HURRY UP AND WAIT

ust as slaving over the stove for hours on a daily basis is no longer the norm, so too is it unusual for people to age their wines in a cellar for several years.

“I blame fast food and the internet for our need to consume everything immediately,” says Stellenzicht winemaker Guy Webber, whose response last year to “the digital world that increasingly dominates our lives” was to launch RED ESCape, an accessible blend of shiraz and pinotage aimed at giving people “an appetising break from computer, tablet or phone”.

Modern wine-growing techniques, including green harvesting (getting rid of unripe grapes ahead of the actual harvest to ensure more even ripeness and softer tannins) as well as better cellar hygiene and more careful filtering, have made it possible to produce “plush and juicy” wines such as RED ESCape (which has apparently gone “viral” at under R60 a bottle).

In fact, even age-worthy red wines are easier, nicer and more rewarding to drink young than they would have been a couple of decades ago.

“But you still get so much more out of them if you do wait,” argues Webber, who is determined not to release Stellenzicht’s flagships from the cellar until they are at least five years old.

His famous single-vineyard Plum Pudding Hill Syrah 2009, for example, is only being released now (R180/bottle), while its 2007 predecessor only left the cellar in 2014 — the fact that it very quickly sold out proving that there is a thirst for more mature wines (as long as most maturing is done prior to purchase). Not that the 2009 tastes “mature”. On the contrary, it’s packed with ripe black plum and berry fruit, with hints of clove and white pepper hinting at even greater complexity to come.