Nederburg may be SA’s largest premium lifestyle brand, but it’s also the most nimble. Nimble Nederburg. Cellarmaster Razvan Macici presented a clutch of new releases last night to a blather of bloggers at Sidedish in Rose Street in the heart of the Bo Kaap.
Dinner was curated by Andrea Foulkes and kicked off with a zingy and zaftig 2010 Sauvignon Blanc – the official white of the World Cup and the first Nederburg to be closed with a screw cap. But unlikely to be the last after one of the bottles of Ingenuity White 2008 matched with a smoked snoek and bacalhau fishcake turned up corked. “We only made 4000, so losing one is serious. If anyone returns a corked Ingenuity, I’ll replace it with two bottles. The 2009 blend has been made up and I wanted to go screw cap but couldn’t find the right bottle.”
Razvan at Sidedish last night
The evening’s real excitement came when Razvan confirmed that this year, his benchmark single vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, the Nederburg Auction Bin D215, will come from grapes grown in Ceres rather than Durbanville. “The Ceres vineyards lie at an altitude of 1100m and the soil has a lot of slate and gravel which impart a minerality to the wine. The palate is incredibly broad and the wine will age well.”
Razvan has long been a pioneer of new varietals in unlikely places and he dropped another bombshell when he called Philadelphia “the best appellation for Shiraz in SA. Not up on the hill next to Capaia – the wind is too wild – but lower down.” Which throws down the gauntlet to the Swartland and Wellington, appellations which have been making all the running to date, not least in the pages of sighted wine guides. The grapes for his elegant Ingenuity Red 2007 come from Darling (Sangiovese), Durbanville (Barbera) and Paarl (Nebbiolo) and the wine had an incredible lightness given the huge concentration of dark cherry flavours. This was Tuscany takes on Piedmont or as Clare Mack summed it up “Italy in a bottle!”
Another gauntlet was dropped when Razvan mentioned in passing that he has made a tank of coffee Pinotage. “We’ll probably blend it away,” but not if the marketing department at Distell grabs it first, I’ll wager. The 2009 Noble Late Harvest (gold at the International Wine Challenge, a disappointing silver at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show as last year the 2008 won the trophy and this year’s wine is better) brought down the curtain on an uproarious evening with Razvan commenting “if I left Nederburg tomorrow, this is the wine I would take with me.” Shareholders in Nederburg brand owner Distell will be hoping that date lies many decades in the future.
