Category Archives: Blend

Private Vintners Beyers Truter Bordeaux Blend Cabernet Merlot 2000

The Headlines: //

The nose is gargantuan. Like the nasal love child of Andre-the-Giant & Bette Midler. Pungent dried violets, raisins, oak, & cellar must.
On the palate, marginally overbearing port notes, though the acidity has lasted surprisingly well. As for tannins…well, what tannins, right? Soft as silk.
While the wine itself may be a touch past its best, Beyers Truter, when he is “a touch past his best” is still twice the winemaker of many a mortal. And his wines follow suit. If you have some cellared, drink them now.

Quality: 15/20 (purely due to over-aging)//
Price: Unknown //
Value: N/A //
Ponce factor: High//
Occasion: Dinner with your Grandpaps//
Key words: aging, tannins, acidity, Beyers Truter//
Vivino rating //

To fill those awkward silences…

T.A.R.A – the four secret ingredients to wines that age well

Because there is nothing like an ironic acronym to help one remember important details, I’ve developed what I like to call the TARA technique to assessing a wine’s aging potential. It involves the study of the following four elements:
Tannins.
Acidity.
Residual Sugar.
Alcohol.

(If the irony of TARA being used as an acronym to unlock the secrets of graceful aging is lost on you, download the season of Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars).

In the matter of Science vs. Booze…

But why do we need an acronym? Can’t we just check the wine’s “Best Before” date? Alas, no. Because, despite the fact that wine has been drunk for thousands of years by hundreds of very clever, curious, well-funded and highly-motivated individuals, no one has discovered a sure-fire way to predict exactly how long a wine will take to reach its peak. Or reduce itself to vinegar.

“If wine was a poor inner-city neighbourhood, oxygen molecules would be juvenile delinquents looking to break stuff…”

Perhaps part of the reason is because, while it might be possible to punch variables into a complex algebraic equation and decipher a best-before date, it’s more enjoyable to punch a hole in a cork and decipher the location of your nearest glass. So no one really bothers.

Which brings us back to T.A.R.A.

By examining the prevalence of tannins, acidity, residual sugar, and alcohol in a wine, we can at least make snappy-but-educated guesses as to how long a wine may continue to improve…or at least survive. (This info is almost always available under “technical specs” on the winemaker or estate website).

TANNINS:
If wine was a poor inner-city neighbourhood, oxygen molecules would be juvenile delinquents looking to break stuff, and tannins would be those selfless social workers, who keep them out of mischief by teaching them to knit, or play badminton.

Tannins form part of a group of compounds called polyphenols that bond to a whole bunch of other chemicals in weird and wonderful ways. One of the chemicals they like to bond to is oxygen. These delinquent oxygen molecules would otherwise set about wreaking havoc with certain elements in the wine, but INSTEAD, the oxygen hangs out with these phenolic compounds and can, given the right opportunities and a good education, actually become healthy citizens, who contribute to society.

ACIDITY:
While tannins may busy themselves with both each other, and youthful, anarchic oxygen molecules, acidity’s trump card is its ability to make life awfully unpleasant for any bacteria that may cause wine to spoil prematurely.

If tannins are social workers, Acidity is Simon Cowell on X-Factor destroying the self-esteem of young hopeful bacteria everywhere. It does this by shifting the pH of the solution down the scale to a point where bacteria cannot survive.
“In general, a wine should have a pH of somewhere between 3 and 4 to be stable and not allow bacteria to grow and thrive,” Max Meindl, all-round organic chemistry biscuit, and superbly knowledgeable founder of Max on Wine.

RESIDUAL SUGAR:
If bacteria are high schoolers on prom night, sugar is the semi-palsied history teacher monitoring the distance between adolescent bodies on the dance floor. “Always leave room for the Holy Ghost”, says Professor Sugar, totally cutting the grass of every bacterium looking to get a legover before Jocund Day can stand tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
There are various mechanisms by which sugar creates highly unromantic settings for would-be bonking bacteria (they don’t actually bonk), but the only mechanism I’d suggest further reading on at present is that of water activity.
If you want to learn more about how sugar reduces water activity, and therefore stops bacteria from having a right old time, this is as good a link as any to start you off. And here is piece from admirably conscientious Royal Coffee on role of WA in green coffee beans. In case you were looking to branch out.

