Could we be about to produce our first great pinot noir?

The two terms most frequently associated with pinot noir are “heartbreak grape” and “holy grail”. Clearly, producing a great pinot noir is as elusive as finding the long-lost chalice. I’m not sure why this should be the case. All you require is a site such as one of the great appellations of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Once you’ve ticked that box, you still need to be sure of appropriate enough weather conditions. Finally, with the first two items sorted, the last requirement is easy: winemaking competence of the kind widely available in the modern world — and not only in Burgundy.

Pinot noir only becomes tricky when you stray from suitable soils and from the climatic environment in which it performs best. Of course, this is exactly what those who call it “the heartbreak grape” have been doing.

You can probably guess from this list of specs that it is only outside Burgundy that great pinot is a grail quest. No wonder so many winemakers have attempted it. We have yet to produce one in SA. I should add that I have never encountered anything comparable to great Burgundy from Australia, New Zealand, Chile and the US — despite sampling many from the antipodes (but very few from the Americas.)

This doesn’t mean it will never happen: the French have been refining their knowledge and delineating the best sites for more than 500 years. The fact that Cros Parantoux in Vosne Romanée (an admittedly very smart address) was only “discovered” in the past 80 years should illustrate quite how difficult it is to get within grabbing distance of the grail. In SA, we’ve been chipping away at the surface for the past 40 years or so. Relative to the ancestors of the vignerons in the Côte d’Or we are well ahead of the curve.

The Hemel-en-Aarde Valley near Hermanus enjoys the longest track record of modern pinot production in SA. Hannes Storm has been making pinot and chardonnay there for more than two decades. Others — such as the Hamilton Russells — have been at it longer, but Storm has a unique claim to fame: he has three select sites, one in each of the subregions of the valley, and he has been involved in establishing all of them. Up to now, all his vineyards are virus free — and they are moving into an age bracket where the fruit is starting to express its terroir: he is on the cusp of discovering whether any of them will yield a great pinot noir.

The importance of vine age was made clear in a series of vertical tastings he hosted to celebrate his first 10 years as an independent producer. I’m not a fan of his early bottlings — on release they were pretty rather than intriguing. Ten years down the line, they haven’t acquired any resonance. However, from about the 2015 vintage (so when the Vrede and Ignis vineyards were seven years old) some textural charm began to emerge. By the 2017 vintage that quality was confirmed.

With the release of the 2021s, it’s clear that greater detail and definition, together with a hint of succulence, are now features you can expect from all three sites. This means they are also age-worthy — because there is something in the fruit and mouthfeel which has the potential to age, rather than to dry out. With another 20 or 30 vintages still ahead of him, Hannes Storm may become the first SA pinot producer to achieve high-quality wines with real site-related characteristics.

He’s much closer with his Chardonnays, but that’s because chardonnay is a more forgiving variety, more tolerant of warmer conditions, less fragile in the passage from vine to bottle. The 2018s and 2019s are particularly enticing now. The newly released 2022 Vrede and Ridge Chardonnays are worth whatever effort it takes simply to track them down.

If you can, and you find any of the Storm 2021 pinots along the way, don’t hesitate to “add them to the basket”.

HANNES STORM MAY BECOME THE FIRST SA PINOT PRODUCER TO ACHIEVE HIGHQUALITY WINES