Tim James reports on Welgemeend Estate Reserve 1979 – 2001

It came to seem inevitable that there would be a vintage missing from each line-up in this series of tastings of the Cape’s oldest bordeaux-style blends: Meerlust was unable to find a bottle of 1987 in its cellar, Overgaauw had no 1992. And the maiden Welgemeend 1979 was – well, ‘there’s definitely a case of it, but we just can’t find it!’ said winemaker Louise Hofmeyr, apologetic and frustrated.

This was the most signicant lack, as Welgemeend 1979 was South Africa’s first commercial bottling of a wine based on the classic Bordeaux blend of grape varieties: involving all or some of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot, and sometimes a soupçon of petit verdot. And in the early years – up to 1984 – the Welgemeend also included malbec, a variety for which these days Argentina is nowdays better known than Bordeaux. After 1984, Welgemeend’s malbec went into an alternative Bordeaux blend, Douelle.

‘A passion for wine’ seems nowadays invoked nearly every time a press statement about a winemaker is issued or a back-label is written. It was a genuine love, curiosity and determination that led land-surveyor Billy Hof-meyr and his wife Ursula to buy a small farm on the cooler side of Paarl in 1974. A wine amateur in all senses, he couldn’t give up the day job at first, and brought more ingenuity than money to building a cellar, with Ursula sharing the load in establishing the vineyards and winery.

Five years later – just beating Meerlust to the post – the Hofmeyrs released their historic bordeaux-style wine. (Incidentally, another notable pioneering wine was born on Welgemeend in that year: Amadé, named for Mozart to reflect Billy’s other great love, music, was, with its pinotage component, by a long way the first of the category now trying to establish itself as the ‘Cape Blend’.)

There’s a little irony in the fact that, while Welgemeend could probably be fairly regarded as the most conservative over the past few decades of the four pioneering Cape bordeaux blends, it offers some of the more noticeable outward signs of change – most noticebly its change of name to Welgemeend Estate Reserve from the 1994 vintage, and a few radical changes of label design. As for winemakers, while the van der Veldens of Overgaauw have changed generations and have also brought in a ‘foreign’ winemaker, Giorgio dalla Cia saw Meerlust through up to the 2004 harvest, and Beyers Truter started easing away from Kanonkop only after 2002. In this respect, the shift at Welgemeend came both more slowly and more turbulently and tragically, as Billy started showing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s as the 1980s closed.

Daughter Louise arrived for a holiday – and remained. As lacking in formal training as her father, but equally guided by the model of great Bordeaux wines that she had been brought up to love, she learned fast, on the job. There were early hiccups: the 1991 vintage was released only as a ‘Dry Red’ – although it performed very creditably when we tasted it amongst the others in this line-up.

Real continuity was ensured, I think, partly by what the Wel-gemeend soil and the vineyards offer, but mostly by this wine aesthetic shared by the two winemaking Hofmeyrs (and by Ursula too, though she drinks little these days). Sometimes, seeing the clever deployment of grapes in different styles by highly trained winemakers who can and do turn their competent hands to anything, at a time of enormous commercial pressures towards an internationally acceptable style, one wonders whether an aesthetic has a significant role in winemaking. It has for the sort of wine the Hofmeyrs have wanted to produce. Tellingly Louise speaks of how so many wines – including some of the fine names of her beloved bordeaux – have lost their ‘soul’ in their quest for powerful American critics’ scores.

The wines

There were three vintage-based flights, from oldest to youngest, tasted blind with the vintages muddled, in order to preclude the effect of prejudices about some years.

Despite offering plenty of refined enjoyment, the first group was a little disappointing to those with experience of older Welgemeends; with wines of this degree of age and development bottle variation can be significant and there were a few here which disappointed, particularly the 1983, which can be excellent. Most of these wines came in the lowest segment of the overall ratings, apart from the 1984 (‘well structured, with rich fruit’, noted Angela Lloyd, ‘with good balance and length’), and the 1986, which was the tasting’s top-scorer (along with 1994): ‘bordeaux-like’, according to Chris Williams, now winemaker at Meerlust, with ‘full, rich, concentrated red sweet fruit’.

Jörg Pfützner, sommelier at Aubergine restaurant in Cape Town, found some stalkiness in the lesser wines of this flight, but welcomed the reasonable alcohol (nothing above 12%, mostly less), and remarked on how well they would go with food. On the whole, most of these wines were generally thought to be past their peaks, though still eminently drinkable.

The second flight, from 1987 through 1994, covered the period of winemaker transition. The 1987 was a great favourite, coming fourth overall, with Williams the only demurring scorer, though his notes were positive. No hurry to drink this wine, suggested Lloyd, though it is unlikely to develop further. The 1994 showed Louise Hofmeyr in confident control of her cellar and understanding how to deal with the grapes offered by her vineyards. (The 1991 was declassified; the 1992 revealed uncertainty, and was marred by the acid she was persuaded by the experts to add!)

Interestingly, 1994 was not only the first vintage to be renamed ‘Estate Reserve’, it also marked the fuller use of the estate’s second label (Soopjeshoogte), meaning that more of the lesser fruit was siphoned away from the flagship – a strategy that clearly made sense. It made for a richer wine than before, with slightly higher alcohol – though still well under 13%. The blend, which varies annually, was this year a not untypical 40% cabernet savignon, 32% merlot, the remainder cabernet franc. A typical Welgemeend trait is the subtle restraint of the wooding: about a quarter of the barriques were new French.

The final flight was of younger wines, up to the next-release 2001. Two things became clear here: firstly, that the Estate Reserve is still a wine that requires some bottle age before it will start showing its best. Most tasters noted these as still very youthful, some rather austere and closed as yet. The standout in this grouping was the current release 2000 – with perfumed, sweet fruit, said Williams – and deserving (and needing) 15-20 years development, according to Hughes.

A second point was the effect of heavily virused vineyards in poor-ripening years like 1996. Although still lively and pleasant, fruit concentration was markedly lower, and the wine was thought to have little future. That said, alarmist views on the horrors of virus would find little support here. Chris Williams, no friend to virused vines and overall the sternest scorer at this tasting, could find no evidence of resulting imbalance. He stressed, in fact, the wines’ structural balance, and approvingly noted the ‘dry toothsome tannins’ – especially on the older ones: those made in the last decade or so he found ‘fuller and rounder, with more fruit and more opulence’, though showing continuity with the earlier vintages.

Williams also noted – as did sommelier Pfützner, and in fact everyone present – that the Welgemeend style meant the wines would be an excellent counterpart to good food. Which would gratify Louise Hofmeyr, whose aesthetic is horrified by ‘show wines’ (she ruefully knows only too well that her young wines often perform poorly in blind tastings).

The tasters were left with a clear sense of continuity at the end of this tasting of wines spanning two decades. Angela Lloyd sums it up well when she notes that ‘the wines have remained true to Billy Hofmeyr’s initial stylistic goal. In their moderation, Welgemeend wines remain full of personality.’

If this report hints at a more personal and even elegiac tone than a tasting report should, it is not, I think, because of a personal friendship with the Hofmeyrs which must be acknowledged (it post-dated my admiration for the wine, and my scores showed no gross evidence of partiality!). It is because Welgemeend, the Cape’s birthplace of both the classic bordeaux blend and the pintage-based ‘Cape blend’, is being sold. In the short history of modern Cape wine the Welgemeend name resonates, despite the quietness of its current reputation. It will be a sad day when the Hofmeyrs move from the farm. They will leave behind a tradition of finesse and restraint in winemaking that is not overwhelmingly evident in the Cape today; we must hope that the tradition is respected and built upon by those who follow here.