South African Wines - HYO Wine Club

South African Wines

South Africa has a Mediterranean climate and is known for full bodied reds and rich whites. Pinotage is a native red varietal, with very high tannins that stand up to the heat. Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz are other common red varietals grown in this region. South Africa is branching out with other grape varieties, including Malbec, but if you're going to go off piste I'd recommend you stick to producers you know and love.

Swartland Winery, Chenin Blanc, Western Cape, South Africa, 13.5%

Chenin Blanc is a versatile grape which can be made in a variety of styles. Chenin from the Loire in France, is fresh with pear and chamomile because of the cool climate. This South African wine is richer with baked apple, honey and dried fruit. It is creamy on the palate and is a perfect match for turkey dinner!

Available from wine-discovery.co.uk £15.50

Mulberry Bush, Shiraz / Merlot, Robertson, South Africa, 14%

This is what I like to call a telly wine - soft, easy drinking; you don't have to think too much about it, and a pretty price. This wine celebrates the mulberry flavours typical of Shiraz and Merlot from Robertson in South Africa. A cacophony of mulberries, plums and figs, with a smooth finish, this wine is much softer than the mainstream tannic reds coming out of South Africa.

Available from Laithwaites £8.99

Bain's Kloof Black Frost Reserve, Pinotage, Breedekloof, South Africa, 14.5%

Frost in the Breedekloof Valley is almost unheard of, but in 2016 the worst fronst seen in a generation descended on the vines and the whole vintage was wiped out. A few barrels of Pinotage that had been put aside in 2013 were rediscovered. Named after the devastating black frost that struck, this wine has seductive richness and power, bramble fruit, spice cake and toasty oak. Enjoy with warming venison and redcurrant jelly or at your next barbecue.

Available from Laithwaites £11.99

Host Your Own Wine Club


We have been serving great wines at our pop-up wine bars and would like to get more people involved with trying the wines we recommend. Once you join HYO Wine Club we will send you a list of wines that we recommend to try each month. When you try the wines please tell us what you think on Twitter using @HYOwineclub and #HYOwineclub, or on the PrincessAndThePinot Facebook Page - we would love to chat to you about the wines you've tasted based on our recommendations. Most of the wines will be available on the high street, but some come from independent stores or winemakers. You can try the wines in the comfort of your own home at your leisure, or you can come to our pop-up wine bars to try the wines, or we can help you to Host Your Own wine club. The flights of wine served at our pop-up wine bars will feature the wines recommended for HYO Wine Club.

To find out more about our pop up wine bars please visit www.princessandthepinot.com/events

To find out more about our wine club please vsiti www.princessandthepinot.com/hyo-club

No brainers for choosing new world wines

A friend of mine asked me "I've bought a Chilean Maipo Shiraz for £4 do you think it will be nice?".

NO!

To start with, you should never spend only £4 on a bottle of wine if you care about taste. Even if the supermarket says its RRP is £8, it is still only worth £4. My advice is to spend at least £7 on a bottle of wine. Think about all the factors that are involved in getting the wine to you, by the time money has been spent on bottling, shipping, marketing, distribution and taxes, there is little money left to pay the guy to actually make your wine. In a £5 bottle of wine, you are only getting about 20p of wine. For 20p how much is he going to care what actually goes into the bottle? See an earlier post on this here:
http://princessandthepinot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/why-pay-more-for-wine.html

Regardless of the price, a low cost shiraz from Chile is unlikely to be great. Chile is best known for its Merlot/ Carmenere, and well-known normally means they know what they are doing. For good value wines at low price points it makes sense to go for the varietals that are best known. Maipo specifically is actually better known for its Carmenere.

NB. Merlot and Carmenere are not the same grape, but many Merlot vines were planted later to be found some were Carmenere, but many producers still call their wine Merlot.

Also, Maipo is more of a gamble as a region in Chile as it is a flat valley and has some good sites and some less good sites. It would therefore be more reliable to choose a Chilean wine from a region that produces more consistently good wines, such as Colchagua or Casablanca.

It is also worthy to note, the more specific the region is on the label, the more likely it is to be better wine, e.g. Wine of Chile < Central Valley < Maipo. So if you see a label with "Wine of [country]" you should keep looking. Another one to watch out for is "Wine of South Eastern Australia" this is a cover-all label to say any grapes from anywhere could have been used, and it would be better to find "South Australia" or better still "Barossa".

New World is easy to find good value wines at £7-8 (except USA), so here are my no-brainers for the new world. If you find these in your price range,  buy without worry:

Chile Merlot / Carmenere (specifically from Rapel / Cachapoal / Colchagua)
Chile Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay (specifically from Casablanca)
Argentina Malbec (from Mendoza)
South Africa Pinotage
South Africa Chenin Blanc
Uruguay Tannat
Australia Shiraz (from South Australia / Barossa)
Australia Cabernet Sauvignon (from Coonawarra)
Australia Riesling (from Clare Valley or Eden Valley)
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (from Marlborough)

There are better wines than listed above, but these will provide options at cheaper price points. I haven't included wines from USA, because they tend to export very basic wines and very good wines, so if you're looking for a good value wine at a low price point I would avoid USA. Although I will mention my very favourite wine at the moment is Ramey Russian River chardonnay, but at around £30, it doesn't get near this list. If you want something close to it, you could try a Californian chardonnay from Monterey or Santa Barbara.

Make a comment on this post if you would like me to write a blog on no-brainers for the old world, and remember to include your @handle if you want me to let you know when its up.

Hope this helps!

Vansha 2010 Paarl South Africa (Price:1)

This is a typical South African wine, punchy and bitter, and although I don't personally like it, it is a good wine. If you're the kind of person that likes S. African wines, you'll like this one, although you might wake up with a headache. Before I tried it, I thought I would like it because its a GSM (one of my favourites), although in the wrong order with 80% Shiraz, 10% Grenache, 8% Mourvedre and the delicate 2% of Viognier.

When you drink it you get a flashback of being outside somewhere hot and humid,  drinking a sweet fruity drink, like Ribena but a cheap version. You're wishing you had a straw so you could look more elegant and avoid the sticky marks left in the corners of your mouth. You're eating black olives marinated in garlic and rosemary, but the rosemary pricks your tongue and you have to spit it out. You decide to go inside where its cooler and leave the drink and olives behind.

Try it if you're not afraid of a fight.

Zalze, Shiraz-Mourvedre-Viognier, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2011 (Price:0)

I am determined to find South African wines I like, I normally find them too harsh and too punchy. I recently found some Italian wines I liked (I'll tell you about these another time), so South Africa is next on the list. I chose this one, because of the blend - Aussie GSM (Grenache-Shiraz-Mourvedre) being one of my favourites. I have high hopes... the only concern before I take a sip is the price, but Tesco tries to keep their wine offer affordable, so here goes...

The smell is exactly as I would expect - punchy and alcoholic, yeah its 14.5%. And first sip, same thing,  woah, that's a slap in the face. But it has more depth as you let it linger. It has lots of black fruit flavours, there's an underlying shrubbery flavour, which lifts into a more fragile finish of herb and spice, which is quite unusual.

I'm being taken back to hot summers in the countryside when you pick fruits from bushes (even if you don't eat them, because you're not sure if they're poisonous), then you slip on loose soil, so take a sharp breath and grab onto a branch to catch yourself and can smell the leaves on the branch as you leverage yourself back into your stroll in the countryside. A mini adventure.