Chamonix Estate, the award-winning wine farm in the Franschhoek Valley, has bottled its first wine from the highly-rated 2020 vintage, with the Chamonix Unoaked Chardonnay 2020 ready for release once South Africa’s Covid-lockdown is over.
The demand for organic wine and other sustainably farmed, natural products is set to increase as a result of the current Corona crisis, with consumers becoming increasingly aware of the relationship between nutrition and health. According to Frank Meaker, cellarmaster at Org de Rac, an organic wine farm in South Africa’s Swartland wine region, it is still too early to say what the impact of this will be on local wine producers as all wine sales and exports are shut-down due to the virus.
One of the many wine events stalled by the current C-crisis was the annual Chefs’ Lunch hosted by De Wetshof Estate. The De Wet family shares the opinion that the chef community plays a profound role in promoting the wine industry, and therefore deserves all the acknowledgement it can get from those producing el vino. Thus, since 2011 De Wetshof has annually hosted a dining and wining event for between 30 and 40 chefs. It selects a different restaurant for each occasion, and it is just a kick-back, eat-and-drink affair, usually turning into an early-evening party.
Vintage 2020 in Marlborough, New Zealand is being described as a clean, disease-free harvest delivering “stunning flavours” in this region’s world-famous Sauvignon Blanc wines. A batch of these will be shipped to South Africa later this year under the Diemersdal Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc label, the second year this Durbanville estate will be introducing South African wine-lovers to the marvels of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
With the Bordeaux wine region commissioning the planting of new varieties more suited to a changing climate, the profile of the traditional South African Bordeaux-style blend might soon have to be revisited. Currently, this blend is cobbled together from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. And this format has not only led to some of the Cape’s most celebrated wines but also its most commanding brands. Think Rubicon from Meerlust and Paul Sauer, courtesy of Kanonkop. In icons, we trust.
Chamonix Estate, the award-winning wine farm in the Franschhoek Valley, this year saw an exceptionally healthy harvest, both in terms of yield and grape quality – a different scenario to 2019 when the ongoing drought resulted in a crop almost half of this year’s volume of 160 tons. Chamonix’s wines are exclusively made from grapes grown on the estate.
Brief, intense and yielding expressive young wines. This was the take-out from harvest 2020 on Org de Rac, the organic wine estate in the heart of the Swartland situated just before the town of Piketberg. As harvesting heads towards completion, cellar master Frank Meaker says it was, climate-wise, an erratic season which made initial predictions as to the yields and quality impossible until the grapes landed and the first juices began fermenting.
