Keimoes Cellar, situated 40km west of Upington on the banks of the Orange River, this year dominated South Africa’s leading retailer-driven wine competition, the Tops at Spar/Orange River Wine Competition. Keimoes, one of the five wineries in the stable of Upington-based Orange River Cellars, was announced Grand Champion Cellar for 2012, winning awards for Best White Cultivar (Colombard), Best White Blend (Colombard/Sauvignon Blanc/Chenin Blanc) and Best Classical Muscadel (Red Muscadel), while Keimoes winemaker Rianco van Rooyen was the Runner-up Champion Winemaker.
George Kruger from the Kakamas Cellar took the title of Champion Winemaker with a red blend comprising of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Shiraz.
This unique wine competition, now in its 11th year, celebrates the relationship between South Africa’s top wine retailer – Tops – and Orange River Cellars, the country’s largest winery which also supplies the wines for Tops in-house Carnival brand, as well as to incentivise winemakers towards improving overall wine quality.
For this annual highlight in the winemaking calendar, winemakers from Orange River Cellars’ five wineries – Upington, Groblershoop, Grootdrink, Kakamas and Keimoes – each make wines specially for the competition. This year 34 wines from a total of 102 were entered into the finals.
The judging panel for 2012 comprised Tinus van Niekerk, one of South Africa’s foremost wine experts who is also consultant to Tops at Spar, Joaquim Sá from cork company Amorim, journalists and international wine judges Neil Pendock and Fiona McDonald, Guy Webber from Stellenzicht, Ntsiki Biyela from Stellekaya Winery in Stellenbosch and Darling Cellars Cellarmaster Abé Beukes.
Mark Robinson, CEO of Tops at Spar, said that as a newcomer to this competition, the quality of Orange River Cellars’ wines and the passion, skill and commitment of the local winemakers was “truly incredible”.
“I have been on a learning curve about wine since taking over as CEO of Tops last year, and my first official involvement with the Tops/Orange River Competition has been a highlight of my foray into the wonderful world of wine,” he said.
“From Orange River Cellars’ side, the wine-makers are producing individually crafted products of excellence in wine styles not found anywhere else in South Africa. From Tops’ side we are truly lucky to have a strong relationship with such a formidable team of wine-makers and in Orange River Cellars a business entity with superb logistical resources and management skills.
“As they say in the classics, it is a win-win situation, and this annual competition celebrates this unique relationship between Tops and Orange River Cellars.”
Pendock echoed Robinson’s call for regional wines bottled separately to express the individual pockets of terroir found in the areas from which the grapes are sourced.
“Currently Orange River Wine Cellars is doing an amazing job in the market by getting one brand – Orange River Cellars – into the public domain, offering terrific wines at stunning value-for-money prices,” said Pendock. “However, the wines we judges get to taste from each of the five separate cellars tell us there more than enough individual expression of terroir and unique character that these wines will make true waves in the market if bottled on their own.”
According to Webber, other wine regions in the world would do anything to get their hands on wines offering such pure fruit. “The fruit-forward flavours – clean, delicious and bright – are a feature of the wines from the Orange River,” he said. “They are gems and the best thing is, as a wine-maker you don’t have to give your accountants sleepless nights as the grapes don’t require lots of new wood or extra tannins to express themselves. This is a region where it all comes naturally.”
Top caption: Mark Robinson,left, CEO of Tops, with the team from the Champion Cellar, Keimoes. From left are Rianco van Rooyen, Chris Venter, Mariken Jordaan and Chris Kalp