Once every four years, soccer fans around the world get their game faces on for the ultimate competition: the World Cup, the most-watched athletic event in the world.

In honor of this year’s World Cup, we decided (on the suggestion of a friend) to try out some wines from South Africa, this year’s host country. We’ve done South African tastings before and noticed this time around there were far fewer to choose from. Several stores, in fact, didn’t have any South African wines, and white wines were nearly impossible to find.

After a little searching, however, we did manage to find seven bottles and invited over soccer fans Adam Cox, Jessica Miller, Phillip Salisbury, Claudia Encalada and Rick Sutter.

We started the tasting with Makulu Iswithi Pinotage ($6.99), a semisweet version of the South Africa’s most famous grape. Our tasters were not immediately impressed, and neither were we. We wondered whether maybe it would have been better chilled, since it is a sweeter red, but the bottle recommended serving at room temperature, so we did. Still, Dan said it was not as sweet as he feared, and found its fruit and berry flavors nice. If you drink nothing but Oliver Soft Red and want to try a South African wine, this is the one to try. Dry-wine drinkers, however, will want to move on.