Tag Archives: premium

KWV Mentors Chardonnay 2013

TLDR: A definitive South African Chardonnay that MUST be experienced by any SA wine lover //
Quality: 18/20 //
Price: R175 – R220 (as of Sept 2016) //
Value: 4/5 //
Ponce factor: High //
Occasion: Sitting on your own, far away from anyone who might guilt you into sharing this //
Key words:  Batonnage, Triton Winemaker Awards//
Vivino rating //

Tasting notes:

This wine is not only the result of superbly selected Elgin fruit, but also impeccably executed winemaking. She spends 9 months in oak & 100 days on its lees, with regular batonnage. The result is yet ANOTHER Triton Express Winemaker’s Choice Diamond Award (The Mentors Chardonnay has garnered this award for two out of their last three vintages).
As for the wine itself…Aromas carry yellow apple, with subtle vanilla & hints of lees-inspired yeast.
Mouthfeel is full & creamy, with beautiful Seville oranges, apricots, vibrant lemon zest & an attractive hint of macadamia nuts (admittedly I needed some prompting to detect it, but now I can’t miss it).

To fill those awkward silences…

I am not going to drag you through another monologue on why the KWV’s Mentors range is so important to the South African wine scene, as I have already gushed like schoolgirl at a Bieber show over here.

Instead, I thought it worth talking a little bit about some of the stickers you’ll see on the bottle, as by and large stickers are little more than annoying eyesores devised to try and boost sales. There are, however, some stickers that actually mean something, and I will try to talk about these awards whenever they crop up.

And while I’m at it…

Why the Triton Diamond award is not just another sticker:

  1. The panel of judges is made up exclusively of winemakers. It is safe to say that a seasoned rugby player will better be able to appreciate watching the performance of a legend of the game, but may struggle to identify with the achievement of a world-class master ballet dancer. The same can be said of a wine lover who understands a little about the process of making wine; he or she is aware of all that could go wrong (or right!), and thus is better able to appreciate the performance that went into making the bottle that they are drinking.
    It is logical then to conclude that a competition judged almost exclusively by winemakers will truly produce winners who are masters at their craft.
  2. Only 10% of the entrants win prizes. There are wine awards where a “gold medal” is actually third place. A “double gold” would be second place, and a trophy award would be the actual winner. This is horribly misleading, and leads many a consumer to buy what they think is a gold medal winner (or silver…or bronze… because, hey, at least they’re on the podium, right?!) when it is nothing more than just a hair’s breadth above the average of all the wine’s that entered. By keeping the awards for only the top 10% of wines entered, one can ensure that anything carrying the Triton Express Diamond Award sticker is actually worth investing in.
  3. I have yet to buy a Triton Express Winemakers’ Choice Diamond Award wine that has left me disappointed.
    The practical application of this observation is that we can place a little more faith in a wine with the Triton Diamond Award sticker, than we might in, say a wine bearing an award like the Vitis Vinifera award. Or, in the same vein, the proud label of “Chucky’s Cheese’s Most Huggable Bargain Buy”.

    What is Batonnage?

    “100 days on its lees,” you say. “With regular batonage”, you add. Well, it all sounds great, unless you have no idea what batonnage is. If not, a beating at the hands of riot police.

    In short, Batonnage is just the process of regularly stirring up the dead yeast cells (the lees) that remain in a wine after fermentation, having settled to the bottom of the barrel, or tank.
    Obviously, in red wine this happens all the time, so it’s no big deal, but in white wine, it is a little more noteworthy. It was first performed in Burgundy France during the production of Chardonnay wines, where, instead of completely removing all traces of dead yeast cells, a winemaker would let the wine mature with the dead yeast cells, thereby adding a richness to the wine. KWV winemaker Johann Fourie’s decision to mature his Chardonnay sur lie (or on the lees) would have been to try and use these yeast cells to enrich the texture of the wine, producing a creamier mouthfeel, or buttery texture on the palate.

    “Okay,” you say, “But you need to focus. Tell us about Batonnage.” To which I say, “Fair Deuce.”
    Batonnage is quite simply the act of stirring up the lees in order to increase level of contact between wine and yeast and therefore increase the contribution that the yeast makes to the end result.

    One can overdo it, producing an unpleasant bready, yeasty result, but,as I may have hinted before, Johann Fourie knows a little about winemaking.

 

 

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 😉

 

KWV Mentors Orchestra 2013

TLDR:  Distinguished but pricy. Cellar until at least 2018 //
Quality: 16/20 //
Price: R270 – R300 (as of Sept 2016) //
Value: 2/5 //
Ponce factor: Moderate to High //
Occasion: Dinner for two (You don’t want to have to share this with too many people) //
Key words: Bordeaux blend //
Vivino rating //

Tasting notes:

Like the original Total Recall; ludicrously lengthy & gratuitously brawny.
Colour is a superbly intense, with vanguard aromas of classic Cab Sauvy pencil shavings & ripe cassis.
Palate is denser than the Governator, with heavy plums, more blackcurrant notes, and some positively gargantuan tannins. My bet would be that this guy will shine a little brighter after a few years in the cellar. Like a long-awaited cinematic remake with better colour and more convincing CGI.

To fill those awkward silences…

Aside from the fact that this is a KWV Mentors range wine (read more about that here), there are a few other chat-worthy elements to this wine. Not least of all is the fact that winemaker Johann Fourie has gone the whole hog and included FIVE of six permitted bordeaux varieties.

Bordeaux’s family five

A red Bordeaux-style blend refers to any wine made up of two or more of the five* Bordeaux grape varieties. If you’ve ever wandered down a supermarket wine aisle, even semi-conscious, then you will have seen most of these: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot & Malbec.

Trying to remember all these can be a bit of buzzkill, so I’ve crafted you a verbal family portrait instead:
Dad: Cabernet Sauvignon – a sage fellow (herbal notes present), full of stature (big tannins) with many years behind him (tannins and acidity give CS great aging potential)
Mom: Merlot – gentle natured (less intense than CS), with soft, feminine curves (tannins far more moderate than CS), and rosy cheeks (usually carrying soft red fruit on the palate)
Gym bunny older brother: Petit Verdot – super dense, super brawny (muscular tannins). Usually recognized in pure form thanks to its inky black-ish purple colour. Like a testorestone-fuelled adolescent, it usually comes with a fair share of intensity (dense ripe sweet black fruits).
Precocious teenage daughter: Cabernet Franc – Blossoms early, smells great, leaves its pleasant bouquet wherever it goes.
Baby: Malbec. Often consumed very young when bottled as a varietal wine (especially New world regions…French Malbecs can age longer). Like Petit Verdot, it adds intense colour to the mix.
*(technically Carmenere is No.6, but I ran out of family members. And if you can find a local Bordeaux blend with Carmenere in it, I’ll eat my hat…and wash it down with said carmenere-loving Bordeaux blend)