One sample was an experimental wine made under the auspices of the late George Spies (at the time the chief winemaker at Monis of Paarl). In the course of his travels he was shown a few wines from the time when Cabernet Sauvignon was the country’s only premium red variety. When (in early 2007) James Molesworth-Wine Spectator’s South African wine specialist-finally made his first trip to the country about whose wines he had been writing for several years (an epochal moment for producers targeting the American market), he was welcomed as a prodigal son. Is it any surprise that most South African wine consumers today have come to believe that Cape wine is not an ageworthy proposition? In time, another decade of disappointments ensued, as punters opened bottles cellared a few years previously and discovered they were at their best when they went to bottle. Another wave of new vineyards followed another batch of simple (but not unattractive) wines with no great aging potential came to market. As they came to recognize the shortcomings of their planting material, they took to vine smuggling (which by the early 1980s was virtually a national pastime). These ranged from acquiring the worst possible wood from French coopers happy to find new suckers for their greenest of staves, to overoaking the fruit of young vines. They made many mistakes-most of them obvious in retrospect. By then many had begun to work with new barrels for the first time. The more avante-garde producers acquired this material in good faith, only to discover, after a few years, how hopelessly inadequate it was in terms of their quality winemaking ambitions. The Chardonnay was grievously infected with leafroll virus, so that the fruit yielded juice that was either harsh and green or clumsy and Porty. For example, the only Pinot Noir available at the time was the Swiss BK5 clone, developed for producing base wine for fizz. This material was released to growers in the second half of the 1970s, and by the early 1980s it was clear that much of it was inadequate or virused-or both. The KWV-dominated Vine (or Plant) Improvement Board-in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture-obtained and husbanded through quite rigorous quarantine requirements, one, maybe two, different clones of Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, and Chardonnay.
Since the primary business of the organization was bulk wine and spirits, no real effort was made to source quality clones. It is probable that many of the bureaucrats employed by the KWV had little or no inkling of the international wine scene. At the time, the dominant force in the South African wine industry was the KWV- the national wine cooperative-an organization imbued with statutory powers and charged with the management of the industry and its surpluses. Simultaneously, the paucity of international varieties available to South African grape growers became an acknowledged issue, and steps were taken to address the problem.
#RADIO SILENCE CABERNET VERIFICATION#
It brought a host of requirements pertaining to site, minimum percentages of specified varieties, and a framework designed to make verification of any claims on the label a simple enough procedure. Wine of Origin legislation-with strict enough controls to enforce pretty general compliance-became law in 1973. While the regulations that drove at least part of the process were imperfect-if not downright flawed-they provided a blueprint from which those charged with managing the infrastructure could at least navigate. The South African wine industry stumbled into modernity ahead of many of its New World counterparts. Why this should be the case is far harder to explain than to describe.
Cape wine consumers could well parody the much-quoted line from Laurence Binyon’s elegy for the war dead: “They shall not grow old…” So effectively has this been achieved that the assumptions that apply to wines produced in the modern era-which really began in the late 1970s-have automatically been transferred to this earlier age.Ĭhief among these is the lack of ageworthiness of the red wines. An industry, which in 2009 will celebrate its 350th anniversary, has all but obliterated the artifacts of an existence that is comfortably within living memory. For many people-including a significant proportion of its domestic consumers-South African wine has no history preceding the era of isolation.
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