Michael Fridjhon on tasting a Cape icon

The opportunity of participating in a vertical tasting of the first two decades of Meerlust Rubicon is not an invitation which is easily refused. The wine is one of the Cape’s icons (a word which is much misused but which indisputably applies to Rubicon). It was one of the Cape’s first Bordeaux-type blends and for the entire era covered by the tasting was made only by Giorgio Dalla Cia. In other words, the event offered a rare opportunity to record the performance of a wine, made by one individual, with grapes from a single site. As vinous archaeology goes, this is as close as things get to perfection.

To cap it all, Dalla Cia attended the tasting at the estate and participated in the discussion. Adding Welgemeend’s Louise Hofmeyr (daughter of the late Billy Hofmeyr who pioneered the category in South Africa) to the tasting panel pretty much made for an historic occasion. Hannes Myburgh, owner of Meerlust, and recently appointed winemaker Chris Williams were also among the tasters – though not included in the scoring panel.

Vertical tastings are different from all other wine assessments, especially when you know the details of the wine, if not the vintage, in the glass before you. There is little guesswork in terms of the scoring range: when you are at Lafite, you don’t expect that the line-up will comprise ‘off’ vintages of Mouton. If you are dealing with an array of great claret the scoring should reflect your opinion of the top end of the category as a whole. If you don’t give the best Lafite from a great vintage a score close to twenty (or 100, depending on the system you use) you are in effect saying that great Médoc is not your idea of desert island wine.

The variables are therefore vintage, and the effect of age on the wine. If you have come to taste the best of the last two decades of the twentieth century at Meerlust, you can provide for disappointments but you must expect highpoints worthy of trophy-winning scores. The spread of points serves to identify the triumphs and the occasional disasters – it also tracks the performance of the appellation (in this case the estate), its wine-making philosophy, and the fate of the Cape’s vineyards over this crucial period in the industry’s modern history.

The wines were served in flights of around five samples, each representing roughly half a decade.We knew the period spanned by each flight, but not the sequence within the five wines. That way, any prejudices about vintage reputation were eliminated, while we could make the necessary mental adjustments in terms of age and maturation potential.

The wines were all pre-poured, so we started with the earliest – a prudent decision given the risk of oxidation on some of the oldest wines. At the end of each flight we discussed our scores, an arrangement which replaced the need to conduct a calibration tasting at the outset. It is worth noting that the panellists appear to have been sufficiently independently-minded that no real approchement occurred in the scoring patterns as the morning advanced.

We started with the five first vintages produced – 1980 to 1984. The merlot and cabernet franc (roughly 20% and 10% respectively) came from young vines. Meerlust had been bottling cabernet sauvignon since the 1975 vintage so this component could draw on older planting material. Oak was introduced initially from large Yugoslavian vats, though by 1984 barrique maturation had replaced these. The launch era produced the second highest-ranked wine of the tasting, the 1984, a finely-fruited, beautifully balanced Bordeaux-like wine. It was old, unlikely to improve, but not yet brittle. The 1983, which finished second in the group and eighth overall, showed surprising quality, given the reputation of the vintage. It was more obviously evolved than the 1984, revealing some porty notes, though the same hallmark tobacco whiffs were there and it was holding together quite well.

The second flight – 1985 to 1989 – was only four wines. It included the ‘declassified’ 1985 (sold merely as Meerlust Red) and it omitted the 1987, of which not a single bottle could be found in the estate’s cellar. This was the least auspicious group, with one high-scoring wine – the 1986 in fourth position – and the remainder languishing at the bottom of the log. The 1985 was excluded from the rankings (though its score would have put in fifteenth place). Both the 1988 and the 1989 came last, averaging 14.2 points out of 20, compared with the 17.7 attained by the highest scoring wine on the day.

We spent some time trying to work out why this was the least exciting group. The vintages were good, if not extraordinary, and 1986 is certainly included amongst the best of the decade. There is no doubt that virus was beginning to take its toll on the vineyards planted by Hannes’s father, the late Nico Myburgh – the driving force behind Meerlust’s rise to fame. As fruit quality deteriorated, wood tannins came to dominate wines which never recovered from this lack of balance. Poor ripening translated into thinner, sourer wines, slightly volatile and noticeably oxidised 15 years or more after the vintage.

The third flight was solidly successful – one wine in fourth slot, one seventh, two tied in eighth position and only the 1993 to let the group down. There were a few more controversial results among them: 1992 appealed to three of the five panellists but was scored down by the other two. 1995, which was slowest to develop and seemed quite dumb in the glass, averaged 17 from four tasters but was brought down by the fifth. There was a general feeling that this was the ‘sleeper’ of the tasting, the wine most worth watching over the next decade.

The final flight probably showed the best performance of the day – not because the wines were youngest and had had least time to fall apart, but because the quality and concentration which comes from healthier vineyards, more phenolic ripeness and better handling of oak were amply evident. To everyone’s surprise the 1996 emerged as the highest scoring wine of the tasting. Many producers have ‘talked down’ the vintage which was marred with intermittent rain and generally cooler conditions. Giorgio’s European training and experience paid handsome dividends: unfazed, he simply waited longer than most of his colleagues to harvest the grapes. The cellar’s records reveal a prolonged and quite opportunistic picking schedule where care and rigour repaid the investment.

The 1998 Rubicon was narrowly edged into third slot by the 1984. Four panellists scored it 17, one 18, showing not simply consistency in the scoring but broad stylistic appeal. The 1999 and the 1997 joined several wines in eighth position. Both were victims of slightly polarised scoring, depending on various tasters’ tolerance of oak and stressed fruit characters.

Meerlust enjoys an enviable reputation as one of South Africa’s pre-eminent properties. Its consistency over the years has meant that it should feature in any discussion about the implications of terroir in South Africa. There were certain taste features which emerged regularly across several vintages of Rubicon: the riper wines presented spicy, quite tobacco-like aromas while the leaner ones retreated into reductive ‘pong’. It is possible that the tobacco whiff is an expression of the terroir while the pong is simply a feature of the winemaking. Given Giorgio dalla Cia’s obvious predilection for porcini and truffle you could argue that even the gamey notes in several of the wines revealed the hand of the maestro – though this is stretching the definition of terroir a little far.

Meerlust’s wines, unshowy in their youth and slow-developing, appear to reinforce an argument that it would be wrong – or at least inappropriate – to submit them to a show judging environment. Pedigree, so this position holds, takes time to present itself and this is the one factor which can never be quantified in a blind tasting of young wine. There is some truth to this, though the success of the youngest flight suggests that Meerlust would have nothing to fear in the environment of a well-managed wine competition.

The tasting panel comprised:
Michael Fridjhon Winewriter and judge
Louise Hofmeyr Winemaker, Welgemeend
Dave Hughes Winewriter and judge
Tim James Grape
Cathy van Zyl Grape