"One day you're just a kid, then you're the 'new generation', not long after you're the avante-garde, and then, before you realise it, you're just another has-been." There's nothing particularly sagacious in this mordant rendition of tempus fugit, but in the world of Cape wine the passage of time is gaining velocity. Neil Ellis is now an industry leader. A 'mere' quarter of century back he pioneered the concept of vineyard rather than estate wine, of fruit source rather than farm cellar. Who ever would have thought that this would so swiftly become the new orthodoxy?

UK wine writer Oz Clarke once wrote that the SAA Shield - the first wine 'test match' (held in November 1995) between South Africa and Australia - revolutionised Cape wine. This was not so much because the 78 - 21 drubbing inspired the cellarmasters of the era to do better, but because the 'cellar rats' (the new kids on the block) discovered how much we needed to learn if we wanted to become global players. They travelled abroad to acquire the knowledge. Within a decade they had become the new generation of winemakers and were in a position to implement the knowledge they had gained.

Eben Sadie - widely regarded as South Africa's only real cult winemaker - began his career at the newly launched Spice Route winery near Malmesbury little more than 10 years ago. Within a few years he had gone independent - his Columella and Palladius brands swiftly acquiring an international following - despite (or perhaps because of) pricing that pitched them substantially above anything else from the Cape.

Tasting for the Platter Guide last year I came upon the Pinot Noirs being produced by Peter-Allan Finlayson - son of Peter Finlayson (pioneering Pinot producer at Hamilton Russell Vineyards in the 1980s and since then the guiding hand at Bouchard Finlayson in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley). I have since tasted his 2008 Crystallum Cuvee Cinema several times and I think it is consistently one of the top three produced in the Cape.

Wade Metzer is another talented young producer now getting some of his own vineyard selections to the market. He - like Sadie - has made the Swartland his focus and his fruit source. His 2007 Syrah - unlike many other potentially cult cuvées - is surprisingly inexpensive. The grapes come from three separate sites, each offering quite specific flavour profiles. The assemblage is elegant, aromatic and finely textured, a haunting rather than a blockbuster statement whose unobtrusive virtues could so easily be disregarded.

Trizanne Barnard (who has just launched her own Trizanne Signature Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2009) used to be the winemaker at Anwilka - the joint venture established between Klein Constantia, Bruno Prats (of Chateau Cos d'Estournel fame) and Hubert de Bouard of Chateau Angelus in St Emilion. She chose to leave the security of this high profile cellar (whose reputation she had helped to establish with a couple of very fine reds) in order to go it alone.

Sourcing her fruit from Elim, she has put together a profoundly good white Bordeaux blend. Small though this category is, it includes some of the country's best wines - the flagship bottlings of winemakers like Vergelegen's Andre van Rensburg, Cape Point's Duncan Savage and Tokara's Miles Mossop.

In short, this is not an area into which the faint of heart are advised to stray. The Trizanne 2009 is comfortably the equal of the best of them. It has intense, almost tropical Sauvignon notes, texture and flavour on the mid-palate, and real vinosity and length.

At around R100 per bottle, it is at about half the price of the wines against which it competes. With only 3000 bottles available for sale, there won't be much about when it finally peaks in perfect drinking condition.

Sourcing the wines:

Crystallum Cuvée Cinema peter@crystallumwines.com 082 420 2142

Metzer Syrah 2007 metzerwines@gmail.com 084 340 8278

Trizanne 2009 info@trizanne.co.za 082 383 6664

From Business Day, 17 February 2009