handtomouth

The company of wine people, who make Versus wines, have made a good bit of money off me and my friends recently. They may even think there is a sudden surge in the Madagascan market ever since we challenged our holiday hotel’s stock of Versus.

Pronounced “ver-soos” by the Malagasy locals, this wine became our unexpected ally after we checked the selection of local and French wines. Madagascar makes a few wines, and in John and Erica Platter’s book, Africa Uncorked, they suggest that the local bubbly is your best bet. We never got to try this wine, unfortunately, but did valiantly try the local still wines. These show a scant disregard for the beneficial effects of sulphur as a preservative. This is either because they want to be organic in style or because they don’t know better, but the result is that the wines taste like sherry, and are brown and oxidised. We opened and checked three, and then abandoned the quest.

To be fair, the state of the wine may have been due to transportation from the winery to our remote beach hotel, or it may have been the result of how long the wine had stood on the (not quite optimum temperature) shelf. These are real obstacles to finding good drinking wine in Africa, where cool temperatures and controlled transportation are as rare as leaders who aren’t paranoid.

The French wine on the shelf, Castel, was a known rot-gut agent and out of contention at the price. That left the selection of South African wines, which pretty much consisted of “ver-soos” red and white. Like most of the wines of South Africa, they had in their favour the benefit of clean, modern wine-making which ensures a decent, if not breath-taking, drink. They also came in one litre bottles, which was a big plus, since we were shelling out R160 per bottle.

The experience got me thinking about the current debate around carbon miles, where the argument runs that people should be drinking the wine from the region that lies closest. The idea, aside from its potential ecological benefit, works for wine in the sense that wine is not a good traveller. It doesn’t like temperature fluctuation or vibration, and it generally comes housed in heavy glass bottles that let in too much light and shatter easily. Local wine also tends to taste best with the local food and in the local setting.

All of which is old news, and the reason why fortified wine, like port and madeira, came to be – they evolved to withstand the rigours of travel. Along with rum, which Madagascar makes some great examples of!

The great thing about winter is the chance to dive into more red wines and also a few stickies, that most grossly overlooked category. Always the modern question: when do you drink them? It is a good thing that these wines age well, they usually do so by default!

The one time I happily imbibe is at dinners where the food and wine is paired, and a glass duly arrives. But order off the wine list? Rarely. Plus you have the concern of how the wine was kept if served by the glass. These wines aren’t being ordered as often as a light sauvignon blanc.

And then at home, a rich white wine or a red wine will typically carry all the way through dinner, and even hide in waiting to present itself again once the initial sweetness of the dessert on the tongue is gone. Barring a large table, opening a sticky is usually going to mean some of the bottle is wasted through oxidation unless you diligently drink a glass a night – but then it sounds like medicine!

The trick, of course, is to drink the sticky instead of dessert, not with it. Another trick is to serve it earlier in the evening as an aperitif, but then you have to make sure that it’s bright enough, what I mean is with enough acidity to wake the taste buds. Clearly port won’t work so well in this capacity, but many of our noble late harvests will be fantastic, like the Paul Cluver Weisser Riesling NLH 2005 with its fresh riesling thrill.

Later in the evening, or on a particularly gloomy day, you want something fuller in body. Monis have recently launched a wooded red Muscadel (vintage 2000) that sips very smoothly and comes packaged in a pretty and tall 500ml bottle, a welcome change in image to the usually-squat and stumpy muscadel incarnations. The wooded part of its make-up is great, because it mellows the drink, also the intense sweetness that these wines can lug about. Just don’t drink it chilled (as the belligerent necktag suggests).

With these wines, it does boil down to the question of having a sweet tooth or not; but then again, in this category like any other, a good wine is marked by its balance. There is no reason why a sticky shouldn’t also have enough acid and tannin to offset the sugar. Take as an example the Peter Bayly Cape Vintage Port 2004 – its smooth sipping and versatile because it’s lighter in girth and all in balance.

The question of whether vintage is important in South African wine comes up every so often. My standard answer is yes, vintage is important, but arguably not as vitally important as it is in Europe.

The preceding winter plays its role in allowing the vine to rest (so much the better when the weather is cold and wet), the growing season dictates the ripening curve and influences quality in endless ways – and of course weather is reliably inconstant. We do have better and worse seasons, for example 2002 is now considered a lesser vintage. That being said, the Cape certainly has more reliable sunshine than Europe has (though this may be historic with climate change) and it is generally true that our ripening season, and wine, is more consistent in style.

One factor that is crucial, yet often forgotten, is the hand of the maker. Although most wine farms now preach the gospel of terroir, the influence of the people who make the wine – and no more so than the winemaker – is vital. Estates with the most consistent style often down-play the personality of the winemaker in order to let the estate personality shine, because, after all, a wine farm can live for centuries but not the maker.

But the hand of the maker is powerful. I was reminded of this the other night when I ordered a bottle of 2005 Meerlust Chardonnay to show to some American guests. They had previously professed a deep love for rich chardonnay, so I thought a few of the Cape’s icons were in order. I can now tell you with certainty that Chris Williams, since taking the reins from Giorgio Dalla Cia, has modulated the Meerlust Chardonnay style quite firmly away from the rich and wood-driven to a fresher, fruit-driven position. He had explained this was his intention, and there it was: not the perfect wine for my oak-loving friends (but very agreeable to me).

By the way, if you like your chardonnay well-wooded and seriously rich, Longridge still specialise in this approach and judging by the award stickers on the bottle, this is still a universally loved style. Another goodie in a soft but less wooded guise is De Wetshof’s Finesse, while my favourite from this stable is the Limestone Hill Chardonnay which is actually unwooded but gets oodles of richness from concentrated fruit flavours.

Speaking of vintage, with many 2005 reds now already appearing on the shelves, the jury is poking its head out over 2004 (famously, every vintage is great until the wine is safely sold). Turns out that 2004 is uneven in quality, and I suspect it will not be a famed vintage in years to come. But if you stick to producers with good track records, you’re doing fine.