Something Sumptous in Somerset West

Howdy everybody,

I've reached about the quarter mark on my journey around the winelands in the Cape and I've already visited so many farms I'm really hoping I get to visit all the areas I want to before I feel the work world calling me. On Saturday I managed to continue my route that was prematurely cut short two weeks ago when my car gave up on me. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to the one place (Flagstone) that was the only reason for me to go wine tasting on a Saturday as I couldn't find how to get to it. The only road that looked like it went to Flagstone was closed off.

This time round I started off at a few farms I missed the last time I went to this area, so my first stop was at Avontuur (after accidentily driving past Ken Forrester's almost invisible entrance). This is where I discovered I had 0 battery power left for my camera (thanks to the power failure the evening before), so please excuse if my discriptions of the farms are a bit vague, as I'm relying on my terrible memory. Avontuur has a huge range of wines to try, including a sparkling wine, several whites and reds and a 5-year old brandy, as well as a 10 year. Avontuur also has a very nice restaurant and they are smart enough to put the tasting room far enough away from the kitchen and sealed off by glass doors and windows from the tables as well. They have 3 ranges of wine here, the Vintners (V), Estate (E) and Premium/Reserve range (R).

I could spend a whole email going through each of the wines I tasted, but I'll select a few as a taster for you 8) The E. Brut MCC (Methode Cap Classique) is made from an equal blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and first gave off a smell of beer yeast with a follow through of sweet fruit on the nose and citrus on the palate, with a very crisp finish that leaves you smacking your lips together. I found that I enjoyed the Sauv Blancs (R&E), as they weren't excessively crisp and on the Reserve (called the Sarabranda) I found some interesting floral notes (rose petals?) and I caught a hint of lemon grass (I think). Not an everyday wine, but if you are a big fan of Sauv Blanc, this would make an excellent birthday gift for you. The Vintner's Blend is a mixture of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and is an absolutely marvellous wine that only cost R38 a bottle - definitely an everyday drinking wine. It is a new release, so make sure to look out for a bottle before everyone realises how good it is and it gets sold out... actually maybe I should go buy some quickly... oh wait, before I do that.. uhm... it's a terrible wine... don't buy it... seriously... it's only lightly wooded and has a really icky toasty/butterscotch nose with an awful strawberry nose that leaps out of the glass and grabs you by the throat. In fact, forget I even mentioned it, and don't try it... you'll spit it out all over your lovely clothes.

The reserve Chardonnay (called the Luna de Miel) is my style of Chard, with a rich creamy butterscotch nose mixed with vanilla and slight notes of citrus. Wine like this glides down your throat like a kid going down a waterslide - with great delight. The R Pinot Noir (the Minelli) is a very complex wine with an alcohol that's just a tad bit too high - it's very fruity with dark berries, but has a dried woodland nose to it with just a subtle hint of leather. Skipping through the list, the next interesting wine was the E Cab Sauv/Merlot blend, which had that nose I'm becoming more familiar with - candied apple and turkish delight, with light red berries and a slight smell of cigar smoke. The R Bourdeux blend - the Baccarat, is a blend of Cab Sauv/Merlot/Cab Franc, with fresh forest smells, fynbos, black berries and some lovely barrel characters coming through of white pepper and milk chocolate - complex and delicious. I'll skip commenting too much on the brandy, other than to say that the 10 year old was a softer style of brandy - good for a non-brandy drinker, so it'll make a good brandy to have on stand by for high-end business executives.

My next stop was at Ken Forrester, another farm with another long list. The Sauv Blanc is a very text-book example (grass and apples), but they've done some fantastic work with Chenin Blanc here. The Petit Chenin Blanc is their quaffer with splashes of melons, peaches and guava - at R30 a bottle, it's well-worth the price-tag for a wine to enjoy throughout the summer. Their estate Chenin Blanc is ever-so-slightly wooded and has rose petal/floral smells mixed with peaches, and their Forrester Meinert Chenin is an interesting combination of a heavily-oaked chenin (10 months) mixed with their natural sweet Chenin to produce an off-dry and delicious white wine that is very highly rated. Well worth the hype, it has intensily complex aromas including: buttered toast, sweet and water-melons, peaches, flowers, honey, apricot, nartjie, litchi, vanilla and light raisons. Unfortunately, at R240 a bottle, the tasting room is about the only place that I'd see this wine touching my lips - a pity, because it's really a one-of-a-kind wine. I'd suggest going through the struggle of finding the farm, looking out at the water fountain from the tasting room and the hanging pieces of meat in the cellar, and have a sip or three of this wine if you are a wine lover. Amongst the other red wines this is one of the very few (if not only) farms to make a straight varietal Grenache. Called the Lonely Grenache, the smells are driven by an powerful cherry nose, with strawberries and raspberries complimenting it, and a slightly spicy (mostly white pepper) backbone just to give it that little extra push. The Grenache is mixed in with Shiraz to make two blends here, and I'd suggest buying the Ken Forrester Shiraz/Grenache if you want a relatively good sense of what a grenache is like, with a little added pepperiness and vanilla, and at R65 a bottle, it's very worthwhile. Especially since the Lonely Grenache is valued at R160, and the Gypsy blend (also Shiraz and Grenache) is sitting at a whopping R240 a bottle. The sweet wine was sold out, so I can't comment on that.

