Cape crusaders
Christine Austin passes blind judgment on some of the top wines from South Africa after sniffing, swirling and spitting her way through glass after glass at a tasting in London, with just the odd hiccup.
ABLIND tasting is the ultimate wine challenge, and never a comfortable experience, but it is difficult to resist. So that’s how I ended up in a large room in London, along with 39 other people, each of us with nine identical glasses. Arranged in three rows of three, each with a small measure of red wine in them, their appearance was fairly uniform, so no clues there. Nor were there any helpful hints with a sneaky peek at a label. I had five minutes to sniff, swirl and spit my way through the first row of three glasses and decide where they might be from. The only clue was evidenced by the man who had arranged the tasting – South African wine producer Mike Ratcliffe. One of his wines was in each group of three. So the challenge was to spot the South African wine among the others – whatever they were.
Surely that shouldn’t be difficult. After all,
South Africa is well known for its robust, wellflavoured wines that offer great value for money, but are generally not known to challenge some of the world’s finest.
The first flight of three wines was introduced as “Super Seconds”. In wine terms, a “second” is not a derogatory term, indicating wines that come from younger vines and which may be ready for drinking earlier than the main wine. I got that flight wrong. I confused Mike’s wine, Seriously Old Dirt 2019 (£25.49), with the second wine of Ch. Lynch Bages in Pauillac, Echo de Lynch Bages 2019 (£44). I did, however, get pretty close to identifying the third wine in that group, Vasse Felix Filius 2019 (around £14) from Western Australia.
On to the next flight, introduced as “Right Bank”, which inevitably means there is a wine from the right bank of Bordeaux, St Emilion, or maybe Pomerol in the line-up. I am delighted to say I scored a hit in this tasting. Mike’s wine, Vilafonté Series M, 2016 (around £80), with a high proportion of Merlot in the mix, stood out for its dense cassis fruit, silky tannins and long, generous finish. It was against La Jota Merlot from Napa Valley (around £100) and Lassègue 2016 (around £60) from St Emilion, both of which were on form. However, I preferred the Vilafonté for its immediate charm and supple style.
The final threesome of the day was identified as “Left Bank”, which indicates a wine from the Médoc, or at least one that is Cabernet-based. Again I wandered across the hemispheres with this group, mixing up Mike’s Vilafonté Series C, 2017 (£125) with Ch. Margaux 2017 (around £500). However, I did get New Zealand’s Te Mata Coleraine (£61) in the right hemisphere, if not in the right country.
So, apart from demonstrating that I really need to practise my blind tasting technique, what was the point of this tasting?
Essentially it shows that South African wine is coming of age. Of course, there are the £5 to £8 bargains, with bags of fruit and positive flavours, but there is an upper echelon of quality emerging which can stand up against some of the famous wines of the world.
Vilafonté and Seriously Old Dirt have taken 25 years of work from two of the world’s leading wine consultants. Zelma Long and Dr Phil Freese, both from west coast USA, have worked in viticulture (Phil) and winemaking (Zelma) in America and in some seriously important wineries around the world. And at some point, they fell in love with a 40-hectare plot of
ground in South Africa. Partnering with Mike Ratcliffe, who at the time was working with his family winery, Warwick Estate, they set about creating a South African wine that could stand out at world level.
The soil they chose to work with is called Vilafonté, hence the name of the wine, and it is one of the oldest soils in the world, undisturbed by glaciation, volcanoes and sedimentary deposits. This is near the Simonsberg mountains, in Paarl, just north of Stellenbosch. They chose to plant it with a mix of Bordeaux grape varieties, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, and developed a winery nearby. Over the years they developed two wines, Series M, which has a substantial percentage of Merlot and Malbec in the blend, and Series C, which is mainly Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. There is also Seriously
Old Dirt where the grapes are sourced from equally old soils outside the Vilafonté plot.
Over the years the wines have won many awards and accolades including Outstanding Winery of the Year from the International Wine and Spirit Competition 2021. The have also worked their way onto many top wine lists and into retailers around the world. But after a lifetime of work, the husband-and-wife team of Phil and Zelma decided it was time to retire and now Mike Ratcliffe has become the sole owner of Vilafonté. The family winery Warwick has been sold and his focus is solely on these wines.
He recently spent time in Yorkshire making sure that our restaurants and independents have a good stock of his wines, and naturally he has a soft spot for our county. His wife, Pip, comes from Doncaster. So far you can find the delicious, fruit filled Seriously Old Dirt 2020 at the Wine Society (£22) and Waitrose Cellar while Roberts & Speight has the 2018 vintage, which is just hitting its stride.
It is important not to think of this as a “second wine”, more like an introduction to the range. And if you really want to test your guests, you can always line it and a few Vilafonté wines against some top-name wines from around the world.
Vilafonté is not the only wine that is starting to set the pace for top-class drinking from South Africa. There are many other wineries pushing the boundaries towards world-class status. Favourites include Mullineux, Boekenhoutskloof, Delaire Graff, Tokara and many more such as Richard Kershaw’s Clonal Selection Chardonnay. I recently poured the 2018 vintage of Richard’s wine for a very knowledgeable audience, including a Master of Wine, and it was tasted blind. This was placed firmly in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, which was quite gratifying. At least I am not the only one to put seriously good South African wine in the wrong hemisphere when blind tasting.