MICHAEL FRIDJHON: A wine by any other name

At the beginning of the democratic era SA wine was aspirationally “New World”.

Most of the fashionable producers favoured labelling their wines with varietal names. Their cultivars of choice were the “international” ones, the chardonnays, merlots, sauvignons and cabernets for which there was a ready market in Europe. Thirty years ago few if any made an effort to add chenin blanc to that platform, while cinsaut, long the backbone of the Cape’s red blends, was utterly invisible.

Looking back, this seems as distant as a young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate or the singalong tunes of Abba. Of course, the wineries whose fortunes were made in that era — Thelema, Dewetshof, Vergelegen, among others — still ply the same trade: varietal names continue to enjoy a significant share of the territory on their labels, obviously less than the main brand, but still very much part of the invitation to purchase.

The big change arrived towards the end of the noughties, as a new generation of largely landless winemakers set out to craft small volume wines, mainly with grapes from old and largely forgotten vineyards. Their opportunity came with the collapse of the old co-operative system (which was hastened to its grave by the export boom that followed the 1994 election). Growers with interesting old blocks and who had up until then been paid a pittance for their fruit were suddenly free to offer their grapes on the open market.

Eben Sadie pretty much created the model. His first two wines were blends, composites comprising the assembled elements of the various white and red cultivar sites he had secured for his enterprise. Later, with the launch of his Ouwingerdreeks in 2009, single vineyards with single varieties became part of the offering.

Those who followed could pick and choose from both models. Adi Badenhorst did exactly that, while the Alheits elevated site and cultivar where they could, creating cult chenins like Magnetic North and Radio Lazarus, while working volume into their very successful Cartology blend. The Mullineuxs recognised that the heterogeneity of the Swartland’s soils would be a selling point and made the geology as much part of their brand as the cultivar — Schist Syrah or Granite Chenin occupying a more elevated place on their pricing pyramid than their blends.

The change has been nothing short of dramatic: wine enthusiasts who were once familiar with the names of most of the country’s leading producers suddenly found themselves looking through lists of the Platter Guide’s laureates with a growing sense of alienation. Who or what was Draaiboek, Elemental Bob, Simelia Fluvius, Kara-Tara, Patatsfontein, Nuiba, City on a Hill and Die Kat se Snor? (Answer: Platter Five Star winners in 2024.)

At the same time, there’s been a discernible shift to real names, together with a focus on varieties. This is evident in Jessica Saurwein’s wines, increasingly finely tuned since 2015 when she began making wine for her own account. Her enterprise is utterly free of hype: her name is the brand name, and variety is a central part of the message. True, there is a slightly Eastern overlay (Nom, Om and Chi), but from the perspective of appreciating what’s in the glass, you don’t need to reach for a copy of the Encyclopaedia of Oriental Mysticism.

It’s no secret that I am largely unconvinced about the virtues of Cape pinot noir. So when I say that the Saurwein 2024 Om pinot sits comfortably alongside a decent Côte de Beaune example selling for twice the price this counts as high praise. I’ve been less critical of our rieslings (partly because I think it’s audacious even to attempt to make something half decent in SA in this era of climate change).

But this doesn’t mean I wasn’t astonished by Saurwein’s Chi riesling 2025. For less than the price of an Uber ride to the airport, it will transport you to the terraces above Trier — which is more than can be said these days for a mid-priced bottle from the Mosel.