Pinotage:
The grape the wine trade loves to hate. Whenever someone expresses their dislike of Chardonnay there’s no amount of falling over themselves the Chardonnay-loving trade won’t go to ‘correct’ the deviant in their views and nurture a love of Meursault in every beating heart.
Yet mention an interest in Pinotage and the inverse snobbery can be, at times, alarming. ‘Oh, you don’t drink that do you?’
Admittedly, there’s a good reason for this. In the wake of apartheid and the coming of South African wines to the market there was some appalling quality Pinotage that was burnt and rubbery, and green, viciously tannic and over-oaked and just…horrible!
And to an extent there are still some wines like that but things are changing. Anyone who tells you today they still hate Pinotage hasn’t been tasting what’s being made now at the sharp end of Cape viticulture because if they’d tasted what David & Nadia, B Vintners, Kanonkop, Ashbourne, Lammershoek, Diemersdal, Meerendal and many others are doing with Pinotage today then they wouldn’t be saying it.
For a start, many young producers are stepping back a little and seeing how to do things better. Pinotage doesn’t do well in the hottest spots, you need to keep yields down, a bit of whole bunch helps freshness and you hardly need to touch it to get the colour and tannins you need so treat it with kid gloves. And it can express terroir very well (it has Pinot as a parent after all) and it can be muscular and rich or it can be surprisingly dainty and pretty (its other parent is Cinsault).
They still might not be the greatest wines South Africa has to offer but before too long people are going to be taking a lot more interest in this maligned grape.
