’Tis the season of resolutions – giving up bad habits, starting (good) new ones, finding work-life balance, saving more, spending less – we’ve heard them all and made brave annual attempts at keeping them.
But how about a New Year’s wine resolution to step out of your comfort zone of familiar labels and names, and try something different?
If you’re game, we have some suggestions – not all necessarily new to the market, but highlights of recent tastings that suggest it’s worth exploring possibly unfamiliar brands, grape varieties or wine styles.
Paul Cluver is well-known as the pioneer of wine farming in the Elgin valley, long before it became the go-to spot for cool-climate wines.
Their 2018 Sauvignon Blanc offers something a little different, its crisp freshness (think green apples) and clean, fruit flavours are complemented by a touch of honey and creaminess thanks to extended lees contact and the addition of a splash of oak-matured semillon.
It’s not as rich or waxy as a full-on Bordeaux-style blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon, but also not a typically fresh and acidic sauvignon blanc.
It’s well worth a try (R110 cellar door, R99 Makro).
Moving to the west coast, Groote Post in Darling created a whole new name and label design for their Salt of the Earth 2015, a red blend released for the first time in 2018.
Old vines yield fewer grapes, with intense flavour concentration, as seen in this blend of shiraz from a 17-year-old vineyard and cinsaut from 42-year-old dryland bush vines – the perfume and softness of the cinsaut lifting and complementing the boldness of shiraz. The result is a really lovely and smooth-drinking wine, a blend of floral softness and savoury spiciness with some subtle earthiness and great length (R240 cellar door).
From the same estate, the Groote Post Kapokberg Chardonnay 2017 (around R160) is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable chardonnays I’ve had in ages, a total sensory experience.
If you had to liken it to food, imagine a naartjie-infused crème brûlée – vanilla cream with those deep, almost-burnt citrus marmalade flavours, caramelised sugar, and a streak of minerally crispness to take it away from pudding into a balanced, alive and lively wine.
The wine scored 92 points in the 2018 winemag.co.za Chardonnay Report, rating higher than some more “serious”, and seriously expensive, contenders.
Treading into perhaps lesser-known territory, Malbec is most well-known as one of the components of a Bordeaux red blend, but is increasingly being seen on our shelves as a single-varietal wine.
It’s loved by those who know it for its inky depth, rich and plummy fruit, smokiness and sometimes woody-herb notes (rosemary, fynbos) and a hint of milk chocolate.
Bellevue (formerly known as Morkel wines) has a Malbec that is a great introduction to the grape as a single varietal wine.
Fragrant, with super-deep dark fruit flavours like over-ripe blackberries and herbaceous notes of rosemary, mint and fynbos making a wine that’s dry rather than jammy, full-bodied and intensely flavourful.
A bargain, I reckon, at R110 at the cellar door, and currently on special on getwine.co.za for R85.
For those pursuing a “dry January” or a resolution to cut down on alcohol or kilojoules, the newest addition to the growing number of choices in no- or very low-alcohol “wines” comes from Van Loveren in the form of Almost Zero, made from sauvignon blanc with alcohol removed.
It’s a crisp and fruity drink, with less than 0.5% alcohol and 75% less kilojoules than a standard glass of wine, widely available at R65. Happy 2019 wine adventures!