Pinotage, piety and proteas 20 October 2006

The awards lunch for the annual Pinotage Top Ten Competition is one of a kind, says Tim James,
who also sampled the contending wines

When the pinotage acolytes, worshippers, hangers on (and kindly tolerated others) gather together at the main annual celebration of their cult, it’s an event like no other on the sometimes bland social circuit of wine award parties, launches and PR presentations.

For a start, the Absa Top Ten Pinotage affair is bigger and bolder than most – appropriately so, given the nature of the grape. The celebrants pour in from the hinterland of Stellenbosch and Paarl and further afield: largely male (largely large males, whom one tends to categorise more easily as farmers than winemakers, somehow, despite their subtle cellar skills), overwhelmingly white, and predominantly Afrikaans-speaking.

Somewhere down Beyers Truter’s lengthy list of those to be thanked for their contribution to pinotage in general, and this event in particular, are ‘those guys who enter every year and get nothing’. They too were present in the flesh or in spirit, filling the ballroom of the Kelvin Grove Club in Cape Town – and is it wrong to suspect here a little irony on the part of the organizers, when this essentially Afrikaner and rather patriotic-toned event should be held in Cape Town’s bastion of English-speaking arrogance, a building whose very style longs for Europe? Probably there’s no irony intended; more likely choosing to hold the function here was just another generous gesture of inclusivity – like Beyers Truter’s invocation of ‘pinotage’s mother’ as ‘Afrikaans: black, white and brown’.

On all the tables, along with the bottles of pinotage, were vases of proteas.

On the whole, the great and the good of the traditional establishment of Cape wine and banking were here – with even the hierarchs of the sponsoring bank looking like farmers who play in the scrum each week-end, and, like everyone else, making knowing references to rugby in their speeches. How they would all love to have Professor Perold, founder of the religion, somehow there in the midst of them! But at least eighty-year-old Professor Chris Orffer, the eminent academic viticulturist, was present and, I think, all sorts of quiet, respected figures who don’t get invited to most public relations events.

There’s a feeling of authentic culture, of community, of enthusiasm, at the Absa Top Ten awards ceremony, and if it smacks a little of the Old South Africa at times – with even a reference to ‘the Transvaal’ slipping out – well, the intentions are all good. It must be admitted, though, that the hospitable warmth also translated, this year as usual, into a very drawn-out luncheon. A lot depended, for a crucial period, on whether or not you are immune to Beyers Truter’s long-winded, passionate, good-humoured and sometimes witty incoherence – and most of us, myself included, found it winning enough to not realise too painfully how many hours were passing as we waited for the next course (and the next speech and the next presentation…). The glories of pinotage and the wonderfulness of all involved in its making and marketing were, needless to say, the discursive theme.

André van Rensburg was not present, not even in spirit – especially not in spirit.

A brief note on the wines

The Pinotage Association and Absa organise their tastings well, and, before lunch, offer their guests samples of not just the Top Ten, but of the top-scoring twenty. The wines are not tasted blind, but the panel’s choice of ten winners is not announced. For someone like myself, not a passionate member of the pinotage cult, but not (quite) a total heretic, it is not an easy tasting. Generally the competition seems to favour big, ambitious wines, with lots of extract, alcohol and wood, while the pinotages I most enjoy tend to be lighter, fruitier, simpler ones – like the standard Beyerskloof, for example, which wasn’t present.

This tendency showed again this year – the majority of the twenty wines were closer to 15 percent alcohol than 14 – and in many of these it was an obvious, unbalanced component, giving not only power but also an awkward hot finish. But some (Camberley, for example, with an alcohol of 15.73) managed to contain the power better, and also retain a freshness. Excessive tannin is often a real problem with pinotage, but I didn’t notice it too much, too often in this selection – perhaps it was most noticeable as a drying, puckering force in the Wellington Co-op 2003, and Neethlingshof 2002.

There were two wines that were analytically off-dry (Slanghoek and Groot Eiland – neither of which made it to the top grouping), and quite a few others that showed rather excessively the jammy sweetness often found in pinotage. Oak there was aplenty, often too much. The Kanonkop 2004, however, showed oak as well as power, but with a balance and forceful intensity of fruit that (in conjunction with knowing the estate’s track record) suggests it will mature well. But elegance is very, very seldom the point with pinotage

My other favourites included three more from the official Top Ten (all, incidentally, with alcohol levels tucked well under 14 percent): an unshowy, rather charming Boland 2004; Môrewag 2002 also in an unpretentious style; and the spicy Tukulu 2004. I also enjoyed the Dornier 2004 (which didn’t make the cut), for its dry freshness, length and restraint in wooding.