Five wines from the second decade of a five decade Pinotage tasting held at Beyers Truter’s Vermont beach house on Monday.

The most unexpected wine from the seventies was a Simonsig 78. Reading back my tasting notes of blackcurrant tea and cassis, I did a double take, for it read like a note on Cabernet Sauvignon. Yet the label said “100% Pinotage” – a claim that got the late Frans Malan into a lot of trouble as the implication was that wines labeled “Pinotage” were not necessarily pure Pinotage. Which could indeed have been the case, as 75% (and only an incredible 33% in the case of Cabernet Sauvignon) was the legal requirement for single cultivar labeling.

Chateau Beyers

In old Pinotages Duimpie said you could expect a dash of Gewürztraminer as this early ripening cultivar was planted at row ends to feed the birds while Hanepoot would be planted between the vines to give the pickers something to nibble on.

The Swartland 71 was my second favourite, bursting with prune fruit and some flavours of a Wellington bar of dried guavas. A typical dikvoet red, the tannin structure was still firmly in place with even a bit of confiture (“French jam” as Beyers explained) on the nose. There’s a good chance that some of the fruit came from Lemoenfontein, my Swartland sanctuary, as the bush vine Pinotage there was planted in 1968.

The 74 Zonnebloem was softer with a beautifully long afdronk as a Belgian might say. Sommeliers Guido Francque and Fabian Scheys, in town to write a WOSA-sponsored book on SA Wine Routes for the Low Countries, missed the tasting by a day. As Guido confided to me “I am very jealous about the Pinotage tasting.” Guido and Fabian would have surely appreciated the afdronk.

The Stellenryk 76 had a most ambitious label (see below), a Christmas cake nose and a delicate, fine structure while the Meerendal 76 was past its sell by date and oxidized, mugged by bad storage we decided.

Related posts:

1. 50 Years of Pinotage: Preparations The hottest ticket in SA wine this year is the...
2. 50 Years of Pinotage: the 60s A remarkable Five Decades of Pinotage tasting was held at...
3. Pinotage loses two friends The departure of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher from...
4. International with Monument When Belgian oenophiles hear that the Jacobsdal wines of Cornelis...
5. Pinotage Wars Pendock gets hit for a six by Sunday Express wine...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.