Diversity is punted as the big draw card for SA wines. So when a group of visiting European sommeliers was presented with a tasting of 120 Sauvignon Blancs at ten in the morning recently, the disappointment at the lack of flavour diversity was palpable. “They all taste the same!” Far better to split the tasting into flights held in a geographic context; perhaps even hosted in the various appellations: Constantia, Darling, Durbanville, Elgin, Hemel en Aarde and even the unexpected Bovlei Valley under the vertiginous pass Andrew Geddes Bains built into the interior in the 19th century.

Say Wellington and Sauvignon Blanc in the same sentence and you’re off to New Zealand, yet the wine which catapulted Wellington (Cape) estate Doolhof onto the vinous radar screen was a 2006 vintage Sauvignon Blanc. As owner Dennis Kerrison remembers “we had a flood of people visiting to see if the wine really came from the Bovlei.” Last year’s elevation of Dunstone Shiraz 2008 to five star stunner in the Platter sighted wine guide will no doubt attract a host of Rhôneish lookie-loos to the Bovlei this summer.

Dennis Kerrison

Located on a major Ley line – meridians of energy that form a grid embracing the planet, an esoteric internet if you will – it would come as no surprise to a passing Chinese geomancer that the Bovlei is suitable for taut Sauvignon Blanc. Known as “dragon paths” in Chinese, Ley lines infuse wines with tension and a tasteable energy, a bit like liquid static electricity. Although for me the real Bovlei terroir character is that taste of blueberries in the Cabernet Sauvignon peaking an elegant Catherine Deneuve nose out of the 2008 Doolhof Bordeaux blend (plus a splash of Shiraz), while the 2008 Malbec with its precise, fine fruit and length longer than the Great Wall of China, runs it a close second.

Over dinner on the stoep of his Grand Dédale (doolhof translated into French, the English version maze having been annexed by Gordon Ramsay) country house, Dennis pointed out the pair of Cape spotted eagle owls promenading on the whitewashed wall beneath the centuries old oak trees, like Russian czarinas on the Italian Riviera a century ago. Dennis preserved the oaks at great expense during renovations, partly because they’re home to Piet Retief (as wife Dorothy refers to the Piet-My-Vrou member of the cuckoo family) although Piet himself was born on Welvanpas, the rustic farm you drive through en route to Doolhof. Dotters says one of the best jokes was to watch twitcher Dennis stalk Piet Retief, leopard style, not realizing the bird had already flown.

The Italian Riviera connection is well made as Dédale is managed by Angelo and Tina Casu while the country house itself is a cross between Provençal idyll out of Philippe Starck and Cape Dutch herenhuis – the kind Lady Anne Barnard (a visitor to the farm) would frequent in Constantia, hiding behind the drapes when the parties became too wild. Presumably wearing the two pairs of knickers she favoured to ward off pirates on her way to the Cape from England – a precaution worth considering if you intend yachting off Somalia. The elegant gable reads “JP MDCCXII DK 2008” and for once the JP referred to – a Frenchman who built the house first time around in 1712, a century before Napoleon drew up his Moscow holiday plans – was not John Platter.

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