When easy drinking gets serious 30 April 2008

Melvyn Minnaar celebrates both delicious rosés and twist-off caps

There will always be corks in some bottles. Wine has an enduring aura of romanticism and expectation, inbred in the culture that old and new wine lovers and collectors buy into when they join the enjoyers’ fraternity. The pull of a cork, that may, or may not, go ‘pop’ from the bottle as part of the ritual, fits into that lingering heritage. Add to this the immense influence and power of especially the Portuguese cork industry and sometimes foolish, red-herring environmental arguments, and one can see that corks are not going to be replaced as stoppers soon. No matter how strong the arguments about cork taint.

Cork as wine-bottle sealer is a state-of-fact as established as the (some would say boring and unimaginative) attire most males wear to business and meetings. There may be more comfortable clothing - and women have certainly felt free to fiddle with fashion - but the Western tie-and-suit seems to be what men will wear until the end of time. When cork is probably still keeping wine inside the glass bottle.

Yet, like a cheerful African outfit will steal the show at an international meeting when all the rest are in dull three-piece suits, the nimble screwcap as wine closure has become a signal of forward-looking wine-production and adventurism in modern vino-culture. The pro- and anti-scientifics of screwcap closures are argued to dizzy complications. (And there are, of course, other closures available as alternatives to cork.) Manuals (Aussie Tyson Stelzer’s Taming the Screw is a benchmark) and books have been published, both high-brow and popular (Dr Jamie Goode’s Wine Bottle Closures is, in fact, a surprisingly good read). And the arguments will go on.

Yet, the facts are that an increasing number of wines - mostly white, but not exclusively so - are being bottled under screwcap. While South African consumer perception may still be that its has a ‘cheap’ image, the best sauvignon blancs in New Zeeland and Australia have screwcaps. Top whites in famous European regions like Austria and Germany too are coming out under the twist-off stopper. Our top producers, also increasingly aware of keeping their wines untainted and fresh, are slowly coming to the party.

In this argument ‘party’ and ‘twist-off’ are key words. Here’s how it operates: once you’ve liberated yourself from the silly notion of fumbling around in search of a cork screw,  ‘popping’ that cork and then finding your precious wine ‘corked’ or not, the simply, convenient pleasures of the twist-off, twist-on screwcap will become all too apparent. It’s party-pleasingly easy.

In fact, if you like one cool glass of let’s say South Hills Sauvignon Blanc 2007 after the long hot day, or a quick-fix of cheer involving the juicy De Grendel Rosé 2007, you simply turn the screwcap, pour, reseal and return the bottle to the fridge. This is easy-drinking in the most obvious and serious of ways. (Something that seldom comes up for discussion when the wine heritage fraternity meets, is what to do with an unfinished bottle of great wine. You can’t pop the cork back in so easily, can you? With a screwcap you simply twist it back on.) 

The screwcap stopper is a bonus to the enjoyment of wine. (We’re not even talking about the guarantee that you can be assured that the wine is not tainted by cork.)

And while we are talking about ‘adventure’, ‘forward-looking’ and ‘serious easy-drinking’, a toast should be raised to those winemakers who have taken up the challenge to make a more than decent pale pink wine. Yes, rosé is the new wine to have in your glass. For far too long, South Africans have had held onto the impression that rosé wines are cheap, cheerful, sweet and for hippy weddings. The great European tradition of making and enjoying rosé as an earnest occupation seemed to have passed us by. Not so anymore.

The delicious, pretty-looking De Grendel is a splendid example of how seductive pink wine can be. While no one would claim this to be the ultimate wine, it clearly deserves a fair amount of serious attention, everything being in harmony and balance beneath that alluring colour of the early morning. This wine is an inventive blend of cabernets franc and sauvignon with our own pinotage, and a perfect example how a new wave of local winemakers are taking up the challenge to make modern South African rosé that can take an international bow. Watch out, there are more to come - this is when easy-drinking is getting increasingly more serious..

COMMENT

From Marcel Lamprecht:
Dear Ed – Why do you bother recycling such weak and rambling stories? It's bad enough reposting Fridjohn's fictions already available on a newspaper website, but to scrape the bottom of the Diners Club barrel is one bottom too many!