It’s a sign of hard pressed times when the Financial Mail asks for your summer shopping list, and you’re encouraged to focus on value for money. Not a hard thing to do with 2009 a comet vintage for Sauvignon Blanc and the year SA Pinot Noir came of age. Herewith my options for the hedonist and hoarder from this week’s FM:

Sauvignon Blanc is top of the terroir pops, reflecting special sites like a dentist’s mirror. 2009 is a comet vintage so good, it would have taken a flying saucer landing in the vineyard to stuff things up. While Henry Ford made Model T’s in any colour so long as they were black, SA Sauvignon comes in four styles: grassy, dusty, flinty and tropical – a NWSE compass of flavour identifiable on a map by taste.

Kiwi green stylistics with lashings of grass and gooseberry hails from the northwest coast where viticulture is rapidly replacing diamond mining. The vines of producers like Fryer’s Cove at Bamboesbaai are so close to the surf they have to spray water on the plants to take off the salt. While no prices are available as the secretary is getting married in Windhoek and the office has taken a week off, if it’s under R100, it’s a gimme.

The berries for Wendy Appelbaum’s DMZ come from Lambert’s Bay and although she hates Sauvignon, she’ll make an exception for this classy fin de siècle duif eie blue (duck egg blue) bottle which she insists is Tiffany blue. At R55 a bottle, Charles Lewis Tiffany is reportedly rotating in his grave.

Wendy Appelbaum & DMZ Winemaker Stefan Gerber

Southwest at Darling, Abé Beukes’ Onyx from Darling Cellars (also R55) has dusty green pepper notes that are so intense, it is quite acceptable to add a few ice cubes to a glass à la Erica Platter.

Even further south in Durbanville and the Maastricht (R60) made by Thys Louw at Diemersdal is ruby grapefruit in a glass. His own Sir Lambert (R80) and Eight Rows (R110) is for serious Sauvignon specialists. Both go well with foie gras pizza, an epicurean indulgence easily arranged at Balducci’s at the Cape Town Waterfront. The Nomada 2007 of Riaan Oosthuizen is my pick of the whites at the late Frank Swainston’s Constantia Uitsig restaurant at R120 a bottle and the 2009 at R60 is a definite sleeper.

Riaan Oosthuizen

Of the Constantia Valley Sauvignons, my pick is from Buitenverwachting (R65), which has an exotic minerality and perfume. Elgin is the promised land for Sauvignon Blanc and the Elgin Vintners (R65) is super if you can stand the orange label reminiscent of SA Airways when it was a flying springbok. Thelema Sutherland Sauvignon Blanc made from Siberia grapes from Elgin is R10 cheaper, as is GT Ferreira’s Zondernaam.

2009 is too soon for Elim Sauvignons, but canny shoppers can pick up Lomond 2007 being dumped (under R100) by one supermarket chain in favour of current vintage (2008). Snap up on sight, as 2007 was a great vintage and two years of bottle age has made the wines richer and more accessible.

For those wishing to hedge their bets, a geographic blend is the answer and the Olive Brook from Spar is a blend of West Coast (Strandfontein), Darling (Groote Pos) and Stanford fruit. Good value at R46, it will be launched mid-October. For tropical fruit expression, Du Toitskloof is widely available and at R28, well priced indeed.

Old vine Chenin Blancs are the crown jewels of SA wine and it’s hard to beat Babylon’s Peak for quality or price at R30 a bottle. White blends are on a roll and the best value is to be found at Tokara where the 2007 vintage is available for R135. Winemaker Miles Mossop was unlucky indeed not to have won the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Competition with it or his own Saskia 2008 last year, at the same price.

For something different, Pinot Grigio is the fastest growing white in the UK and the 2009 from Two Oceans at R26 proves why. For a more serious interpretation, Charles Hopkins’ De Grendel 2009 is a symphony of tropical fruits and granny smiths for R70.

Fans of the late Keith Floyd will have read reports of his last meal and approved of his choice of red to follow the potted Morcambe Bay shrimp: Côtes du Rhône. The closest SA comes to Châteauneuf du Pape is out on the Paardeberg where Paul Kretzel’s Lammershoek Roulette 2006 is an unruly strawberry stunner for R95 a bottle. GT Ferreira’s Zondernaam 2007 Syrah/Grenache is also worth a flutter at R70.

Paul Kretzel

If you want the real thing, hold on until October when Spar will release their Olive Brook Côte du Rhône 2007 for under R80 a bottle. This was a wine rated 95/100 by the America’s überpalate, Robert Parker and is the kind of juice to give wine snobs wet dreams.

2009 was the vintage SA Pinot Noir came of age. The glass ceiling has been well and truly shattered by Two Oceans, a brand praised to the skies in unlikely quarters – Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate magazine. While the 2008 vintage Two Oceans Pinot Noir at R28 will not have Anthony Hamilton Russell quaking in his bespoke blazer from a quality point of view quite yet, with a case of Oceans going for the price of a bottle of HRV, Oceans 12 anybody? Made from West Coast young vine fruit grown on Distell’s organic farm Papkuilsfontein, an unlikely empowerment venture with a group of shebeen queens from Soweto, it is as fresh and lively as Milly Molly Mundy – Mick Jagger’s erstwhile girlfriend.

For a more serious interpretation of the great grape of Burgundy, the Oak Valley 2008 is a stonker (R170) while another 2008 Elgin Pinot, from Elgin Vintners, is a steal at R90. Both the Fryer’s Cove 2008 (no price because of weddings) and Danie de Wet’s Nature in Concert 2007 (R160) allow you to compare the merits of Burgundy versus New Zealand in stylistics.

Polo players will love the Malbec 2005 from Neethlingshof – why go to Argentina when you can find sweaty saddles for R65 beneath Wendy Appelbaum in the Stellenboschkloof? The new label is also a stunner featuring a large “N” that pleased both Corsican corporal Napoleon and this critic.

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