Chris Williams tastes riesling and shiraz while he waits for ripeness

This is a trying time for winemakers. The cellars have been scrubbed, sanitised and washed. Fragrant new oak barrels have arrived and stand patiently in their plastic wrapping, waiting to be filled with freshly fermented wine. Cellar staff pace around purposefully trying to look busy but with very little to actually do. Bright-eyed and expectant, the 'stagiers' (foreign winemakers come to gather experience) arrive and have to be shown around and promised that grapes will ripen and arrive pretty soon.

I spend hours walking up and down vineyard rows, sampling berries and tasting skins, trying to understand what kind of young wine these bunches will produce. January becomes February and harvest is about to begin.

The harvest appears to be about a week late this year. At Meerlust the mornings are noticeably cooler than normal, the mid-day temperature spike pushes the mercury to 25 degrees and not the expected 29-30 degrees. The skies are blue and no clouds appear, except on the horizon, out at sea where the cold fronts are being pushed further and further south, allegedly the result of global warming. But I am not complaining, warm, dry days followed by cool nights are perfect weather to ripen wine grapes. I am sure the Stellenbosch sauvignon blanc producers are on tenterhooks because a heat wave in the next 10 days will spoil what promises to be a superb vintage. Plenty of wind has ensured a very healthy canopy with no disease apparent.

Learning abroad

This waiting around is in stark contrast to the week I have just spent in Austria as part of the preparation on my Master of Wine course. Intensive daily tasting and written exams followed by superb gastronomy and a fascinating tour of the Austrian winelands. I was impressed by the new-world character of fruitiness and softness in the red wines, but it was the superb white wines, primarily riesling and grüner veltliner that astounded me. The pure minerality and perfect balance of these wines is astonishing. The summers here are warmer than in Germany so these wines offer a little more fruit and richness than their northerly neighbour, but the pure stony minerality of the better Austrian white wines make them perfect for many types of food. I have been converted – but these wines are not inexpensive as the high costs of vineyard inputs pushes the prices above the 20 Euro mark.

And learning at home

Also not cheap were the benchmark syrah/shiraz wines we tasted to get a feeling of where top South African syrahs fit in against their French, Californian and Australian counterparts. The really top wines proved to be disappointing. It was the middle range of particularly Northern Rhône examples of Crozes Hermitage that stood out for me as offering typical Syrah warm, spice and florality at reasonable value. The E Darnaud Les Trois Chênes Crozes Hermitage 2003 was a fantastic wine, unfortunately not available in South Africa but not badly priced at around 13 pounds in the UK.

The Cape examples showed the divergent approach to this variety with many dominated by wood in my opinion. I am not so sure we need to develop a distinctive national style with this variety and perhaps the best response would be to rejoice in diversity, as long as we get to taste wine and not oak.

Two of the Australian examples did not disappoint, with massive concentration and fruit yet still balanced. The Amon Rah is a massive 15.5% alcohol and as black as ebony but remained poised – though I don’t think it would be advisable to drink more than a glass. The Giaconda 2002 comes from the cooler climate of Victoria and this showed in what nowdays seems a comparatively modest alcohol of 14.5 per cent. This was not a Rhone look-alike but a concentrated, richly fruited wine of the sort Australia has become famous for – but at the equivalent price of over R400, I would go for the Crozes anyday!

Roll-on the harvest