The idea that South African wine does not improve with age is a myth which has often been disproved - yet it still persists. Like fairy tales which serve to make sense of the world to infant minds, the idea of the transience of Cape wine may once have had some value. Now, it adds to the opacity.

True, there was a time - from the late 1970s until the late 1990s - when many of the better-known brands were designed for instant consumption. While the winemaking strategies employed to achieve this may have made the wines less age- worthy, very few of the better examples keeled over in the blink of an eye. They didn't improve, but they also didn't collapse.

No doubt the myth suited the cash-flow needs of the producers: if you've been told that the wines are ready to drink, you attribute less value to the idea of storage and bottle maturation. Nowhere is this more evident than with Sauvignon Blanc. It's not meant to age, we were told - and it is now almost impossible for retailers to sell a Sauvignon older than the current vintage.

Aged white wines are still something of a rarity. Most punters will risk a flutter on reds that are five to 15 years old but few would take on a chance on a Chardonnay (which in Burgundy can age gracefully for half a century or more) once it has passed the four-year mark.

Some weeks ago Glen Carlou hosted a vertical tasting covering 10 vintages of the standard Chardonnay cuvée, followed by a comparable line- up of the Grand Classique - the cellar's Bordeaux-style blend. There were some attractive and well-aged wines in both line-ups, though I thought the overall quality of the aged whites set the whole class above the reds.

The Grand Classique evolves graciously, though not many vintages gained in complexity with the elapse of time. With the Chardonnays, however, there were two very clear features. One was vintage quality. The better wines reflected better harvest conditions more emphatically.

The second was their relative age- worthiness compared with the Bordeaux blends.

This is not a unique result. The museum classes at this year's Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show were dominated by white (rather than red) wines. This is counterintuitive. Red wines are supposed to live longer, and to deliver more pleasure with the passage of time.

Some of the explanation may lie in vineyard age. Leaf-roll virus - the bane of the country's winelands - afflicts reds more than whites, so the average vine age of our premium red varieties is now significantly less than the whites. Older vines can deliver more complex fruit - and since a wine can never be better than the grapes which went into it, the best start gives the best chance of a decent end result.

Another feature - which accounts more for the ability to survive than the propensity to evolve - is the level of acidity with which the wine goes to bottle. Our super-ripe reds may taste plush and velvety when young, but they have higher pHs and lower acids than most whites. Unsurprisingly, it was the edgier, grippier whites which dominated the museum classes at the Trophy Wine Show: Cape Point Semillon, Cape Point Isliedh (Sauvignon/Semillon blend) and Cape Chamonix Chardonnay.

As long as we do not reward age in wine, we will not find mature wines easily. Current vintages always cost more than their older counterparts at the time of release because input costs increase and we have a high tolerance of inflation.

Unless we are prepared to pay for the holding cost, and then add a premium for the complexity that comes with maturity, no one will do the job for us. That is why The Bergkelder's Vinotheque scheme has fallen off the radar screen (though vinous mediocrity played its part). If we care about our wine culture, we need to think of fine wine differently from the latest model cars.