Where to for Pinotage?
July 2, 2008
Last night I attended the Wine Magazine Top Ten Pinotage tasting at the Mount Nelson with a couple of friends.
I was excited about the prospect of tasting some of the top examples of Pinotage in the country - I have always been optimistic about Pinotage and it’s potential as a stand alone varietal.
Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, but this optimism was all but destroyed and removed from my South African soul last night.
The wines on offer were DULL. They showed absolutely no imagination or progression in style; they lacked complexity,and potential and basically they were all over the show. I’m willing to bet that if they were able to talk in an interview, not one of the bottles would be able to tell you who they were, and what they were trying to achieve in the next five years.
All in all and to put it plainly - I thought the wines were rubbish and their performance failed to persuade me to buy a solitary bottle.
It honestly pains me to highlight the above because I was so damn excited about the evening and the wines on offer but something is going wrong here.
I think it boils down to the following - the wine makers have no idea how to harness the potential of Pinotage. Some are attempting this and that, others are hitting the right notes here and there but in general most are way off the ball. It appears that there just isn’t a general consensus on how Pinotage should be made and/or the preferred style to adopt.
I am sure that there has been plenty of discussion around the topic but I don’t think everyone has arrived at a sound conclusion. Don’t ask me how it should be made - I have no idea - but what I do know is that we not getting it right yet.
There’s a lot of work to be done and I really hope we identify how to best make Pinotage and all start adhering to those standards and learning’s.
From my experience Beyerskloof get it right and so to do Kanonkop. So what is it that they do right? Is it that Pinotage shouldn’t be a serious wine - like Beyerskloof’s standard offering? Or, is the real potential in creating serious, well crafted examples like Kanonkop? Perhaps it’s that we as consumers need to change our mindset and lower our expectations?
Either way we need to figure it out.
Posted in Red Wine, Views & Opinions
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Oh dear….
They lacked imagination and yet they were all over the show?
Surely the fact that they interpret the variety in different ways shows imagination and is one of the excitingthings about the variety. There is a great difference between the interpretation by Jacobsdal and Southern Right for example and I enjoy both.
Do you think there should be standard way to make the variety? If so, who should lay down the law? I think the market should decide — it is a very young variety and it is still finding its way.
I haven’t tasted all these wines, and Icertainlt haven’t tasted them together, but maybe they were all technically correct, lacking the brett and other faults that have affected some in the past, that made them seem dull.
Please note tho’ these are not The Top 10 as judged by the Pinotage Association/ Absa Top 10 Competition
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
hi pete
each individual wine was all over the show….not one stood out as well balanced.
across the range of wines - any imagination took no leap of faith and no confidence in what they were trying to achieve.
There was no clear cut direction - like you experience in the choc/coffee Diemersfontein - you know what they trying to achieve with that wine. It’s a wine that I don’t particularly like but the market loves it - so why don’t we see more of that style of Pinotage in the market (perhaps there are but I haven’t seen any)?
I do think there should at least be one standard way in which they make Pinotage - a way that works. From there you can have others trying different things. But with everyone trying different things it gets a bit confusing and inconsistent. I believe one consistent output of good Pinotage will go a long way in redeeming the perception of the varietal world wide.
you make a good point about it being a young varietal and still finding it’s way - perhaps we should all be a bit more patient and open to variety while waiting for it to settle. I guess the hopes are so high that everyone becomes so critical.
your last point is also a good one - perhaps Wine Magazine has got it wrong here. Maybe this top 10 is not the best selection of Pinotage at all. On that note I thoroughly look forward to seeing the top 10 from the Pinotage Association/Absa Top 10 and perhaps I should reserve my opinion until then.
I was just so disappointed with last nights wines.
To be fair there were two I liked, but I’d only buy a bottle and not a case:
Diemersfontein Carpe Diem Pinotage 2006
Simonsig Redhill Pinotage 2006
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Coffee & Chocolate Pinotage?? How could you have missed KWV’s Cafe Culture?
Wine magazine were careful not to call them the Top 10, just top wines of which there were 10
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
i haven’t tried it but remember Winefly profiled it at some stage - but thats only one other example
mmmm…very diplomatic of wine!
I just want to say that I’m not dissing Pinotage as a stand alone varietal but moreover, the way in which it’s been made at the moment…if we are to shut the critics up then something powerful and confident has to happen and inconsistency does not lend itself to this goal.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Hi both
Just a note Pete re coffee and chocolate…the Diemersfontein Carpe Diem is not the coffee Pinotage, it’s part of the flagship range that is lesser known by most, and well spotted I think as a good wine.
