Last month’s #feesmustfall riots outside parliament scared off many guests at our bimonthly WellsFaber Sommelier Selection tasting at the Cape Town Club. Which was a pity, as La Vierge winemaker Gerhard Smith drove in all the way from Heaven (well the Hemel en Aarde Valley at least) to a rioting Hell to present his wines. My pick was his 2015 Pinot Noir called The Affair which tickles my tiny organ all over the country today.
Bottle of the Week: La Vierge “The Affair” 2015
How much and where?
R129; www.citycellar.co.za
Why? Before wineries sprang up in the southern Cape, the selling point of Walker Bay pinots was geography. The further south, the cooler, hence the better for Burgundy’s favourite son. (That Beaune is quite far from the sea went unremarked.)
No longer the furthest south or coolest (now that fantastic pinot fruit is grown in the Koue Bokkeveld), the focus of Walker Bay spin doctors has moved on to appropriate soils.
Alas, as any geologist will tell you, minerals in the ground tend to stay there and any minerality detected in wine is a misnomer.
Yet another nail in the coffin of terroir, a hypothesis that is essentially a SCAM. By which I’m referring to Soil, Climate, Aspect and Man, and the greatest of these, as St Paul noted, is Man. In this case Gerhard Smith, who spent nine years making wine at the southern tip of the North Island of New Zealand.
The Kiwis invented New World sauvignon blanc and called it Cloudy Bay. They’ve done the same thing with cool-climate fruit-driven pinot and The Affair is an excellent example, even if the grapes hail from Walker Bay. Or the Upper Hemel en Aarde Valley, as Walker Bayists prefer to call their subdivision of the Garden of Eden.
The year 2015 is turning out to be a most excellent vintage for reds and this cherry-driven elegant expression of pinot precociousness is the stuff of seduction and secret affairs.
It’s also half the price of comparable pinots from the rest of Heaven.
Rating: ****
*****: Burgundy
****: Central Otago
***: Russian River Valley
**: Mendoza
*: Alaska
