Tag Archives: premium

KWV Mentors Cabernet Sauvignon 2013

The Headlines: //

Colour is superbly dense. Sweet blueberry and maraschino cherries abound on the vanguard, complicated by some gloriously open oak aromas.
Palate is heavy with ripe fruit; mostly continued black maraschino cherries, with soft pepper finish and some truly grippy tannins. Acidity is moderate.
This could go beyond Thunderdome in two years’ time. But, hell, at R300 per bottle, I guess I’ll never know.

Quality: 15/20 //
Price: R270 – R300 (as of Sept 2016) //
Value: 1/5 //
Ponce factor: Moderate to High //
Occasion: Wine ponce festival //
Key words: Fruit selection, ripening //
Vivino rating //

To fill those awkward silences:

A little on the South African vintage of 2013

Humidity was an issue in 2013. Too high a moisture content in the air can facilitate the danger of rot in the vines. But harvesting too early can lead to stalky and green notes popping up in your wines. So what to do? Wait for drier conditions in which to harvest; giving your fruit time to ripen, but also increasing the chance of losing your crop to rot.
As it turns out, those winemakers who took the risk of waiting it out for drier conditions were rewarded with a superb harvest (especially among the red wines). With KWV having supreme access to awesome  fruit, they could pretty much do what they wanted. Which helps when trying to make wise fruit selection.

A few tidbits on the KWV Mentors range

For those not familiar with the Mentors Range, it is worth noting that the KWV group needs to be understood as a conglomerate of hugely disparate brands, some of which should be given global respect…as opposed to being diluted by Coca Cola. Mentors is one such label. It is a range of wines that has garnered more international awards than almost any other range of wines that our young democracy has tolerated. So, even though this wine is decent, it’s backstory is almost better than what’s in the bottle. Enough to elevate it to the point of being awesome.

But why? Well, for starters, as is the case with all Mentors wines, winemaker Johan Fourie has his pick of some of the finest grapes from pretty much any grape growing region in the country (thanks to KWV’s vast empire and unrivalled access to the country’s prime grape growing outfits). But secondly, Johan Fourie is not a rubbish winemaker. He spent years as a viticulturist, understanding the raw product, which gave him an advantage over those who skipped the agricultural grounding and went straight into the cellar. And then, more recently, he was awarded the Jan Smuts award at the 2015 Young Wine awards for both his Cabernet sauvignon, and his Shiraz.

And if that isn’t enough to keep you entertained, Jan Fourie makes some of the finest Chardonnays that this country has ever seen.
So…plenty to talk about, so long as your dinner guests are vaguely interested in wine. However, if they aren’t, and you still have nothing interesting to add on the topic of democracy, government spending, or indie rock, a sure winner is to play the “artisanal versus big corporate” card (which everyone loves, regardless of the industry), and expand on how KWV manage to be both a big corporate, and an artisanal winemaking outfit that garners international awards.

 

Oldenburg 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon

 The Headlines: //

This cab looks and sounds a lot younger than it is. Aromas carry fairly fresh berry fruit & pencil shavings, while the palate hosts ripe cherry fruit, with gentle anise hints & oak spice on the finish. Tannins are present, but soft.
My critique would be that, for R230 per bottle, you get neither the complexity that usually accompanies moderate age, nor the stature and structure that one would expect from a Cabernet Sauvignon. In all honesty, during the blind tasting, the lighter berry-like nature and fairly open nose left me thinking it was a Cabernet Franc.

Quality: 15/20 //
Price: R230 (as of September 2016) //
Value: 1/5 //
Ponce factor: Moderate to High //
Occasion: A second date. Fireside drinking. //
Key words: Vintage, Terroir //
Vivino rating //

To fill those awkward silences…

By all accounts, 2009 was a great year for South African wine, across both whites and reds. So apart from the fact that it would take a very brave/rude/insecure dinner guest to start tearing apart a wine bottled in the previous decade, you as host at least have confidence in the knowledge that you have served a bottle with a lot of intellectual value supporting it. It hails from one of South Africa’s most celebrated Cabernet Sauvignon regions (Stellenbosch is world renowned for its big, fruit-foreward, classic new world reds) and was harvested in a vintage that has been amongst the best that South Africa has seen in the last ten years.

If you need the extra intel to fill awkward silences, it may help to know that the vines are relatively young, planted in 2005. If no one is looking particularly impressed with what’s in their glasses, it may help to lift the mood by muttering something about how it will be exciting to see these youngish vines mature over the next few vintages. Folk should nod knowingly at the sentiment and, hopefully, leave you alone after that.

 

KWV The Mentors Shiraz 2013

TLDR: Very nice, but at a price. //
Quality: 16/20 //
Price: R270 – R300 (as of September 2016) //
Value: 2/5 //
Ponce factor: High //
Occasion: Wine Ponce Festival //
Keywords: Terroir, Swartland, Fruit Selection //
Vivino rating //

Tasting notes:

Dense black fruit, white pepper, cloves & oak on the caboose. Superbly balanced. Despite its youth & formidable weight, tannins are ludicrously soft. If there is any criticism to make of this beauty, it’d be that it feels a little safe; acidity is tempered & any sharp edges have been removed. But, then again, as stated earlier, this is a definitive work, not a rule breaker. So safe as it is, I could drink this all year long.

To fill those awkward silences…

KWV Mentors winemaker Johan Fourie is writing textbooks; one bottle at a time. His chapter on Shiraz just happens to be a tour de force, with all the grace and elegance of a Tolkeinesque elven princess on ice skates. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of intrigue in the back story, so if you want to get maximum social impact when cracking this, best wait for a crowd that actually knows how incredible KWV’s Mentors range really is.

If you’re going to soldier on with this wine, and insist on dropping your pearls before your social circle of swine, be prepared to explain concepts like “terroir” and “fruit selection”. What makes KWV Mentors so exceptional as a range is that it fully employs the vast resources available to KWV to ensure that the fruit that goes into the wine is quite simply as good as it can be. Or at least as good as the winemaker wants it to be. There is the misconception amongst alchemists that “big is bad”, but quite honestly “big” is (more often than not) simply better funded, and so, if budget allows, and the winemaker knows what he is doing, the end result is going to be a winner. Needless to say, Johan Fourie knows his way around a grape.

With regards to terroir, this wine does boast the street cred of being 39% Swartland shiraz, so you can casually drop terms like “Swartland Revolution”, “bushvine”, or “low yield”, accompanied by the odd raised left eye brow. Wait to see if that gets any brownie points. If not, well, you’ve learnt your lesson – you should have kept this bad boy for a late night Wine Lovers’ Summit.