The Year of the Plague has not been conducive to much direct engagement with winemakers. Lockdown meant that for many months only essential travel between the Cape and the rest of the country was permitted, while the liquor sales prohibition made even the transportation of samples problematic.
Catching up the lost months has taken time. A direct engagement is worth any number of webinar hours. No discussion is required to taste what a producer has achieved in his vineyards and cellars: the conversation is more about where they think they’re going and to discover whether the end game is driven primarily by an aesthetic vision or by commercial pragmatism.
So it was particularly useful last week to meet up with two winemakers who embody the message their wines are meant to convey and whose approach is as much a reflection of winemaking philosophy as a story about time in the vineyard. First up was Paul Gerber, who occupies the chef de caves position at Franschhoek’s Colmant, the specialist Cap Classique cellar built by and imbued with the vision of Jean-Philippe Colmant. Gerber has probably spent more time in the production cellars of Champagne than any other SA producer.
He’s been at Colmant a couple of years, so his influence over the wines now in bottle is still minimal: Colmant’s most youthful bubbly, the Brut Reserve, spends at least 30 months on the lees, which means it predates Gerber’s arrival at the cellar. It’s a smart wine: richer, leesier and creamier than most, and now beginning to show the hallmark nuttiness of yeast autolysis. At about R240 a bottle, it actually represents real value. It was overshadowed, if only slightly, by the superb blanc de blanc. After 48 months on the lees it has the extra weight to go with the extra freshness of the chardonnay. The range includes a pretty rosé bubbly and a Sec Reserve — richer, rather than palpably sweeter, on the palate.
The second encounter was with Jean Smit, ex-Boekenhoutskloof and now master of Damascene, a winery that David Curl, a Canadian who has previously owned property in Bordeaux, has set up in Elgin. I had been impressed with the range when I sampled it for the first time a year ago. Now with another vintage available, and being mopped up swiftly by the market, my first impressions were more than confirmed. I think that Damascene under Smit will become a profoundly important vinous venture.
Smit has selected certain sites from which he sources the fruit for each of the wines in the range. The idea is that as the volumes increase, he will be able to maintain the style and quality, if necessary adding new vineyards to the cuvée. Mostly the wines are not from single sites. The aesthetic vision is the guiding principle: changes in the component parts should never be at the expense of what the wine is meant to express.
The pinot noir, sold under the Moya Meaker label and made exclusively from fruit grown on Curl’s Elgin property, is comfortably the sexiest pinot produced in SA. Bursting with ripe black cherry notes, it is juicy and showy, and reminiscent of the style made famous by the Kiwi producers in Central Otago. It’s not about complexity, but about pleasure, and at R250 a bottle it is completely seductive.
Of the other wines, all sold under the Damascene label, there is no risk of disappointment. The Stellenbosch Syrah has the feel and perfume of the Northern Rhone. The Sémillon is waxy, limy, fresh and beautifully polished. The 2019 Cabernet Franc is even better than the 2018: floral, spicy, linear and savoury, food-friendly and happily without the overt herbal notes that mar so many other, more overworked, examples. All the Damascene wines retail at just less than R400 a bottle. Not an everyday price, but then not an everyday wine experience.
