We rated over 850 South African wines this year, in both the Western Cape and in our Hong Kong office, and the best wines we tasted show immense freshness and drinkability, defying the country’s warm climate.

The top South African wine this year, from pioneering winemaker Eben Sadie, is the Sadie Family Swartland Columella 2022. It’s the 22^nd vintage of the red blend, now composed of six varieties – syrah, mourvedre, grenache, carignan, cinsaut and tinta barocca – from across 12 Swartland vineyards.

It’s layered and incredibly complex, as well as aromatic, showing violet, spice, tea, peach and orange fruit aromas. But it’s also structured, with tight, sleek tannins and fantastic freshness and has an alcohol level of just 13.2 percent, which is the lowest Sadie has achieved for the blend.

“We have changed our viticulture to allow us to pick at 13.5 alcohol at physiological maturity,” Sadie told me over the phone recently. He used to pick at 14 or 14.5 alcohol when he started, 25 years ago. He has gradually increased the proportions of heat-loving, acidity-retaining varieties, like grenache and tinta barocca, with a view to “preserving acidity and freshness in the wine.”

“Our vision for Columella is to be the best possible ambassador for what the Swartland is, with the variability of our soils and climates,” Sadie said, whereas “our nine single vineyard wines from historic sites [the Old Vine Series] … are just a snapshot of a single reality.”

The Columella 2022 is one of only two South African wines we rated 98 points, and it’s also the only one in our Top 100 Wines of the World 2024. The average worldwide price of Columella is $130, which is on the higher end for South African wines but not on the same global price scale as other wines of its caliber. What’s more, for a South African wine, production is substantial at over 1,200 cases of 12 bottles. This “starts to be a volume where the world starts recognizing the wine,” according to Sadie, who believes that what South Africa is lacking is high-level wines produced with more than 50,000 bottles (over 4,000 cases).

The availability of the wines strongly factored into their ranking, alongside their score, price and “wow” factor. Almost all the wines in this list have production quantities of above 150 cases, which although relatively low on a global scale is par for the course in a country that has suffered from international embargoes in its recent past. In areas like  the Swartland, smaller vineyard plots – mainly due to strict vineyard-purchasing regulations – also translate into limited output.

Several great wines are excluded from this list because of tiny production quantities, like the two-barrique production (50 cases) of Kershaw’s Deconstructed Series, or Mvemve Raat’s new white wine Vesperi (100 cases, to be released next year).

Our No. 2 wine is further testament to the freshness and elegance of the best wines from South Africa. The Storm Pinot Noir Hemel-en-Aarde Valley Vrede 2022 is at once floral, salty and spicy, wowing with its intense fragrance alongside a firm and focused palate. Winemaker Hannes Storm attributes its floral perfume and tannin finesse to the high iron content in the soil, saying that they “strive for wines with texture. If you can keep the aromatics, that’s fantastic.”

I struggled to pick between Storm’s trio of fragrant, single-site pinot noirs in terms of quality, but the Vrede won out over the tense and restrained Ridge 2022 (No. 12) and the open and elegant Ignis 2022 because of its higher production level – over 1,000 cases were made. But they all offer great value at around $40 each.

The Vrede 2022 is one of 11 wines on this list from the small Hemel-en-Aarde valley, which is the second-most wines from any one region, behind the Swartland with 19 wines. Another Hemel-en-Aarde pinot noir in our top 10 is the Crystallum Pinot Noir Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge Cuvée Cinéma 2023, which has fantastic structure with an elegant, airy quality and vibrant red-fruit character.

Four other wines from the Swartland are in the Top 10 alongside the Columella 2022. The Rall Syrah Swartland AVA 2023 (No.3) is a superbly fresh, peppery and savory blend of two syrah vineyards, with fantastic concentration at only 12 percent alcohol. It’s made by another new-generation winemaker, Donovan Rall, who said he was inspired to start his own winery after working a harvest with Eben Sadie in the 2000s.

