New wave wines to be swept away by
The so-called new wave of Cape wine is a lot less like Hokusai’s iconic image and much more like a series of ripples across a wind-swept lake. For a start, it’s not a single movement driven by a common intellectual force or aesthetic vision.
Nor are its exponents united in terms of age and experience. Some have been in the wine industry for many years, during which time they have assembled a following which permits them to alter course. Others have just set out on their own and are trying to carve out a niche, the boundaries of which are not yet clear.
This absence of homogeneity was evident at a tasting organised by a specialist distributor whose portfolio, while not mainstream, has virtually no other unifying feature except that most of the producers are identified with this “new wave”. It includes high-end fizz producer La Lude representing the craft end of Cap Classique. It is also home to Christopher Keet (Jnr), whose Weather Report boutique brand makes a focus of cabernet franc. In the same line-up there were wines from Reenen Borman (Boschkloof), Rianie Strydom (Strydom Family Wines), Lucinda Heyns (Illiminis) and Attie Louw (Opstal).
This had me thinking about other producers I think of as innovators — such as Bruce Jack — who are anything but new in the industry. In fact, Jack and Strydom both count as oldtimers; both had previous and important industry incarnations. Jack famously created Flagstone, which he sold to Accolade, at the time the world’s biggest wine producer. Strydom’s most notable earlier platform was Haskell Vineyards in Stellenbosch. If one of the identifiers of new wave is elegance and refinement, few wines epitomise this better than Jack’s Ghost in the Machine Syrah, which is perfumed, elegant, often elusive, yet always haunting.
The same commitment to purity and fragrance is to be found in Strydom’s 2023 cinsaut, a wine which captures the nuanced spice inherent in the cultivar but often lost as winemakers seek to build a more structured and muscular style.
Heyns handles cinsaut in a similar way — fragrant and refined (though not evanescent). The fruit for her 2023 comes from a 50-year-old vineyard in Darling. Despite the received wisdom which says that old vines concentrate the fruit, she has managed to catch the essence of the variety without overdoing it.
Her brand has been around for almost 10 years. The volumes are tiny but the wines — as the name (which is Latin for “clarity”) suggests — share a purity and linearity which distinguishes them from the merely pretty. Perhaps try her 2023 pinotage, the structure and mouthfeel of which is much closer to young pinot than the bigger, brasher styles more beloved by their producers than by the market as a whole.
It’s also worth sampling what Borman is conjuring up at Boschkloof, especially with syrah (his Epilogue has come to be regarded as something of a new wave classic). His 2021 standard release sells for less than R300 and delivers an aromatic spice compote which is quite exotic in its layering. The Epilogue is obviously bigger — this is what the punters expect for roughly three times the price.
Louw at Opstal rightly enjoys something of a reputation for his Carl Everson chenins. At the tasting I discovered his finely assembled Cape blend — fragrant, almost juicy and very easy drinking. His 2022 sémillon is imbued with promise, but it needs time in bottle for the hallmark waxy notes to evolve.
Finally, there’s Le Lude, the boutique size Franschhoek-based fizz producer which has pretty much redefined the upper end of the cap classique market. The cellar’s first bottlings go back to 2012, so it’s something of a treat to discover that there are still deluxe cuvées available which date from the 2013 vintage. The more affordable nonvintage delivers beautiful intensity, while the brut vintage 2015 manages perfectly the knife-edge of freshness with an applecrumble richness on the palate.