Being a winemaker has many challenges – weather, pests, people, for starters – but being handed a 135-year-old French wine as your benchmark must surely take the cake as far performance expectations go. The wine was an 1873 Lafite Rothschild – the aspirational challenge presented by octogenarian Madame May de Lencquesaing, a legend of Bordeaux wine-making, to Glenelly’s then newly appointed winemaker Luke O’Cuinneagain.
In the decade since that first meeting, the team of French owner and South African-Irish winemaker have steadily built a solid reputation for Glenelly and its flagship cabernet sauvignon, Lady May, with that memorable Lafite Rothschild always in mind as the yardstick for “power, elegance and balance” – and ageability, of course.
The wine has consistently maintained 95-point scores in Master of Wine Tim Atkins’s South African wine reports and 4.5 star Platter’s ratings, with the 2009 earning 5 five stars.Writing in Business Day earlier this year, wine expert Michael Fridjhon said the first vintage, the 2008, had taken “as long to settle down as a comparable wine from Bordeaux. A little gawky in its youth, it is now – at 10 ten years old – splendid.”Tasting the 2011 recently with Luke, the winemaker has similarly high expectations for all the vintages of Lady May as they slowly age into their full potential, reflecting his and Madame’s aim not to imitate Bordeaux but to produce typically South African, Stellenbosch, wines with French flair and world-class status.The 2011, which has a dash of merlot and petit verdot rounding out the cabernet, is drinking beautifully already – plush and intense with subtle cassis-blackberry notes, full-bodied with a dry finish, while Luke reckons the recently released 2012 (R490 ex-cellar) is “still austere”.“Buy it now, and then lay it away, forget about it for a few years” is his advice.
Equally ageable are Glenelly’s two Estate Reserve wines – the lush and vibrant chardonnay, super elegant with great balance of zesty citrus, butterscotch and minerality; and the 2012 signature red blend, rich, powerful and aromatic, a blend of cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, petit verdot and merlot (both R230 from the estate).
Luke’s aim with all Glenelly’s wines is to achieve purity of fruit in the flavours, fine rather than bold tannins, and the texture that comes from the estate’s particular soils.This can be seen across the Glass Collection range of a cab sauv, cab franc, merlot, syrah and unwooded chardonnay – all Platter’s 4-stars, and delivering some of the best quality-for-value around. At around R90, all deliver on depth of fruit flavours with complexity, texture and balance – a really classy, fine wine standard at a very reasonable price for what you’re getting in the bottle.