is planted voluminously throughout the Western Cape (there’s even some in the Orange River area), and still expanding. With just over 8 percent of total vineyard coverage in 2011, it ranked sixth in terms of vineyard coverage, the fourth most planted white variety (this proportion up from 5.1 percent fifteen years previously). Clearly the ABC brigades (anything but Chardonnay) are not winning, although the new vineyards are particularly serving the burgeoning growth in sparkling-wine production. More than half of the plantings are in the Breede River Valley, but this does not carry the usual adverse implications for quality, as half of these vineyards are in Robertson, where a rich vein of limestone has proved to be well suited to the grape, even if these are not the Cape’s most exciting Chardonnays. Paarl and Stellenbosch are the areas next in terms of Chardonnay vineyard area; but there are virtually no districts in which Chardonnay is not to be found, and usually producing at least one decent example. It is difficult, then, to suggest that there is any degree of specialization on the basis of terroir that has emerged over the years, beyond the success of the Robertson soils and of the cooler climates in Hemel-en-Aarde, Elgin, and Constantia, where most of the wineries produce good to excellent Chardonnays. It would be difficult to argue against the claims of Hemel-en-Aarde for preeminence, perhaps, from well-established Hamilton Russell (in 2011 I enjoyed a superb 1989 in fine condition) to the newer Newton Johnson and Crystallum. Elgin might disagree, with my support.
The significance of a greater degree of coolness is also graphically shown in Franschhoek, where Chamonix’s is by far the most successful Chardonnay, from vines that are planted at a higher altitude than elsewhere in the valley. Robertson apart, few of the most highly regarded samples come from warmer areas. The best-known Robertson examples come from Springfield, De Wetshof, and Weltevrede. Stellenbosch has a large number of at least decent, often better, examples (including, but not exclusively, Rustenberg, Vergelegen, Jordan, Thelema, and Uva Mira), but Paarl has many fewer (Glen Carlou having shown the best potential).
White blends notwithstanding, Chardonnay might arguably offer the largest contribution to the list of the best South African white wines—which, on the whole, means the best South African wines tout court.
CHENIN BLANC AND CHENIN-BASED BLENDS
The story of Chenin Blanc in South Africa tends to invite extremes, along with phrases like “highs and lows” and “splendors and miseries.” Today, though far off its quantitative height, it remains by far the most planted variety in the Cape: by area more than 18 percent of all varieties and well over 30 percent of whites. It is spread throughout the wine-producing areas, but inevitably the heaviest concentrations are in the hot, irrigated inland valleys, plantings in marked contrast to the old low-yielding bushvines that produce the finest wines (although old unirrigated bushvines are frequently found in warm parts, like the Swartland and Olifants River). Each year it tends to be the most frequently uprooted as well as the most newly planted variety—with much more uprootings than plantings but with less discrepancy than during the 1990s, when the fashion was to replace as much of it as possible with red varieties. In the early years of that decade Chenin occupied nearly a third of the vineyard area. It was—as it still is to a large extent, along with Colombard—the versatile workhorse of the industry, producing vaguely pleasant wine from heavy-cropping vineyards as well as supplying the grape-juice, brandy, and fortified-wine industries. But with more vines than any other country, and with great quality improvements at all levels of ambition, Chenin is gaining a reputation as a South African signature variety—and a good one, at that.
This is one of the oldest varieties on the Cape, though only in 1963 did Professor Orffer match the Loire variety with what had been known here as Steen. It was also known as Stein; some pardonable confusion and folk etymology made the Germanic connection, and there is even a note in the handwriting of Governor Simon van der Stel suggesting comparability in terms of quality of Steen with German Stein wines, which shows that the duality has been around for a long time. Stein has no status as a synonym any longer, and has also largely lost its status as a generic name for off-dry white wine. One theory has it that the Dutch corrupted Listán (a Spanish name for Palomino, another pioneering variety here) into La Stan and then into De Steen, before dropping the article. Now the name Steen appears as a synonym for Chenin on only a few defiant wine labels (including two fine ones: one from the tiny producer Tobias in the Swartland, and Donkiesbaai, from Piekenierskloof, made by Jean Engelbrecht of Rust en Vrede). It lingers stubbornly, though, among some growers, who associate the lower-yielding, better-quality—perhaps best-adapted—clones of the grape (there are ten currently available in South Africa) with Steen. It is greatly to be hoped that further research will establish not so much a justification for the name as whether the variety has adapted itself to local conditions in a reproducible clone.
So, with varying reputation, Steen-Chenin has been a continuous feature of the Cape vineyard. It was one of the grapes grown at Constantia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although its price was far off those of Pontac and the Muscat varieties. By the early twentieth century Steen was advancing, but still some way behind Greengrape. Although the rise in brandy production was undoubtedly responsible for much of the increased planting of Chenin in warm areas, the grape’s defining moment came during and subsequent to the 1960s with the huge popularity of off-dry white wines like Lieberstein, and its rise (anonymous to the public) became inexorable.
In the post-1994 Cape wine revolution, destruction might have been more extreme had it not been for the awareness of a few farsighted winemakers that mature Chenin vines might produce better wine than the despised or, at best, taken-for-granted grape was usually credited with. There were the first signs of Chenin being taken more seriously. Walter Finlayson of Glen Carlou blended a little of a rather more prestigious grape into his barrel-fermented Devereux Chenin Blanc–Chardonnay 1994. Then Irina von Holdt introduced her nearly dry Blue White Chenin Blanc in 1995, comparatively expensive and in a striking blue bottle.
The growth in number and quality of varietal wines was undoubtedly furthered by an annual competition, the Chenin Blanc Challenge, expressly dedicated to improving the breed. This revival has been further driven by the Chenin Blanc Association, one of the most active of the variety-based winegrower bodies. To an extent, however, the improvement has come with the price that is paid when competitive blind tastings acquire significance: more winemakers started picking their best fruit ultraripe—with resulting high alcohol levels and often a noticeable degree of residual sugar—and then put the wine into new oak to complete the blockbuster effect. While many of these expensive “show wines” are undoubtedly of high quality, not all of them make for satisfying, refreshing drinking to the bottom of the glass.
As the industry matures, however, and as the market’s doubts about such wines grow, more winemakers are relying rather on purity and intensity of fruit. Many of the top-priced Chenins continue to be wooded, but less emphatically so than they were. Any short list of examples would omit many good wines, but labels would certainly include Ken Forrester, De Morgenzon, Raats, Kanu, Rudera, De Trafford, Teddy Hall, and Jean Daneel. Top-end unwooded Chenins include those of Beaumont, Old Vines, Raats, and Vinum, as well as quite a number of new-wave wines from Swartland producers, like Lammershoek. The majority of cheaper, simple and fruity Chenins are unwooded.
The basis of the large volumes of good Chenin at all levels is the old vineyards of, especially, Paarl, Stellenbosch, and the Swartland. The variety’s natural good acidity is fully taken advantage of in such viticultural conditions. The market for relatively expensive Chenin is necessarily limited, so old, low-yielding bushvines are still being pulled out, if at a slightly less alarming rate. Nonetheless, the age distribution chart shows more than half of the vines to be older than sixteen years, and nearly 40 percent older than twenty.
Chenin’s first moment of South African glory came many decades ago, however, when it was used in Nederburg’s Edelkeur, the first of the Cape’s unfortified botrytised dessert wines. It still serves Edelkeur, as well as a number of other extremely good versions, including Ken Forrester T, Kanu Kia-Ora, and Rudera Noble Late Harvest.
