgin, Springfield Life from Stone, Kleine Zalze Family Reserve, Reyneke Vinehugger, Vredenheim. A few went further: Cape Point Reserve 2021, Painted Wolf Lightning 2022, Jordan Outlier 2023 and Iona Elgin Highlands 2023 all scored 91.
This result needs a little unpacking. Three of the wines (Cape Point, Iona and Painted Wolf — which comes from Stanford) are obviously cool climate/maritime (the environment that best suits the variety). The Painted Wolf had been carefully worked, acquiring depth through ageing, and some complexity from a dollop of Sémillon. The Jordan was helped along with a barrelfermented component.
So in the end, there were no surprises. The best sites generally produce the best wines. The problem remains the intrinsic absence of complexity: if you want it, you need to get it from somewhere/something other than the grapes.