Cape Crusade: the multiple talents of South African winegrowers

Pringle Bay Pinot Noir, Western Cape, South Africa 2021 (£8.99, or £7.99 as part of a blend of six, majestic.co.uk) It there are a lot of winemakers that I look up to who are brilliant at making small batches of very special wine with special occasion prices to match. And there are others who I think are doing a great job of making millions of bottles of the type of wine that most of us can afford to buy in our day-to-day lives. The skills required for each are a bit different: most “good” winemakers tend to work closely with vineyards and wineries small enough to receive their daily personal attention; high-volume grape growers focus on mastering logistics, managing teams of grape growers and grape growers, and knowing where to find the most beneficial grapes. South African Duncan Savage is one of the few to have succeeded in both areas. Savage produces some of Cape Town's most exciting small-batch wines under its namesake label; but with his partner Thys Louw from the respected family estate Diemersdal, he is also responsible for the elegantly juicy red Pinot Noir wines and the tangy white wines (Chenin Blanc) Pringle Bay which are among the best wines I have tried this year. /p>

Great Heart Red Blend, Swartland, South Africa 2019 (£9.99, Waitrose) Savage isn't the only talented South African winemaker whose career has sometimes looked like to the art filmmaker is also turning to Hollywood blockbusters. The equally revered Adi Badenhorst, whose Badenhorst family wines are a treasure trove of deliciously inventive fine wines, was once responsible for a Swartland Chenin Blanc that was one of the finest wines in Tesco's finest range (his ripe , rich, yet refreshing and balanced current equivalent, Tesco Finest Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc 2021, made by the large historic family business Stellenrust, remains a great buy at £7.50). Andrea Mullineux and Gynore Fredericks, who work together on the often exquisite fine wines of Leeu Passant and Mullineux, but are also responsible for the excellent Great Heart range, which includes a spicy meaty Syrah-based red and a Chenin blanc Apple Crunch 2020, both down from £14.99 to £9.99 until the end of the month at Waitrose.

Blank Bottle Aasvoel, Stellenbosch, Africa du Sud 2021 (£26, swig.co.uk) As far as I know, Pieter Walser has never made wine for a supermarket. Nor does he quite correspond to the caricature of the artisan vigeneron that I sketched above. His methods are somewhat unorthodox in that, rather than owning and tending his own vines, or associating himself with a single site or region, he hunts in the vineyards of South Africa, looking for small plots of old vines that might yield something interesting for his Blank Bottle label. . It's a method that means you never really know what you're going to get each year. Indeed, according to British importers Swig, who are also responsible for importing wines from Badenhorst, Savage and many of South Africa's most interesting wine producers, Walser's annual production could be 20 to 35 different wines per vintage. I haven't tasted anything like all of them, but I've never been less than enthralled by what I've tried, including, more recently, this absolutely scintillating dry white, made from the Portuguese Verdelho variety, which teases the palate with citrus tartness and then fills it with beautifully pure tropical fruit.

Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach