Chris Mullineux gets around to look at the excitement of experimentation in the modern Cape

I love this time of year. Early winter brings such freshness and greenness to the Cape, and though one would expect the cold and rain to have winemakers resorting to hibernation in their cellars, it’s actually a great time for getting out and about.

Firstly, there are many wine shows around the world. This year’s Prowein and London Wine shows have come and gone, and Vinexpo is currently running in Bordeaux. Though many question the value of exhibiting at these shows, it’s good to go, if only to see the competition out there. The Main Hall at Vinexpo, which is filled to bursting with row upon row exhibititors, is surely as large as Cape Town International Airport!

Many winemakers are making preparations to work a harvest later in winter in one of the Northern hemisphere wine regions, but back in the Cape I find it interesting to use the quieter days to get out and visit friends at other cellars to see how the harvest went – and taste their new wines of course! This week I spent a few days doing just this, and came home feeling confident and deeply excited about the number of seriously good wines coming out of the Cape. For some regions it was not an easy vintage, with very dry conditions in places, and heavy periods of rain elsewhere. In spite of this, it seems very little poor wine was produced.

Ten years ago, there were a handful of Cape winemakers who were flying the flag of consistency, but this is no longer the case. Today there are a number of seriously good wines out there. What gets me really excited though is that although the wines are consistently good, they are not boringly similar. A few years ago it seemed that all high quality wines were tending to taste the same. The serious guys appeared to be applying the same scientifically sound techniques, leading to very good, but slightly unadventurous wines.

Today’s winemakers travel furiously between vintages, exploring and working in the various wine regions of the world; picking up techniques and philosophies definitely not taught at university or college, and this seems to show in the wines. We’re learning how to get the best out of varieties like cabernet and pinotage, and how differently one can and should work to express more versatile varieties like shiraz and chenin.

It’s not to say that the winemakers have abandoned the sound scientific principles that brought about consistency. Instead, it seems we’re learning to experiment within the scientific framework to better reflect terroir and complexity.

Some of the experimenting focuses on new varieties such as mourvèdre or sangiovese and neglected varieties like clairette blanche and cinsaut. Other experiments include the blending together of interesting combinations such as shiraz with petit verdot; full and partial carbonic macerations for serious wines; fermentation on skins for white wines; barrel fermentation of red wines; natural fermentations and inoculation with radically different yeast strains (e.g. candida); very long post-fermentation skin contact; organic and biodynamic farming practices; and most importantly, planting in new, exciting areas with varieties that are carefully chosen and well suited to the region.

Though each of these experiments brings a different character to a final wine, no single experiment is the answer for winemaking in the Cape. It is the sum of many subtle nuances from these and other experiments that are making our wines more interesting and characterful. This extra complexity together with the solid consistency we’re managing means only good things for our industry.