Until quite recently it used to be the ambition of high-end New World wine producers to offer only a single wine (rather than a whole range). Until the 1980s the inspiration for this came from the great estates of Bordeaux. This was how most of the Cru Classé properties sold their entire harvest — as a single blended wine.
In Napa and in Stellenbosch this appeared to be the most authentic as well as the simplest approach. You harvested the crop, vinified the cabernet sauvignon and the merlot, the cabernet franc and the petit verdot, blended them all together, and sold them as Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou or Chateau Kirwan and then went off to the Riviera for the summer.
But at exactly the time that the New World was fantasising about this, Bordeaux was actually changing its model. Robert Parker’s ratings (which by the mid-1980s were playing an important role in driving pricing and sales) obliged proprietors to concede that not all parts of the estate’s vineyards (and therefore not all barrels of wine) were equally good.
If you wanted higher ratings, you had to find a cost-effective way of excluding from the blend whatever was inferior. This led to the creation of “second label wines” — such as “Charmes de Kirwan” — which sold for less than the “Grand Vin” and whose absence from it served to enhance the quality of the top wine.
Meantime, the SA producers who had hoped to offer just a single red (and perhaps a single white) found it wasn’t as easy as they had imagined. Not every block of vines contributes equally to the best blend (which is why each blend has to be made differently every year). Second, there are always inferior blocks (necessitating a tiered system, such as was developing in Bordeaux, to dispose of whatever didn’t make the cut).
But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t brave souls who come to market with just one wine. A few weeks ago I met up with two of them, and on a single day. The first was Alastair Rimmer, formerly cellarmaster at DeMorgenzon and before that at Kleine Zalze. He’s now making a wine called Six Legs Genesis 2024. He’s aiming for the gap in the market where consumers want a well-made, easy-drinking wine that doesn’t require cellaring and doesn’t need a sommelier to tell you how it’s been made, and why you should enjoy it.
Genesis 2024 is a Bordeaux blend with two thoughtful additions: syrah (34%) and sangiovese (3%). The result is exactly as targeted — soft, savoury, the palate with a succulent, almost sweet edge, not complicated but not uncomplex, and priced to sell at about R250 a bottle.
The other is an altogether more serious affair: a high-end chenin blanc from a single site near Koelenhof, farmed by the Du Bois family since the 1930s. The fruit has always been sold to different wineries, with the chenin much sought after by the great modern exponents of the variety. Now Gabriel du Bois, a descendant of the founder (and previously assistant winemaker at Alheit Vineyards) has made a selection from two of the oldest blocks planted in 1982 and 1986. They share in common shale soils — unusual for this ridge on the edge of Bottelary.
The winemaking is all about capturing the fruit purity: chilling the grapes overnight, then immediate pressing, followed by fermentation and ageing in old 400l barrels. The wine is bottled after a light filtration 10 months later: minimal intervention winemaking in deed as well as in thought.
Unsurprisingly, it’s very fine: substantial, textural and layered, ample, not overly intense, slow-evolving, bone-dry and made for long ageing. You can drink it now (if you must), but only if you are ready to engage with it — a conversation with what’s in the glass, but not while scrolling on your phone. Otherwise, wait for when you’re both ready, and find something else to drink in the meantime.
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