The back label of the Stellenbosch Ridge 2009 Bordeaux-style blend (the classic varietals minus Cabernet Franc which winemaker Coenie Snyman does not like and so did not include on account of its “steeliness”) says it all: “Stellenbosch is unique in that it is the centre of fine wine, academia and culture in South Africa… Stellenbosch is birthplace and home to many of South Africa’s greatest leaders, intellectuals, artists, scientists, sportsmen and winemakers.”

Coenie Snyman and Jean Engelbrecht

Marketers in Franschhoek will be throwing their made-in-China berets and printed-in-Singapore Platter 2012 guides up into the air at this bumptious presumptuousness. Best red, best winery and best super-quaffer for Franschhoek this year, according to the Platter paw-paws. Heck, even the best white was from Rawsonville and older than the best red, too! But of course Stellenbosch philosophers would respond that this year’s Platter selections say much more about the guide than about the wines, with the choices confirming the poverty of the rating process employed. And they would not be wrong.

Although an attractive idea, evidence for Stellenbosch as the epi-centre of SA culture is less convincing. Ignoring the heavily politicized “peace prize”, SA’s super-genii Nobel laureates hail from Germiston in the case of Sydney Brenner, Springs for Nadine Gordimer, Allan Cormack from Johannesburg and Max Theiler from Pretoria. The only one not born in Gauteng was JM Coetzee who hails from Cape Town. So Stellenbosch has some work to do.

But wines like this fruit-driven rather than herbaceous style Bordeaux blend make the point that Stellenbosch is certainly the centre of gravity of SA fine wine. Lovers of that more austere expression need look no further than Chris Keet’s First Verse 2009, another Stellenbosch Bordeaux blend, which brings perfumed Cabernet Franc back into the frame pioneered by his Cordoba Crescendo. A most remarkable wine. There are more world class Bordeaux-style blends in the Eikestad than the president has wives: Paul Sauver, John X Merriman, Vergelegen, Glenelly, Thelema, Tokara, Muratie, Dalla Cia…

Chris Keet

This latest addition, The Ridge, was the dream of Dilly Malherbe, Jannie Durand and Jean Engelbrecht and although business pressures forced the first two partners out of the venture, they can be well pleased with the result.

Jean Engelbrecht