Dellrust was next on my list, and after a long dusty road, I arrived at the farm to the sounds of Fish Eagles. Of the white wines I had there, the slightly wooded Chenin Blanc/Semillon stood out, filled with tropical fruit - like passion fruit and mango. The Rose was an off-dry picnic style wine. Then came some interesting Red blends - the Vinehills Red Ruby Cabernet/ Tinta Barocca blend of cinnamon, pine needles, fynbos and ceder, followed by the Tinta Barocca/ Cinsaut blend of leather, black currant, cinnamon (guess that's from the Tinta) and coffee. The Merlot was well worth the price-tag of R45 a bottle - a soft, easy-drinking red filled with dark berries and plums, a smell of damp earth and mocha. The Three Vines red blend of Merlot/Pinotage/Shiraz was a very interesting wine - a mixture of leather and a kind of meaty paste (which I'm struggling to connect), which I think may be liver pate, olive paste and prunes coming in at the end. The Late Bottled Vintage Port had a delicious dried fruit (almost fruit roll) style and well-priced. They also have two Jerepigos here, white and red, although they aren't really noteworthy.

The next few farms were all farms with a lot of history behind them and all of them had gorgeous farms with large ponds and a large variety of flora. I stopped first at Morgenster (although, on hindsight, I should've stopped at Lourensford first). Morgenster has a stunning tasting room with a superb view looking out over a serene pond. They also have olive tastings here... yum. The farm was originally all part of Vergelegen and owned by Simon Van De Stel's son William. After some bad business practices, it got divided up and Morgenster came under the ownership of a French Huguenot - Jacques Malan, so it is over 300 years old (thank you google!) Although they are more well-known for their olives and especially their olive oil, they do have a small selection of wines. The wines are regal reds - strong, powerful, complex, and worthy of a throne. The Lourensriver Valley is a Merlot driven blend with Cab Sauv and Cab Franc adding complexity to the wine. A firm, gripping wine, it has flavours ranging from the barrel chacteristics of mocha, milk chocolate and a spicy black pepper, to the fruitier black berries and black currant, with an added dose of mushrooms - I'd imagine this to go well with dark-meat poultry, boar or lamb, but a must to have with an exotic old-world meal (it goes with the whole regal image). Still reasonably affordable (barely under R100 a bottle). The Morgenster is a more balanced blend of Cab Sauv/ Cab Franc/ Merlot filled with fresh forest smells, ceder/pine trees, and fruity plums, raspberries, blueberries and dark cherries - a more accessible and smooth wine, which the farm calls their 'liquid velvet' and it almost costs as much.

The second last stop was at Lourensford that had a very nice and friendly staff - they let me stay and go through almost all of their range, which was quite extensive, and even offered some off the list wine to taste, and all well past their closing time (I stayed about an hour and a half after closing time because the company was that good). Of the extensive list, I'll comment on a few of their wines. They have 3 ranges of wines here, the Lourensford Estate, the Lourensford Five Heirs, and the Eden Crest, and wine from their sister farm of Lanzerac. The Eden Crest Sauv was a typical green apple and fresh cut grass - a very textbook, typical sauv blanc at a very good price (especially since it's on promotion). The Eden Crest white blend of Sauv Blanc/ Chard has a hint of toast, but is predominantly filled with citrus/tropical flavours like pineapple, guava and a hint of passion fruit and peach. They have a wooded Estate Viognier, with which I can attribute mouth-watering flavours like peach, apricot, gooseberry, vanilla and butterscotch. The Chardonnay here was another one made in the style I like with rich butterscotch and buttered toast, but with some added smells of sweet melon and a surprising note of ginger. Blend the two together, and you have the Chardonnay/Viognier which gives off all sorts of dried fruits - apricots, peaches and pears, as well as a subtle macadamian nuttiness. Of the reds, there were a few that stood out for me, and I tasted the 5 heirs reds - the merlot had a strong mocha/cocoa flavour to it, the shiraz was a mixture of fresh meat and dark berries, and in the blend with Mouvedre, it became leathery and filled with light berries instead, the pinotage was herbaceous (thyme and italian herbs) and smelled of fresh bananas as well. The final red I managed to sneak a taste of was the Seventeen Hundred - mostly Cab Sauv with a dollup of Merlot and a drop of Shiraz, it was an intense complex wine and I picked up black currant, chocolate/coffee, blackberry and black pepper and a hint of vanilla.

I was about to go home, but decided to stop by Vergelegen again (as they were still open) to check to see if I could get a fresh taste of their Merlot (with a drop of Cab Franc) that I had last time and I thought was corked. The farm here is such a beautiful place to visit, and it's very easy to make a whole day of it wandering around the nearby grounds, having a bite to eat at the near-by restaurant, and generally have a nice relaxing day. Unfortunately, I came in the closing hour of the tasting room, and got an overwhelming sense from the help that they've had a long day, and so they were rather slow, impatient and unenthusiastic, even though my enthusiasm rubbed off a bit and they were at least a bit polite and engaging with me at times. Still, it was a good idea to go back, and I should've trusted my taste the first time, as that smell of damp cardboard that I got last time was no-where to be found and in it's place was black currant, dark plum, black pepper and fresh fynbos. By now I should've really learnt to trust my instincts and simply ask for a new bottle to be opened, even if the people behind the desk seemed rather unhelpful and unsympathetic.

Well, that's it for today. I'm sure I've given you a good few minutes reading. I haven't decided whether or not to go tasting tomorrow yet, but I've booked Friday for some tasting in the nearby Durbanville area and I'm definitely looking forward to some of their wines!

Until I find the time to write another email about the 6 Franschhoek farms I visited yesterday, you'll have to wait patiently doing your nails or whatever it is you do during the day when you're not reading my thoroughly engrossing emails.

Ciao,
Val.