ALCOHOL:
While the aim of this piece has been to avoid getting technical, I just think it’s cool the way that alcohol deals with bacteria. Alcohol acts like the blob from the 80s horror film “The Blob”. It dissolves lipids in a bacteria’s outer membranes, and then, when the poor little critter starts to bleed out like a doomed high school cheerleader in the back of jalopy, the alcohol rushes into the cell and starts denaturing proteins. Meditate on that one when you’re next hungover, and you’ll realise, “heck, I got off pretty darn lightly with nausea and a headache!”

Cheers!

 

 

AA Badenhorst Family Wines Red Blend 2014

The Headlines: //
Some estates harvest in strict accordance with the correct physiological ripeness. Maverick winemaker Adi Badenhorst prefers “psychological ripeness”; when the timing “just feels right”.
The result is a fresh, elegant Shiraz-fronted red blend with herbal and spice aromatics, fine grapeskin tannins, and exquisitely pronounced laser-like red fruit acidity. At its core, the wine holds juicy red cherries, currants, and red plum fruit, finished off with delicate hints of pepper & cloves. An exquisite example of just how elegant and refined a shiraz blend can be.

Quality: 17/20//
Price: R280 (as of October 2016) //
Value: 2/5 //
Ponce factor: Through the roof//
Occasion: Any time you’re on a date with a vegan//
Key words:  Swartland revolution, minimal intervention //
Vivino rating //

 To fill those awkward silences…

The man, the mystery, the boerewors

Adi Badenhorst is a visual mélange of Old Testament Abrahamic beardy majesty and a skater from Tableview. But one very soon realizes that his conflicting visual cues are simply a premonition of the multiple contradictions that this winemaking legend embodies. When speaking publically, he mixes his penchant for profanity with regular religious references (he makes wine that are like sermons – they “comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable”) and, most noticeably, he is relentlessly self-effacing, while clearly carrying the sort of charisma that has his audiences hanging on his every word. When asked what his wines pair well with, he replies, “Shit, I don’t know. But they taste bloody lekker with boerewors.”
It’s really hard not to like him.

Why Vegans love Adi:

Vegans are, by and large, pretty down on the human race. Humans are all idiots who messed up the planet. Humans drink milk, even though they are most certainly not baby cows. And humans think they’re clever but are almost always doing something that will inevitably lead to their extinction.

So… the big question is:

How does a man, who wakes up at 5am to eat boerewors with fellow Swartland legend Eben Sadie, make wines that are perfectly suited to impress a disdainful vegan? Well, quite simply, by embodying all of those elements into a wine that still manages to pair well with boerewors (just because she’s vegan, doesn’t mean you have to be):

  1. Adi acknowledges that people can be dumb:
    Adi harvests his grapes according to “psychological ripeness”. Instead of running around with a brix meter measuring sugar levels of various grape varieties, he prefers to simply pick a day when it “feels right” and then harvest his grapes. Why? Because the more that humans try fiddle around with a harvest, the greater the chances that they’ll mess it all up. As Porseleinberg’s Callie Louw likes to remind us, “your wine is just a measurement of how well you farmed”. So farm well, and then relax about what comes afterwards.
  2. Irrigation should not be a thing in the Swartland:
    Adi farms with utmost respect for his environment. Not only does he select grape varieties that grow well in the hot dry Swartland (his view is that varieties of Portuguese origin work wonderfully, by and large), but he also refuses to irrigate his vineyards. Why? Because water is scarce, and irrigating your grapes shows a distinct lack of respect for both water as a natural resource, and for certain grapes’ ability to thrive against the odds.
  3. There is always hope for humanity:
    In his own words, Adi was fired from making wine for the iconic Rustenburg Wine Estate for a combination of offenses that included using foul language and making a particularly dodgy rosé. But had that never happened, he wouldn’t have found the magical piece of Swartland land that is Kalmoesfontein – the home of all AA Badenhorst family wines.

So however disdainful one may be of the human race, one has to believe in second chances, and Kalmoesfontein, (and the wines that have brought Adi international acclaim and rave reviews from half of the world’s leading wine critics) is a tangible piece of evidence to support this. While vegans may exhibit a tough exterior, they really just hanker after genuine hope for the future of the planet, and Adi’s wines are a delightful combination of sensory bliss and ideological uncle banana which may or may not set you in good stead for a glorious evening of soul connection with any vegan worth his or her biodynamic salt.

