commonly the former that gets the best barrels of Cab.
THE RED RHÔNE AND MEDITERRANEAN VARIETIES
Syrah/Shiraz
There is no doubt that the huge growth in plantings of Syrah from the 1990s onward has been prompted by its international fashionability, which in turn was stimulated—initially at least—more by the offerings from Australia at all levels of quality than by the great wines of the northern Rhône. In fact, some authorities have thought it likely that Syrah has been present in the Cape in a small way for a very long time, if not necessarily continuously, and may have been among the earliest plantings. Unambiguous references are in short supply, however, and it is also more than possible that Australia was, more recently, the source. Certainly the influence of Australia on South African Syrah plantings long predated recent decades. Following a visit there toward the end of the nineteenth century, C.T. de Waal, the enterprising manager of Groot Constantia, recommended that the Department of Agriculture (which exercised a monopoly on the importing of grapevines) should send to South Australia for vine cuttings. Syrah was prime among the imports; known in Australia as Hermitage, it understandably impressed him more than Cinsaut, the local usurper of that great terroir’s name.
It must have been this more immediate origin that led to South Africa and Australia sharing Shiraz as a primary synonym for Syrah. Interestingly, although Perold in his 1926 treatise spells the former version in the now-accepted way, during the 1930s the spellings Schiraz and Schiras are also found. The use of Syrah as an alternative grew once it became an official synonym here after an application by Stellenzicht estate for its 1994 bottling, made by André van Rensburg. Van Rensburg wanted to use the French rather than the traditional name, as he insisted that his wine was different from “old style, sweaty, horsy Shiraz.” This excellent wine was perhaps the one that most alerted winemakers and wine lovers to the local potential of the variety.
The grape had made little headway in the Cape in the first seventy-odd years since its (re)appearance here. Although a few varietal wines were made (the first varietally labeled example was from Bellingham in 1957), what little was planted mostly went into good-quality blends with Cabernet and Cinsaut. When the WO legislation was introduced in 1973, there were fewer than half a million Syrah vines in the country. The great leap forward started in the 1990s, and plantings grew steeply to well over 10,000 hectares in 2011. Syrah is the only red-wine grape that has increased its plantings every single year in the fifteen up to 2011, and it is now the fourth most planted grape: more than 10 percent of the total vineyard area, and more than 20 percent of black-grape plantings.
A necessary corollary of all the new plantings is that there are still many youngish vineyards around—although the grape’s age distribution profile has changed dramatically in recent years. At the end of 2011 only 35 percent of vines were under ten years old (in 2008 the proportion was 75 percent). On the other hand, only 7 percent were older than fifteen years, and a mere 2 percent over twenty. Fashionability has meant that Syrah is planted heavily in all parts—from cool Elgin and Elim to the hot Klein Karoo. Clearly the picture of Syrah in the Cape will be different in ten and twenty years’ time, with more mature vineyards and a better sense of terroirs most suited to it. What is already encouraging is that good wines are coming from many sources, although performance generalizations are difficult, especially as winemaking still tends to dominate.
Syrah is used more as a monovarietal wine than in blends. The modish addition of a dollop of Viognier (a practice ultimately deriving from Côte-Rôtie, though the immediate inspiration is Australia) is perhaps waning, and anyway now done with more subtlety than was often the case in the past. Mourvèdre and Grenache, in the style of the southern Rhône, are more common minor blending partners (not always announced). The Swartland—with the inspiration of first Charles Back’s Spice Route and more definitively with Eben Sadie—has emerged as the leader in such blends, but it is far from alone in producing them. Nico van der Merwe, Catherine Marshall, Newton Johnson, and La Motte are among the other sources of fine Syrah-based blends of this type.
The Australian model of Syrah-Cabernet blends has not been compelling here, although Syrah is often successfully used within what would otherwise be Bordeaux-style blends. Rust en Vrede’s flagship Estate Wine has long been of this type, as has Rouge from nearby Alto; and this has fostered something of a minor subregional tradition on the Helderberg and Simonsberg slopes (Uva Mira, Haskell, and Guardian Peak among those fitting in). Anwilka’s was a more recent high-profile launch of a predominantly Cabernet-Syrah blend.
Cinsaut and Other Varieties Associated with Southern France
Cinsaut is of great historical significance in the Cape. It has been grown here since the middle of the nineteenth century and was known locally as Hermitage (for unclear reasons) until the trade agreement with France in 1935 prevented taking the names of French wine regions in vain. Perold had already made the formal identification with Cinsaut (often spelled Cinsault) of southern France, and that name became widely used. Until the rise of Chenin Blanc, it was South Africa’s most planted variety, occupying nearly a third of the vineyard and used for everything from brandy, through rosé, to sweet, dry, and fortified red wines. The quality range was extreme. Records are rare, but apparently even some of the best “Cabernet Sauvignons” and blends of the mid twentieth century included a greater or lesser percentage of Cinsaut. From the 1960s onward, uprootings ensured that it now accounts for less than 2 percent of the total—mostly in the warmer regions, but a surprising amount lingers in Stellenbosch. Some 27 percent of Cinsaut vines are more than twenty years old, and a mere 2 percent are under four.
Some ambitious new producers of the Swartland particularly have sought out old bushvine Cinsaut for inclusion in their serious Syrah-based blends (Mullineux and Badenhorst, for example). There are some splendid old bushvine vineyards of Cinsaut in that area, and Sadie Family Pofadder is one of very few ambitious monovarietal Cinsauts in the country. But there will undoubtedly be more, and not only from the Swartland, as winemakers come to realize that the results obtainable from well-farmed, low-cropping vines are a world apart from the insipidity of Cape Cinsaut in the late twentieth century. Cinsaut’s main claim to fame, or notoriety, in the Cape remains, however, its role in the parenthood of Pinotage.
Carignan, too, lingers in one or two decent wines made from old vineyards, notably Fairview’s Pegleg from the Swartland, and it finds its way into a few good blends in that area; but the variety has never been present here in anything like significant volumes. Grenache, like Carignan, is a grape that is originally Spanish but internationally best known for its voluminous presence in the south of France. The original importation into South Africa seems to have been from Spain, and it was established (mostly for fortified wine production) by the time Perold identified it in 1910. Some is now being planted, but as the variety is generally regarded as requiring more vine maturity than most to make decent quality, the tiny volume of older Grenache (notably in the Piketberg area) is keenly sought after by ambitious producers of both Rhône-style blends (especially in the Swartland, but also Ken Forrester’s the Gypsy, for example), and monovarietal wines (by Neil Ellis, Vriesenhof, Sadie Family, Tierhoek), of which the numbers are growing. There is also a little of the red (gris) and white versions.
Mourvèdre, the French name for the Spanish grape Monastrell, is officially known in South Africa primarily as Mataro, reflecting its importation from Australia at the end of the nineteenth century, though it is invariably referred to by its French synonym. Of the little group of varieties associated mostly with the south of France, it is probably the most fashionable in the Cape, but plantings are still very small. There are some good varietal wines made from it (from Beaumont, Spice Route, and Tobias, for example), but its main role is probably as a minority partner with Syrah—the best known of which blends is Sadie Family Columella.
Tannat, the grape from southwestern France, has risen from nothing to nearly 75 hectares in 2011. As yet it mostly disappears into blends—including Zorgvliet’s flagship Richelle, otherwise a
