My year of wine: Top tipple on board SAA

In less than a month's time, South African Airways will announce its wine list for 2015.

In spite of the parastatal's financial woes, it takes wine very seriously. Every year a panel of judges - local and international - are invited to make a selection of wines.

You can imagine how desirable it is to be on that list. Not only would you get huge orders, but you'd also get great exposure to markets worldwide. In late August, 12 judges tasted more than 800 wines, and their selection of 60 will be announced next month.

"The annual wine selection is one of SAA's most hallowed traditions and one that we - and the industry - take seriously. SAA is a showcase for South Africa on many fronts, not least of them our excellent local wines," SAA's Bongi Sodladla said.

I was reminded of this process after drinking a glass of wine on a recent flight. The Frog Hill Sauvignon Blanc 2013 was delicious. The wine is made on the Anura Wine Estate in Klapmuts, and, judging from its glamorous website, it is in fine fettle. The wine estate has previously won, among other awards, an SAA Chairperson's Award for largest wine supplier to SAA.

The wine was not typical of a sauvignon blanc. These usually taste like green pepper and grass with high acidity and are dry, referring to their sugar content, not their liquid form. There should be less than 5g of sugar per litre in a sauvignon blanc.

This wine is creamy and buttery, suggesting it had been through malolactic fermentation, a technique used to add complexity. The process results in a conversion of one kind of grape acid, malic acid, into another, lactic acid. The latter is less sour and softer than malic acid, leaving the wine less dry and the finish gentler than a typical sauvignon.

Not trusting my own tasting, I phoned Johnnie Calitz, the estate's winemaker. I was right. He did "malo" this lovely wine.

"Although not all the malic acid was converted, the wine does suggest the conversion," he said.

Another reason for the softer finish: "We source grapes from different regions within the coastal perimeter, and tend to pick the grapes fairly ripe. This will result in a higher pH, which sometimes also [leaves] the wine fuller bodied, with the acidity not being as prominent," Calitz said.

For those of us who find most sauvignon blancs too dry, this is a good one to drink.