South Africa’s Wine Soul: Chenin and Chardonnay Lead a Varietal Evolution

Over the past year we rated 570 South African wines, our largest tasting yet of wines from the country, and by the end we got a better sense of why we were left asking for more chenin blanc and chardonnay. They simply expressed a true sense of place, showcasing South Africa’s ability to make intense and rich-fruited wines with freshness and balance, a unique sensation between new- and old-world styles.

It was a challenging country to taste with the ups and downs in quality. All of the wines were tasted in our office in Hong Kong. Our white wine tastings were dominated by chardonnay, representing 30 percent of the whites we tried, closely followed by chenin blanc at 28 percent and sauvignon blanc at 20 percent. For varietal reds, syrah/shiraz and cabernet sauvignon each represented 17 percent of tastings, followed by pinotage at 11 percent.

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But it was chardonnay and chenin blanc that impressed the most. Out of the top 10 varietals in terms of volume, whites from chardonnay and chenin blanc had the highest average scores (91.1 and 90.9, respectively). The chenin blancs were particularly memorable, representing a quarter of the top 20 wines, from top producers David & Nadia, Arendsig and Craven. We believe that this grape can do the most to improve South Africa’s identity as a top-quality wine producer.

Chris Mullineux, the co-owner of Mullineux Wines in the Swartland region, in South Africa’s southwestern cape, said the country’s winemakers have come into their own with chenins, crafting a product that is no longer derivative of French progenitors.

“In the 90s, the best chenins were super oaky; the winemakers were trying to make them taste like Burgundy or they were trying to make them taste like Vouvray, so they were leaving a bit of sugar in them because they thought great chenin had to be like Vouvray,” Mullineux said. “The wines were interesting, but they weren't really authentic. They weren't South African because they were trying to be something else."

His Mullineux Chenin Blanc Swartland Granite 2020, a rich, spicy and full-bodied white, offers a fascinating nose of spices, fruit, chamomile and butterscotch that aptly underscores South Africa’s chenin verve.

In the last 10 to 15 years, old vines in the region are now being made into transparent, concentrated and uniquely South African wines. “We're not picking overripe, or over-oaking the wines, or manipulating them to be like Vouvray or Bordeaux or whatever,” said Mullineux. "We’re not trying to make other wines. We're trying to make South African wines, or Stellenbosch wines, or Swartland wines.”

The change was jump-started in part by the Swartland Revolution, an annual event held from 2010 to 2015 that gathered the region’s winemakers for a weekend of tastings and seminars. It established the narrative scene that has since played out across the country.

INDUSTRY IMPACT:  Claire Nesbitt and Christiaan Coetzee of Uva Mira discuss how the pandemic has impacted the South African wine industry and his hopes for the future.

WINE EVOLUTION: Chris Mullineux of Mullineux Wines discusses the evolution of South African wines and the biggest challenges the country's producers face.

Mullineux explained that the Swartland’s endowment of old vines, classified in the country as vines of 35 or more years of age, was indirectly owing to the region’s role of producing bulk wines 50 or so years ago. Whereas vineyards were replanted in more fashionable regions such as Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek, old vines of mostly white varieties with some grenache and cinsault were left in the more “unfashionable” Swartland region, he said.

Bulk wine remains one of the hurdles on the country’s road to greatness, according to Callie Louw, winemaker at the Swartland-based Porseleinberg winery. "I think that's one of the things plaguing South Africa still," he said. “As soon as the wine leaves our shores in bulk, you sort of cut off the umbilical cord and it's open to the world and [blended with] very average wine. And then it's bottled and labeled as Swartland wine and sold for less than 4 euros a bottle."

Louw said the large amount of bulk wine exports is “not helping build brand South Africa.”

Wines of South Africa, which promotes the country’s wine exports, found that bulk wine plays a significant factor in the exports, representing 62.5 percent of total exports by volume in 2021 but only 23.5 percent by value. Exports were helped last year in part by bans on local alcohol sales due to pandemic restrictions. Packaged wine sales – pivotal to South Africa’s quality image – were “impacted heavily by packaging supply issues, but ultimately managed to show good recovery” in 2021, the report said. These made up 37.5 percent of exports by volume and 76.5 percent by value. This means that producers have full quality control of only one in three bottles sold outside the region.