Cheers
Erica
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I’ve been to several tastings of the top 10 that Peter mentions in his comments and, not really being a Pinotage fan, found many wonderful examples.
I’m not sure I understand your points either. You can have many different styles of wine from a single grape variety - Chardonnay for eg - oaky, rich and full through to light and crisp. Should Pinotage be limited to just one style as I think you are suggesting? Should there not be regional differences?
(Just re-read Peters comments; seems like I am saying the same thing only differently).
July 4th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Andrew I have also tasted some amazing Pinotage’s - some of my most memorable wines are Pintotage - but that cannot detract from there fact that there is a lot of k*k out there (to use a popular South Africanism).
but I agree, I think the use of the word ’style’ was wrong - I dont mean you should remove the nuances that come from the different regions and/or different types of vines etc.
I also admit that perhaps it was Wine Magazine that got it wrong and didn’t present the best wines at all.
I think what I’m getting at is that I don’t think Pinotage in general is being well made here - I honestly don’t think they have figured out how best to harness it’s true potential. And if some winemakers have, the others certainly aren’t learning from it - or at least not quick enough.
Of course, it’s still a young varietal and learning’s still need to take place and develop and so on. But I don’t think that’s an excuse - with the technology and the access to knowledge we have today there shouldn’t be any excuse. The learning process should be rapid.
There is a lack of consistency across the board - you generally get a stellar wine and then 7 terrible wines. What I’m asking is that they figure out what the market wants and do that properly and consistently.
But perhaps this is a problem with South African wine in general - we have superlative over delivering top wine and then a great void of terrible stuff near the bottom with some good value examples in the middle.
When I visited Argentina I was amazed by the consistency of their Malbec - no matter what the price, there was at least a base level of quality that was appealing. They know how to make Malbec there and do it well. They have learnt what winemaking techniques work well with the varietal, they know what wood to use and for how long, etc, and as a result the quality is consistent. That is not the case with Pinotage here in SA.
This is my humble and inexperienced opinion - but with a marketing background, I understand that Pinotage will achieve nothing unless the output is of a consistent quality.
July 5th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I agree that Pinotage needs more consistency in terms of quality levels but isn’t this the case for wine across the board in South Africa? Consistency in style I do not agree with. Wine style needs to be dictated by the terroir in which the vine is grown, and less by the toasting of the oak of the barrel (Diemersfontein cough cough). I wasn’t that impressed by the wines on display on the evening but it is also very difficult to judge a wine in a tasting environment. One should really sit down with a bottle of wine and take it apart in that way! On that note… bye!
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I wish to stand up in defense of a variety of styles for South African Pinotage.
As a Canadian wine consumer, I am pleased that on the whole, South African wines are well represented in my immediate area - Southern Ontario. It was a very bitter and astringent, “nail-polishy”/banana type Pinotage that first turned me on to the grape: for the simple fact that it was so utterly different than all ubiquitous Cabernets, Merlots and Shirazes out there, and for the fact that the Pinotage in question had great structure and a serious personality.
That was in the mid-90s; since then, we’ve seen increased “internationalization” of the wines, to the point where some of them have just become non-descript, fruity high-alcohol, high-residual-sugar, but character-devoid wines.
I think the problem with the export markets (I say this because apparently the old-school bitter Pinotage did have a following at home) is that people are so focused on the hedonistic wine experience that they shy away from wines that offer more dour, pensive aromatic profiles. Why is it that people can accept barnyard, cat’s pee or other similarly offensive-sounding aromas in other wines, yet a campaign seems to have been launched to purge leathery/”varnishy” Pinotages?
Really, there should be a place for these old-school examples on the market today - just as there should be a place for the easy-going internationalized styles, for those who prefer the latter. Fact is, the old-school Pinotages do go well with a variety of savoury, smoky foods. It’s a pity that they are becoming increasingly rarer in the current sea of uniformity.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Thank so much for the insightful comment Paul - much appreciated.
the first thing that i am pleased to hear is that South African wine is well represented in your area - great stuff, we need more of that around the world.
i have to agree on your comments on uniformity.
i think what I was trying to get at was that we need an improved level of quality across the board with Pinotage and indeed South African wine. I find you get some great examples (world beaters) and then a whole bunch of terrible examples and not much in between. I’d like to see that in between gap filled up with a greater level of quality consistency.
But I guess that is an aspiration and we are relatively new to the ‘new world’ of wine since reintroduction after apartheid- so some experimentation with the variety should be allowed.
for now that is.