Around the same time, Chris and Andrea Mullineux started their winery, Mullineux, to focus on syrah and chenin blanc. At No. 5, the single-site Mullineux Syrah Granite 2022 is immensely fresh, structured and mineral, with rocky and spicy complexity. As the name suggests, the syrah is grown on granitic soils (which promotes higher acidity and lower pH in the fruit, according to Andrea Mullineux) in a vineyard planted in 1988.

Like syrah, our top chenin blancs fall under both single-site and multi-vineyard categories. The David & Nadia Chenin Blanc Swartland Skaliekap Single Vineyard Wine 2023 (No. 6) has fantastic coolness, tension and minerality, as well as a superbly long finish. It’s consistently one of the best chenins from South Africa (the 2022 was our No. 2 wine last year), made from 40-year-old vines planted in the shale soils of the Paardeberg, a region known as one of the best terroirs for chenin blanc.

Another Swartland chenin blanc in the Top 10, the A.A. Badenhorst Chenin Blanc Swartland Grensloos 2023 (No. 8) is a brand-new blend of Adi Badenhorst’s estate chenin blanc vineyards, planted from 1968 to 1971, that were previously bottled separately. It’s aromatically complex, full-bodied and intense, and of course has excellent freshness, too.

The third chenin blanc in the South Africa top 10 is from the Citrusdal Mountain – an arid northern, inland and higher-elevation area. The Alheit Vineyards Chenin Blanc Citrusdal Mountain Huilkrans 2023 (No. 7) is made from old bush vines planted at 450 meters above sea level and has exciting notes of orange, stone and citrus fruit, as well as minerals and oyster shells, showing both density and tension.

The established wine area of Stellenbosch has the greatest representation on our Top 100 list with 38 wines, although only one of these made the Top 10. The Mvemve Raats Stellenbosch MR de Compostella 2022 (No. 4) is a sophisticated cabernet sauvignon-led, Bordeaux-style blend that exhibits perfectly ripe black-fruit, nutmeg and sage character, with fantastic structure. Seek it out – it holds its ground when compared with Bordeaux Left-Bank classics.

The final bottle in our Top 10 is a wine from neighboring Franschhoek, the Boekenhoutskloof Semillon Franschhoek 2022 (No. 9), which is consistently one of South Africa’s best semillons. It’s creamy, textural and full-bodied, from very old vines planted in 1902, 1936 and 1942, and it’s widely available, with a production of 1,250 cases.

The Sadie Family Chenin Blanc Swartland Rotsbank 2023 (No. 11) also deserves mention. It’s the only other wine from South Africa we rated 98 points, but it features outside the Top 10 since we limit each producer to only one wine in the Top 10 (and to two wines for the entire list). The Rotsbank 2023 is the second release of this wine, which is made from nearly 40-year-old chenin bush vines, and it shows unbelievable tension, minerality and steeliness. It can be found globally for an average price of $70 and has a solid production quantity of 563 cases.

“It was one of my lifelong dreams to make this wine,” Eben Sadie told me, adding that he waited 14 years before he could buy the vineyard. But that’s a story for another time.

It's an exciting time in the South African wine scene, where many winemakers continue to innovate with an eye on the future. Although the leading variety in this list is chenin blanc – 24 wines are pure chenin blanc, or steen (the South African name for the grape) – there are slightly more red wines (57) on this year’s list, with syrah and red blends (both Bordeaux- and Rhone-style) together claiming a third of the list.

The diversity of varieties, even in just the top 20 wines, illustrates the resolution of this generation of winemakers to farm grapes best suited to their unique growing conditions. For mid-range and premium wines, South Africa is worlds away from the likes of mass-produced sauvignon blanc or merlot of other "New World" wine countries. Yes, it’s chenin blanc land, but not only. And yes, it’s still bulk wine-driven in terms of volume – a relic of 20^th century regulations, embargoes and cooperative domination – but there is now more global recognition of independent premium wines than ever before.

– Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor

Note: The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2024 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.