The United Kingdom and Germany were the two biggest exports markets in 2021, followed by the United States and the Netherlands. Packaged wine sales to the U.K. increased 10 percent by volume and 25 percent by value.

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Christiaan Coetzee, the winemaker at Uva Mira, which sits on the slopes of the Helderberg Mountain Range, agreed that a clear-cut move away from bulk-wine mentality is needed.

“Because of history and bulk wine, it's always been looked at as you get very good value for money. But that perception needs to change,” said Coetzee, whose Uva Mira Chardonnay Stellenbosch The Single Tree 2017 clearly stood out as our top chardonnay: a rich, buttery and layered style with salted caramel and ripe fruit notes.

Despite there still being many estates “that are in the volume game and do not have enough cash flow,” Coetzee believes that there has recently been a greater focus on producing specific varieties that take the country’s wines to a new level. “I think South Africa has done exceptionally well in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of improving quality,” he said.

COLLECTIVE EFFORT

Nadia Sadie, the co-owner of the Swartland’s David & Nadia winery, is of the same opinion. “We’ve definitively seen a shift towards specialization rather than generalists, but it will take time,” she said in an email. “The focus towards certain varieties in certain regions and the collective effort to embrace it makes me excited.”

Contrary to expectations, the pandemic may have helped. While multiple alcohol bans in 2020 and 2021 hindered sales of large-volume South African wines with shorter shelf lives, producers of wines that benefit from aging have been able to focus on their winemaking and on growing export markets.

For David & Nadia, “it's actually been very positive … we used the opportunity to consolidate our farming and wine philosophy,” subsequently deciding to discontinue two wines to focus on chenin blanc and grenache.

David & Nadia Chenin Blanc Swartland Skaliekap Single Vineyard Wine 2020 was our highest-scoring chenin: a compact, tightly wound white with fantastic flavor concentration and focus (and also my "surprise wine" of 2021). Their other two-single vineyard chenins – Platbos 2020 and Hoë-Steen 2020 – were also in the top 10 wines, showcasing the grape’s expressive flavor profile, structure and minerality.

Alongside chenin blanc, syrah and other Mediterranean varietals are thriving in the Swartland (with stellar examples from Stellenbosch, too). Porseleinberg Swartland 2019, a fantastic, vibrant and peppery expression of syrah, was our highest-scoring red alongside the Bordeaux blend Vilafonte Paarl Series M 2017.

“The berry size and the bunch size that you get from here is just completely different,” Louw, Porseleinberg’s winemaker, said about the hilltop farm. “Syrah is something that loves to grow,” he said. “It produces very big bunches, very big berries. This place is just suited to holding back and producing a bit more grip, a bit more flavor and tannin."

Nonetheless, some people still associate South Africa with pinotage as its most famous grape. Among our selection (and not at all representative of the bulk market), only 7 percent were varietal pinotage. Although none appeared among our top 20 wines, they achieved an excellent average score of 90.3 points. We especially liked L’Avenir Pinotage Stellenbosch Single Block 02 2018, which “has all the intensity and tension you could expect in a top pinotage,” as well as expressions from Kanonkop and Longridge from Stellenbosch, and Meerendal from Cape Town.

Some traditions hold in South Africa. Our top-scoring wine was Klein Constantia Vin de Constance Natural Sweet Wine 2018, the legendary sweet wine made from Muscat de Frontignan. The 2018 vintage was the greatest example of this wine that James has tasted in his career, a result of fine-tuning methods in the vineyard and winery to make a more balanced and energetic white. He described it as “a sweet wine to drink when young, to marvel over the intensity and verve, yet also one to age for decades.”

This is testament to Klein Constantia’s centuries-old, consistent greatness, now juxtaposed with a new generation of South African producers determined to take a stand on the global stage with their chenins, chardonnays and anything else they can make at the very highest quality.

– Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor

The list below is comprised of South African wines tasted and rated over the past year by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.