A hundred muscadel summers 27 February 2008

Rietvallei’s old vineyard celebrates its first century; Tim James reports

They must be backbreakingly hellish to harvest, those low old bushvines: the short, gnarled trunk sends out the fruit-bearing canes which lie close to the ground, offering for the hundredth season the purple grapes which long made the words ‘muscadel’ and ‘Rietvallei’ so closely associated.

The pedant would point out that it's poetic licence to speak of the hundredth time, as the first few years wouldn’t have produced much in the way of a harvest, back then before the Union of South Africa was proclaimed, so soon after the Boers in the north had lost their war for independence, with the first World War six years ahead. But a whiff of poetry seems permissible when talking of a vineyard whose centenary is now being celebrated – we have, after all, so few vines of this age in the Cape, and this is our oldest muscadel vineyard.

This quarter hectare of muscadel vines, planted in 1908, lies just outside the doors of the (much younger) cellar of Rietvallei Estate, not far from Ashton in the Breede River valley. The winefarm itself is more venerable yet, of course, and has been in the hands of the Burger family since 1864. A Muscadel was bottled under the estate name for the first time in 1975, by Johnny Burger – who was a quietly authoritative figure at the formal celebration of the vineyard’s centenary, recently held on the farm.

That wine would have been more widely sourced than just this little patch of vines. The idea of bottling the wine from the old vineyard separately came through discussions between Johnny and his son Kobus (an engineer by training who returned to the farm and took over the winemaking in 2002 – the sixth generation of the Burger family on the farm). And so the '1908 Muscadel' was born.

We’re not living in a time when traditional muscadels – these rich, sweet fortified dessert wines, made by adding pure wine spirit to only partly-fermented juice – are widely popular. But Rietvallei’s example has always been regarded as among the very best on offer, and is so even more now that the Muscadel 1908 is bottled separately – only some 1500 litres of it each year.

Tasting old and the young

Some of the older vintages were available at the vineyard’s birthday party (like the Queen of England’s official birthday, it had little to do with the precise day – who’d have planted a vineyard in the middle of harvest? even back in 1908 when they probably did some strange things). The maiden 1975 was, in fact, one of the best – bottle age can do good things for muscadel, if the quality is there to start with. Intense, lightly raisined aromas and flavours, with plenty of complexity – toffee, butter and coffee notes were all there, and more, and the wine was still fresh, and even rather elegant: time had muted the sweetness a little, and there was just a slight edge of bitterness on the finish, like a twist of lemon, which was very pleasing.

The 1980 was attractive too, though shyer, and the alcohol stood out rather unbalancedly; certainly this was not a problem with the 1984; which was well balanced, rich, creamy and generally lovely, and still fresh despite a more restrained acidity. This wine had some mint and orange chacacters for me, and it was noticeable, in fact, how different all the wines on offer were, with age and vintage speaking as much through fortified muscadel as through any wine style.

The 1989 was slightly tainted by cork, unfortunately (well, I thought so, and so did Janake Johansson, the Swedish wine-judge and marketer there of Rietvallei’s wines, though not everyone agreed). A pity, as it seemed to be another very good wine beneath the off-odour. Moving into the modern period, the 1995 seemed rather young and undeveloped after the older wines, but fresh and charming, though a little short. But there did indeed seem to be something of a breakthrough with the maiden 2002 Muscadel 1908, which even in its comparative youth combines opulence with freshness, offering incipient complexities of aroma and flavour.

The currently available 2004 is also an excellent wine, with gentle tannins and the promise of greater interest to come – though there is already plenty there, with floral notes, tealeaf and cherry, and not too much raisin, with a lingering finish that has a sufficient grip of alcohol to cope with the sweetness. You could happily chill it down in summer, and relish rather warmer its comforting richness in winter.

The wine is made nowadays with a degree or two less alcohol than was the earlier practice (it’s a little more than 15%, with a residual sugar in the 2004 of nearly 190 grams per litre), and this comparative lightness is certainly beneficial in the wine’s youth, making for a more elegant, less sweetly heavy balance. There’s surely no reason to suppose, however, that the modern wines won’t mature and develop in the bottle as the best of the older versions did – particularly when the fruit comes from those splendid old vines.

• Rietvallei 1908 Muscadel costs R125 per 375ml bottle

• Link to the Rietvallei website