Cheers!

Rust en Vrede Estate Blend 2008

TLDR: Who cares what it costs? This is discernment, dominance, desire, and alliteration. In a bottle. //
Quality: 19/20
Price: Current vintage (2013) R385 – R450 (as of September 2016) //
Value: kinda irrelevant (but compared to other wines in this price bracket…this is stellar value) //
Ponce factor: Stratospheric //
Occasion: Dinner with the firm’s partners //
Key words:  Concours Mondial Bruxelles, Wine Spectator Top 100//
Vivino rating //

Tasting notes:

Blend: roughly 60% Cab Sauv, 30% Shiraz, 10% Merlot
This is like Lincoln, Mandela & Thatcher pressed and distilled into a bottle of pure authority. An enormous wine that is simultaneously imposing and seductive.
Vanguard aromas carry black olives, oak, plums, cassis, and dried violets, leading onto a heavy rounded palate of ripe plums and cassis set against glorious black cherry acidity.
Pepper emerges on the tail, accompanied by gloriously well-integrated tannins and a marachino cherry tail that lingers for days.
If the sheer joy of drinking it is not enough, it has more than its fair share of bragging rights:
1. 93 points from Wine Spectator
2. Position 78 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 for 2012
3. Concour Mondial Bruxelles Gold Medal

To fill those awkward silences…

There are times where the joy of a wine is purely sensory, and then there are those times, where half the joy it to be attained outside the bottle. This wine is the latter.
Not only does it comes from an estate with over 300 years of winemaking history behind it, but Rust en Vrede has been established over the years as one of the most lauded South African estates on the International stage. Not only has their Estate blend garnered silverware from Concours Mondial Bruxelles, and given Rust-en-Vrede their fifth appearance in the esteemed Wine Spectator‘s Top 100 list, but R&V’s Single Vineyard Cab Sauvs & Single Vineyard Syrahs are no strangers to the upper Echelons of the Wine Spectator scoring system, or Platters 5-star status either.
In short, Rust en Vrede did not simply produce a superb wine in their Estate Blend 2008, but have proven time and time again, that they are a truly world class vineyard. They were Nelson Mandela’s choice of wine at his Nobel Peace Prize-giving dinner; they produced the first South African wine to be listed in the Top 100 wines of the world; and the proceeded to repeat that feat for the next four consecutive vintages. I don’t often gush like a Taylor Swift fan on Grammy night, but when I do, it’s usually because of an overwhelming sense of national pride, not unlike this wave, brought on by the genius of a team like the one lead by Jean Engelbrecht and Coenie Snyman.

Don’t even say the word “Rubicon”.

But let’s just pause for a second. Because whenever making claims of this grandeur about a South African wine, there will always be a reprobate, usually just having returned from the can, where he most certainly did not wash his hands, who will say, “Yeah, but nothing can touch the rubicon.”
Now, there are no doubt a number of contenders who could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with this beauty – Groot Constantia’s Gouverneurs Reserve; Costantia Glen’s Five; Warwick’s Trilogy, Rustenburg’s Peter Barlow… But Meerlust’s Rubicon is not one of them.
Admittedly I feel like the lady doth protest too much on this matter (“the lady” being me in this case), but I only do so, because it is almost a certainty that any one of your dinner companions, who realises that he has been properly wet-willied by your magnificently tasteful wine choice will (no doubt) try to invoke the power of this status totem by saying something vulgar like, “Oh, now I wish I’d brought the Rubicon that I left in my gym bag.”
When this happens, don’t get violent, as would be fitting, but rather just suggest that it’s best that he let it rest for a few more years. It is a commonly known fact that Rubicons are universally and perpetually “going to be magnificent in a a decade or so.” They’re life retirement annuities for vampires. Far more valuable when unrealised.

Don’t take my word for it

In contrast to a lot of wine in the R300+ bracket, this wine performs remarkably well in blind tastings, and is superb value despite it being priced where it is. But rather than have to endure any more of me frothing uncontrollably about it, why not slip a bottle into your next red blend blind tasting and see for yourself. To really test value, you’ll want to have wines from a range of price points…and just for good measure, include a Rubicon from the same vintage and decide the matter for yourself 😉