James Suckling & the Soul of South African Wine
Chenin and Chardonnay Lead an Evolution
Wine expert and former "Wine Spectator" editor James Suckling reviews South African wines in an article.
Last year, we reviewed 570 South African wines, our most comprehensive tasting of wines from the country to date, and in the end, we better understood why we craved more Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay. They simply expressed a true sense of place and showcased South Africa's ability to produce intense and rich wines with freshness and balance, a unique feeling between New World and Old World styles.
It was a challenging country to taste, with ups and downs in quality. All wines were tasted at our Hong Kong office. Among white wines, Chardonnay dominated, accounting for 30 percent of the white wines tasted, closely followed by Chenin Blanc at 28 percent and Sauvignon Blanc at 20 percent. For red wines, Syrah/Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon each made up 17 percent of the tastings, followed by Pinotage at 11 percent.
However, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc impressed the most. Among the top 10 grape varieties by volume, white wines made from Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc received the highest average scores (91.1 and 90.9 respectively). Of particular note are the Chenin Blancs, which account for a quarter of the top 20 wines and come from leading producers David & Nadia, Arendsig, and Craven. We believe this grape variety has the most potential to strengthen South Africa's identity as a top wine producer.
Chris Mullineux, co-owner of Mullineux Wines in the Swartland region of South Africa's southwestern Cape, said that the country's winemakers have come into their own with Chenin, producing a product that is no longer derived from French models.
“In the 90s, the best Chenins were super oaky; winemakers were trying to make them taste like Burgundy or Vouvray, so they left a little sugar in them because they thought a great Chenin had to be like Vouvray,” said Mullineux. “The wines were interesting, but they weren't really authentic. They weren't South African because they were trying to be something else.”
His Mullineux Chenin Blanc Swartland Granite 2020, a rich, spicy, and full-bodied white wine, offers a fascinating nose of spices, fruits, chamomile, and caramel, aptly highlighting the South African Chenin flair.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, old vines in the region are now producing transparent, concentrated, and uniquely South African wines. “We don't pick overripe grapes, over-ripen the wines, or manipulate them to look like Vouvray or Bordeaux or whatever,” says Mullineux. “We're not trying to make other wines. We're trying to make South African wines, Stellenbosch wines, or Swartland wines.”
The change was partly spurred by the Swartland Revolution, an annual event held from 2010 to 2015 that brought together the region's winemakers for a weekend of tastings and seminars. It established the narrative scene that has since unfolded throughout the country.
Mullineux explained that the stock of old vines in Swartland, which are classified as 35 years or older in the country, is indirectly due to the fact that the region produced bulk wines about 50 years ago. While vineyards were replanted in more modern regions such as Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Franschhoek, the rather “unfashionable” Swartland region left old vines, predominantly white varieties with some Grenache and Cinsault, he said.
According to Callie Louw, winemaker at the Swartland-based winery Porseleinberg, bulk wine remains one of the hurdles on the country's path to greatness. “I think that's one of the problems South Africa still struggles with,” he said. “Once the wine leaves our shores in bulk, the umbilical cord is cut, and it's open to the world and blended with very average wine. And then it's bottled and labeled as Swartland wine and sold for less than 4 Euros a bottle.”
Louw said that the large volume of bulk wine exports “doesn't help to build the South African brand.”
Wines of South Africa, which promotes the country's wine exports, noted that bulk wine accounts for a significant share of exports, making up 62.5 percent of total exports by volume in 2021, but only 23.5 percent by value. Last year, exports were partly boosted by the ban on local alcohol sales due to pandemic restrictions. Sales of packaged wine, which is central to South Africa's quality image, were severely impacted by packaging supply issues but recovered well in 2021, the report states. These accounted for 37.5 percent of exports by volume and 76.5 percent by value. This means that producers only have full quality control over one out of every three bottles sold outside the region.
The United Kingdom and Germany were the two largest export markets in 2021, followed by the United States and the Netherlands. Sales of packaged wine to the United Kingdom increased by 10 percent in volume and 25 percent in value.
Christiaan Coetzee, the winemaker at Uva Mira, located on the slopes of the Helderberg Mountains, agreed that a clear shift away from the bulk wine mentality is needed.
“Because of history and bulk wine, it was always seen as very inexpensive. But that perception needs to change,” said Coetzee, whose Uva Mira Chardonnay Stellenbosch The Single Tree 2017 clearly stood out as our best Chardonnay: a rich, buttery, and layered style with notes of salted caramel and ripe fruits.
Despite the fact that there are still many wineries focusing on mass wine production and lacking sufficient cash flow, Coetzee believes that there has been a greater focus recently on producing specific varieties that elevate the country's wines to a new level. “I think South Africa has done an exceptionally good job in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of improving quality.”
COLLECTIVE EFFORT
Nadia Sadie, co-owner of David & Nadia winery in Swartland, agrees. “We have definitely seen a shift towards specialization rather than generalization, but that will take time,” she said in an email. “The focus on specific grape varieties in specific regions and the collective efforts to utilize them make me confident.”
Contrary to expectations, the pandemic may have helped. While several alcohol bans in 2020 and 2021 hampered sales of high-volume South African wines with shorter shelf lives, producers of wines that benefit from aging were able to focus on their winemaking and on growing export markets.
For David & Nadia, “it was actually very positive… we took the opportunity to consolidate our viticultural and winemaking philosophy,” and decided to discontinue two wines to focus on Chenin Blanc and Grenache.
The David & Nadia Chenin Blanc Swartland Skaliekap Single Vineyard Wine 2020 was our highest-rated Chenin: a compact, tightly wound white wine with fantastic flavor concentration and focus (and also my surprise wine of 2021). The two other single-vineyard Chenins – Platbos 2020 and Hoë-Steen 2020 – were also among the top 10 wines, demonstrating the expressive flavor profile, structure, and minerality of the grape variety.
In addition to Chenin Blanc, Swartland also thrives with Syrah and other Mediterranean grape varieties (with excellent examples from Stellenbosch). The Porseleinberg Swartland 2019, a fantastic, vibrant, and peppery expression of Syrah, was our highest-rated red wine, alongside the Bordeaux blend Vilafonte Paarl Series M 2017.
“The size of the berries and grapes you get here is just completely different,” said Louw, the winemaker of Porseleinberg, about Hilltop Farm. “Syrah is something that likes to grow,” he said. “It produces very large bunches, very large berries. This place is excellent for holding back and producing a little more grip, a little more flavor and tannin.”
Nevertheless, some people still associate South Africa with Pinotage as its most famous grape variety. From our selection (which is by no means representative of the mass market), only 7 percent were Pinotage wines. Although none of them were among the top 20 wines, they achieved an excellent average rating of 90.3 points. We particularly liked the L'Avenir Pinotage Stellenbosch Single Block 02 2018, which has “all the intensity and tension you would expect from a top Pinotage,” as well as wines from Kanonkop and Longridge from Stellenbosch and Meerendal from Cape Town.
Some traditions endure in South Africa. Our top wine was Klein Constantia Vin de Constance Natural Sweet Wine 2018, the legendary sweet wine from Muscat de Frontignan. The 2018 vintage was the best example of this wine James has tasted in his career, a result of fine-tuning methods in the vineyard and winery to produce a more balanced and energetic white wine. He described it as “a sweet wine to drink young to marvel at its intensity and verve, but which can also age for decades.”
This is a testament to Klein Constantia's centuries-old, enduring greatness, now facing a new generation of South African producers determined to assert themselves on the world stage with their Chenins, Chardonnays, and anything else they can produce at the highest quality.
