A return to elegance? 13 May 2008

Some thoughts on the best of this year's Trophy Wine Show, from judge Angela Lloyd

The day prior to this year’s Trophy Wine Show judging, a small group, including some of the TWS judges, had the privilege of tasting 26 South African wines ranging in age from 1982 back to 1940. During the discussion afterwards, I, not entirely frivolously, wondered if the elegance we had found in these old wines would reflect on our judgment of the youngsters we were to evaluate over the coming three days.

Of course, once our heads were down and a hundred and something glasses – filled with fizz, whites of various styles and sweetness, reds, both varietal and blended, and colourful fortifieds – were lined up in front of us, our concentration was on the present rather than the past.

Four days later, as we were deciding on trophies for the 24 wines that had made it through our painstaking scrutiny to achieve gold medals, I was suddenly reminded of those old wines by an elegance glimpsed in several of these youngsters.

If the 2006 cabernet and shiraz golds, a trio of each, initially impressed me most, it was probably because I hadn’t judged on either of these panels, so had not had to wade through the sea of bolder and less beautiful entries. Vintage might play a role in my tentative enthusiasm; 2006 was the first for years where alcohols actually came down in some cases. It seems clear also that winemakers have a better understanding of the fruit they’re dealing with and confidence in the styles they’re producing.

That said, the really stunning merlot (now how often does merlot justify that description?) is a 2005, which proves even in difficult years the right site and a sensitive winemaker can produce a quality wine.

What typified all these reds was good fruit that hadn’t been mucked up in the cellar with over-extraction or too much wood; as well as purity, there is individuality. Certainly, they have me daring to believe that South African reds are turning a corner.

After all the praise that’s been heaped on South Africa’s white wines, they might be expected to generate enthusiasm. Which they duly did, though much arose from unexpected quarters of the 108 blends of all sorts, semillon, chenin blanc, viognier, riesling, gewürztraminer and a lonely Special Late Harvest, the last-mentioned wine really living up to its qualitative description!

Where Sam Harrop MW, winemaker Chris Williams, associate judge Tairio Masayiti and I agreed elegance was missing was in the viogniers and most of the blends including this fashionable grape. Even a little in a blend can be too much, where the idea is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And whilst on the subject of ‘too much’ , oak and working the white wine in it fell into that hole far too often, a shortcoming that was highlighted by those wines from unexpected quarters. None more so than an unwooded chenin blanc which went on to achieve what must be a first for the style by winning  the sole gold medal in the chenin class. We joked that the winemaker hadn’t messed it up because he/she couldn’t afford oak, but the wine’s sustained concentration and its purity speaks volumes for where and how it was nurtured on the vine.

If the rieslings and gewürztraminers didn’t reach quite the same heights, three bronzes and a bronze and silver, respectively perhaps don’t do justice to the engaging and individual character of this quintet.

I’ve left my colleague Cathy van Zyl to discuss the serious problems involving ‘burnt’ and ‘rubber’, as she judged with technical guys such as Sam Harrop and Gary Jordan in categories where these unfortunate characters were more evident  (though one or two were identified by Anthony Rose in our merlot class).

The counter side of this is as I describe above. It’s a no-brainer that if we can knock the burnt rubber on the head and produce many more wines of the quality and elegance this year’s crop of Trophy Wine show gold medals has identified, both consumers and pesky journalists will have nothing more to moan about.