South African Wines Part One: We love wine!

One of the draws of moving to South Africa was that it had a wine region we have never visited and always wanted to learn more about. We knew nothing really about South African wines. Most wine stores in the United States carry small selections, if any, and typically not the best representatives. Since we have been here we have discovered that the wines in South Africa are extremely good, a tremendous value and as we suspected, not widely distributed in the US.

Vince and I have always been into wine, even before we were married, and we have always tried to visit wine regions wherever we traveled. First of all you meet the nicest people. You get an insider’s view into an interesting part of the local culture and wine makes a great souvenir! 

Part of our honeymoon was spent in the Loire Valley, Bordeaux and the Burgundy regions of France where we went for tastings at all the first-growth chateaus and many of the smaller appellations. We brought back a case of 1978 Chateau Haut-Brion from that trip transporting it by car from Bordeaux to Normandy, by hovercraft across the Channel, by train to London and finally a taxi to Heathrow for our flight home to JFK! At that time we were able to carry the case on board the plane and place it in the overhead. My, how things have changed.

10th wedding anniversary in Burgundy

We purchased the case directly from the negociant, Nathaniel Johnston et Fils, one of the oldest firms (established 1734)  in France, on the Quay in Bordeaux, where we spent a pleasant afternoon while Monsieur Johnston and one of his fils regaled us with stories about Bordeaux from Napolean’s time through the occupation by Hitler’s army. I remember one story in particular. He told us that Hitler was so confident Germany would be victorious over the French, he had the first growths strictly guarded by the Gestapo for after the war. Had Hitler been less confident, he may have destroyed this precious region. 

Another story centered around Raoul Blondin, the Chateau Mouton Rothschild Cellarmaster at the time we visited. We had just met Raoul the day before when he led us on a tour of the cellar at Mouton. As a very young man, Raoul was apprentice to his father who was Mouton’s Cellarmaster during the Vichy Occupation. Nathaniel Johnston told us how a then 21 year old Raoul had once stood up to a Nazi General who decided to pillage some of the cellar right under the nose of the Gestapo while his father the Cellarmaster was away. Raoul survived the incident, but the General probably did not having been summarily sent to the Russian Front after being forced to return his truck full of cases back to Mouton. See? Where else would you get that story?

Hunter Valley Australia

Our honeymoon was the first of many wine-centric trips. Over the years, we have visited all the wine regions of France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Greece, sampled Port and Vinho Verde in Portugal, and Riojas in Spain. We even tasted wine cultivated in Suffolk and the Chiltern Valley in England (yes, they produce wine in England but trust me, you are better off sticking to beer and whiskey.) Beyond Europe, we tasted Shiraz in Australia’s Hunter Valley, Malbecs in Mendoza, Argentina, Ice Wine in Quebec, kosher wine in Israel's Golan Heights and back home have extensively visited the wine regions of California and the Pacific Northwest in America.  And with every tasting and vineyard visit, our conclusion was the same.  If you want to taste and buy the best wines an area produces, you must go to the region or country itself and many times to the source vineyard!

So this weekend we are going to take our first drive to some of the wine routes around Cape Town to begin our study of South African wines. To prepare, we have been going to tastings at the local wine store and taking notes on vineyards and vintners we want to visit. We bought Platter’s South African Wines 2013 which is the most comprehensive guide to the wine regions of South Africa you can get. The annual “orange book,” Platter’s is akin to our Parker wine ratings or Zagat guides for food. We have set up a wine cellar in our dining room using vintage wooden Stellenbosch wine crates we purchased at Bootleggers in Fourways. There is room for two cases with drawer and cabinet space in the credenza below for more. We are armed and ready!

To be continued ....