Situational variables, so important when tasting fine wine, maximized at second beach Clifton this lunchtime when a herd of sacred cows of the sniffing and spitting fraternity were corralled into the bungalow of Antony Beck for a blind tasting of the maiden vintage of a special Chardonnay. Called Capensis, it is made from grapes grown in Banghoek, Robertson and Villiersdorp by Graham Weerts who gets equal billing to the varietal on the label.

For this is a hand-crafted wine, no messing. The last time I spoke to Graham, we were also tasting Chardonnay on the stoep of Uva Mira on the Helderberg. And that was over a decade ago. The big, fat Napa Chards didn’t show well then and so were replaced by a 2012 Olivier Leflaive Corton-Charlemagne and a 2011 Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay. The Capensis shone like burnished gold.

Forbidden to score the wines, comments bored down to sites and although Kaaimansgat supplied 1/5 of the berries, it dominated the comments. Even if the tasting notes were way off beam with the pronunciation “kaya.MANS.got”. But then one of the tasters had a peculiar idea of what a piel is in the context of soutpiel so it had no material effect.

SA bombed terribly when it came to Cabernet driven blends with a 2003 Kanonkop Paul Sauer up against a Ch. Latour 2004 and Verite La Joie 2004 from Sonoma. One pundit even called the SA meesterstuk a “pyrazine bomb.” Oops.

And we’d got off to such a good start with the 2009 Graham Beck Blanc de Blanc the bomb, “better than” the Schramsberg J. Schram 2006 and the 2005 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne until the labels were vouchsafed. And doubly so when told the price.

The food, from the mobile kitchen of Margot Janse of Quartier Francais fame, was excellent. But then what do you expect when the soup was fashioned according to a Vermeer painting with the light on the left and the shadows on the right of the bowl? Yet another situational variable positioned to show the Capensis in all its glory.

The best Chardonnay in SA? At R935 a bottle, certainly the priciest. Time will tell whether it is a champion but of course, not being a terroir wine in that it the grapes come from three appellations, not the kind of wine for Danie de Wet’s biannual Celebration of Chardonnay.