When second best is at least pretty good 17 June 2008

Notes from Tim James on family names on bottles, on winewriting modesty,
and on some 'second labels'

Shortly after delivering my last Noseweek column to Mr Nose I felt obliged to wonder if Something wasn’t putting me firmly in my place.  I’d made airy observations on what seemed a uniquely South African tradition of naming grand wines after proprietoral family members with a very definite definitive in front: The Joshua, The Jem, etc.

Then I noticed two bits of current international wine news. One was British guru Jancis Robinson talking of the need for wine-critics to show some humility. (The fact that this came from someone who ventures hundreds of wine judgements per week, with scarcely an um, er or maybe attached to the score, is indeed pretty newsworthy). The other was an anouncement that the very grand Bordeaux property Château Haut-Brion was changing the name of its second-level wine from ‘Bahans’. I’ve no idea of the meaning of the abandoned name, but I do understand the new one: Le Clarence. The Clarence! Named after Mr Clarence Dillon the American banker who bought the property in 1935 – because, so they say, it was the finest domaine close to the city of Bordeaux – and whose family still owns it, though they’ve all become duchesses and princes now, it seems.

So it’s not only the dynasts of the Cape who do this. At least, though, Clarence was dead before it happened, even if it was a notably poncy name he left behind. Nonetheless, I felt chastened and humble, and decided to restrict my observations here to modestly suggesting some red wines that offer particularly good value.

Where better to start than with the ‘second wines’ of local estates of great repute? Buitenverwachting’s Meifort springs to mind (and I confess I don’t know why it’s named that). The concept of a second wine is interesting. It generally includes the wines that are not quite good enough to make the top wine. Sometimes it’s young vines, or less well situated ones, that give the fruit for the second wine; sometimes it comes around through a selection of the best barrels to go into the grand wine. Having a second wine is often a sign of seriousness and ambition and, depending on the standards for the top label and the quality of all the vineyards, looking among the second labels of top producers can be a pretty smart move for those on a budget.

Or for those in a hurry. Christine 2003, Buitenverwachting’s flagship red blend sells off the farm for R250. It’s excellent, but should really only be drunk in 2010, I’d guess, at the earliest (I had a lovely bottle of the 1998 recently); it’s still rather tough, tight and adolescently awkward. Whereas the Meifort 2004, at R50, is already delicious, and actually much nicer to drink now than its grander relation.

A very similar situation with Kanonkop, really. Though there the second label, Kadette (R55), is the poorer but still classy relation of the aristocratic Paul Sauer (R230) as well as the Pinotage (R160) – in fact there’s more pinotage than anything else in it, helping its lesser seriousness and greater early drinkability.

A modest and tasty wine which I hadn’t known until recently is Freedom Hill’s Cape Blend (about R40). There are a couple of senior Freedom Hill wines made from the best lots of the cabernet, pinotage and shiraz in the Cape Blend. They’re only about 50 percent more expensive, but I myself would stick to this – although (or because) it’s a bit less showy, I prefer it, especially as it’s such good value.

Solms-Delta is one of the properties that is making Franschhoek a exciting place for wine these days. There’s a new range of wines there called Solms-Astor, which are rather cheaper than the ones with Delta or Hegewisch after the hyphen. (Richard Astor is a lover of African music as well as being the scion of the once unbelievably rich American-English Astors, and a partner in the Solms empowerment, history-gathering, wine-making project – read about it on the website, if you can’t get to see the deeply moving museum itself).

Two of the three wines take their names from vernacular dances. Langarm is another Cape Blend (that is, with pinotage plus a handful of other varieties). Vastrap is the chenin-based equivalent. Both are under screwcap, both good value, and highly recommended. The third in the trio is the delightfully named Cape Jazz Shiraz – a sweetish, lightly sparkling red, it’s a bit of a joke, but a good one if you feel like a gentle chuckle.

A later footnote:
It was interesting that the Trophy Wine Show gave at least two 'second label' wines higher scores than the pricier and better known bottlings from the same properties (that's while accepting that trophy-winning Guardian Peak Lapa Cabernet should really be considered part of a separate, second range rather than a 'lower-level' wine than the Ernie Els and Engelbrecht Els, both of which which it hugely outscored). The KC Cabernet from Klein Constantia (whose second-best fruit was combined with grapes from Anwilka in Stellenbosch) trounced the Marlbrook, and Saronsberg's Provenance Rooi outscored wines from the property's senior range.

There are surely a few reasons for this - quite beyond the eccentricities and mistakes made by panels blind-tasting a hundred or more wines. Firstly, as I suggested in relation to the Buitenverwachting wines, the 'second' wine can be, in youth, much more immediately attractive (this is where sighted tastings come into their own, as they can take into account track record and knowledge of how a serious wine is likely to develop). Secondly, sometimes a producer can simply throw too much ripeness and oak at the top wine, and the second wine actually is, to many tasters, the better wine. On these grounds I would agree with the Trophy Wine Show judges in relation to the Saronsberg - I too find the Provenance Rooi a much preferable wine in all ways to Saronsberg's most expensive wines.

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine'