“Why doesn’t Johannesburg get Chenin?” wondered Cheniniste Jasper Raats “all they want to drink up north is Sauvignon Blanc.” “Perhaps because the Sauvignistas have gimmicky brands like Splattered Toad” I ventured “with a squashed green amphibian on the label.” The dude responded with a quote from the Coen brother’s cult 1998 bowling movie: “times like these call for a Big Lebowski.” A Big Lebowski Chenin Blanc. But then the dude hadn’t entered his Rudera wines into the competition, arguing rather for an industry-wide tourney along the lines of the Pinotage Association’s ABSA Top Ten Competition. “I hate beauty pageants” muttered the dude.

Jasper Raats

The answer to the dude’s dilemma is an economic one. Why would hard pressed consumers up north (or indeed anywhere) buy Chenin when the winner of the Best Value award (the Kleine Zalze Cellar Selection Bush Vines 2009) retails at R31 and rates 3½ stars while three pages later in the same February edition of WINE magazine you can buy Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc 2009 16% cheaper (at R26 and most likely discounted even further in supermarkets) which rates 4 stars. Better wine for a cheaper price – sounds like a deal for the dude.

The dude has a valid point about a Top Ten rather than a winner takes all victor, as the best rated wines looked like they popped out of the same oaky barrel. Fully 100% of Chenin rated 5 stars, 4½ stars and 4 stars are wooded. In fact if this was a blind tasting, I would have called the overall winner, the Kleine Zalze Vineyard Selection 2008, a Rhône blend with that floral/mineral character of the Loire entirely missing. This is a big wine (15.18% alcohol) with rich botrytis on the nose, a blast of oak on the palate, serious residual sugar (7.3 g/l) made in an oxidative style. Something you’d expect from Adi Badenhorst or Eben Sadie. A consummate show wine, confirmed by more medals on the bottle than Idi Amin Dada, dude.

You have to lower your sights (or raise them, depending on your perspective) to 3½ stars to find an unwooded wine (20% of the category), but then they arrive thick and fast – 33% of the 3 stars are unwooded, 56% of the 2½ starred wines ditto as are fully 75% of the 2 star wines. So clearly the WINE magazine panel prefers Chenin on their wood.

At least the sponsors, Guala Closures – manufacturers of screwcaps – have a sense of humour. For all the 5 and 4½ star wines were closed by cork as were 57% of the 4 star stunners. Of course the lion’s share of unwooded Chenins were screw cap customers, but they were given short shrift by this Pinocchio Panel. Whether SA consumers will agree, is less clear.

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