handtomouth

Viognier. Hard to pronounce and hard to like. Yet it’s become a darling of much of the Cape winemaking industry over the last few years; on its own as a floral and usually flabby white, but also as an addition to Shiraz. All of a sudden, if you want to make a serious Cape Shiraz, you seem to need to add a dollop of Viognier.

This is the practise in the Rhone region of France, where they use a small percentage of this white variety to lift the fruit of their Shiraz and also to soften the hard tannins of the red. But by small percentage we are talking five or less. As the Viognier fad has gripped the Cape, this additive has been employed in far higher percentages, often resulting in red wines with a distinctly unsatisfying mid-palate. A kind of middle-aged spread at late adolescence.

But there are some examples of the intelligent and astute use of Viognier. At Fairview, where the variety was first made into wine commercially, the idea was to use Viognier as a blending partner with not Shiraz but Pinotage. “Why re-invent the wheel?” asks Charles Back, who examined the reason why Viognier was used with Shiraz in the Rhone, not just the fact that it is used with Shiraz.

Softening some harsh tannins? It sounds like Viognier has a natural place with Pinotage reasoned Back, and their Pinotage-Viognier blend was born. Pinotage is famous for having quite pronounced and chewy tannins in its youth – which is also the reason why it ages well. But a little softening in the early years, like what’s needed with French Shiraz, is just the ticket.

And it works a treat. The hard edge is tickled, and the natural fruit of the Pinotage shines. Fairview also uses the Viognier in their take of the regional Rhone-style red wine, the “Goat-Roti”; as well as their riff on white Rhone blends, “Goats-do-Roam in Villages,” which is fantastic.

Plus Fairview, and the sister winery, Spice Route, indulge in single variety Viognier. At Fairview, the single-variety wine shows as a floral, ripe melon flavoured wine with a surprisingly elegant and lean palate. The Spice Route incarnation is richer, floral and distinctly broad and opulent in structure. Says Back: “It has a mid-palate texture and weight that works well with the type of food that we enjoy in South Africa”. Some suggestions that were floated were crayfish and mild curries, and I can’t argue with that.

While Viognier is certainly not going to jump to the top of my white variety hit list, I am certainly better disposed to it now that I have seen it in bed with Pinotage. It takes birds of a gamey feather to flock together.

In matters of taste, it is easy to become parochial. Eat your mother’s macaroni cheese for a few decades and you think it’s the best in the world. Drink only South African wines, and you also “calibrate” your palate to their style.

Wines from different parts of the world certainly have styles of their own. These stylistic fingerprints are formed through multiple influences, climate and soil being two of the most powerful. The human factor is also strong, however. The Burgundian wine maker may have a very different approach to his counterpart in Paarl.

Another influence that dominates is age of vine. For a host of reasons, our vineyards tend to be very youthful and tend to be re-planted every couple of decades. Vines that are 30 years old are still considered young in some parts of France, like Burgundy.
Gordon Newton Johnson recently held a tasting of Pinot Noir to explore the soul of this grape, as expressed through the lens of a few different Pinot-producing countries. He asked: “Is the New World only about pure fruit expression?” The best Pinot, the experts agree, is identified by textures and flavours that go far beyond the basic fruit flavours that are associated with the grape: strawberry, cherry, some earthiness. The Pinots of the New World (SA, New Zealand, Australia, etc), when compared to Burgundies, are often identified as having fantastic fruit expression, but little of the mystical depth and texture of the French examples.

The line up was stellar, with leading wines from each country, including: Tuck’s Ridge (Aus), Ata Rangi (NZ), Domaine Drouhin (USA), Bouchard Finlayson, Newton Johnson and Hamilton Russell from SA. In the French corner were some notable first growths: Domaines Dujac, Comte Georges de Vogüé, and Henri Gouges. Vintages varied slightly, but since the exercise was more about stylistics, this was less important.

And it turned out to be true, certainly in the case of the New Zealand wines, that fruit expression was wonderful. These wines are piercing in their intensity, the fruit almost strident in its clarion call. The wines from America tended to be very chunky and well-wooded in style, with the South African wines somewhere between these two: rich in personality, with good fruit and well-made, though tending to be a little too enthusiastically oaked. And the fruit on these wines was certainly of the cherry and berry type.

For texture and a perfume that demanded much more time to explore, the Burgundies were in another league. They had something we cannot buy (though we clearly are spending on French coopers) – vine age. In the words of Remington Norman, noted French wine specialist: “Burgundy has specialised in vineyard selection for centuries and you cannot forget the age of the vines they are working with. Here, we need to refine our selection of site, and make sure our vines age.” True for Pinot, true for all wines.