You’re not likely to often see the name on labels, but if your taste is for modestly priced sauvignon blanc or grassy white blends from the Cape the chances are that increasingly over the coming years you’ll be swallowing (with pleasure, one hopes) some ‘nouvelle’.

The grape is a crossing of two others: sémillon, which was the commonest variety in the Cape a century or so back and is now making something of a prestige comeback here, and crouchen blanc, an obscure French variety grown mostly in South Africa now, where it is better known as Cape riesling. (Actually, crouchen is even better, and more notoriously, known simply as riesling, tainting and elbowing aside the much greater German variety - but that scandal is another story.)

Nouvelle was developed nearly half a century back by the eminent viticulturist Professor C J Orffer of Stellenbosch University. Orffer also developed, incidentally, other varieties specifically catering for local conditions: one of these, called chenel and claiming chenin blanc and trebbiano as its parents, is still planted. The nouvelle crossing lingered in the Nietvoorbij research institute’s vineyards, unappreciated under its working name ‘gras 26’, until the middle 1990s. Then, presumably prompted by the growth in demand for the grassy flavours of sauvignon blanc, a commercially sized block was planted in the Perdeberg region of Paarl. This is now the ‘mother’ block. The grape was given the name nouvelle under which it is registered for certification purposes.

Now nouvelle is being increasingly planted, mostly for inclusion in blends. It produces wine with a strong green-grassy, green-pepper character, making it particularly useful in warmer climates where such sought-after flavour notes are difficult to come by in sauvignon blanc (except when illegally squeezed from a tube, of course!). It is a vigorous grower, says viticulturist Andrew Teubes, able to crop at high levels, but with a fairly low acidity especially when picked at highere levels of ripeness.

Teubes has been planting nouvelle for Charles Back in vineyards in Darling. Boland Kelder, the large Paarl cooperative, is also one of those making more and more use of the grape – and in fact a Boland nouvelle wine  recently received the trophy for 'Champion Other White Cultivar' at the SA Young Wine Show (though the spelling given on the Show website is 'novelle', which is not as the grape appears to be registered).

Plantings remain tiny as yet (and presumably limited to the Cape), and quality claims are cautious – but will we one day reach the stage that we have now with that other indigenous crossing, pinotage, where nouvelle will be touted as an essential ingredient in the definitive (White) Cape Blend?

– Tim James