South African Wines
The other day I organised a tasting where the clients asked to try both a white and a red that were a little bit different and value driven with the ability to find good bottles for around the £10 mark. I was also asked to suggest a potential snack pairing for each wine.
Challenge accepted!
The South African wine industry is suffering due to COVID-19 lockdown bans, so it felt fitting to choose a couple of varieties that are some of South Africa’s pioneering grape varieties. If you want to find out a bit more about what’s happening in SA right now, scroll down to the end of this post.
The wine: Chenin Blanc and Pinotage (South Africa). The food: Smoked salmon and a selection of hard cheeses.
Chenin Blanc
This Chenin Blanc from The Vinologist has grapes that were harvested early, leaving a puckering acidity.
My favourite food with this was the smoked salmon! The smokeyness from the salmon complimented this perfectly and wasn't too overpowering, whereas the acidity from the wine cut through the fatty oils in the salmon leaving a creamy texture on the palette. The wine itself isn't complex and is still young, with lots of pear and citrus fruit and a bit of marmalade. After a few swirls of the wine the nose opened up to reveal mango and sharp passionfruit. I still can't decide if I either really loved the acidity from it, or if it was a touch too much to keep it balanced. All together a good Chenin at a decent price from Majestic.
Pinotage
Some wines are divisive and this Kraal Bay South African Pinotage, bought from Majestic wine seems to be one of those.
My view: A young Pinotage, heavy on the black fruit followed by subtle red berries. It isn’t really complex but there are hints of vanilla and smoke on the finish, and on the nose there is a powerful spice. It could get away with some heavier tannin to balance out the high alcohol and acidity, but the levels that it has certainly make it a quaffable drink.
After reading reviews of it, and customer ratings on Vivino (follow me here), it’s divided by an almost equal split between 5* and 1* reviews (with lots in-between). Sometimes it just comes down to personal preference.
What’s happening in South Africa
In normal conditions South Africa produces around 974 million litres of wine a year and reaches revenues of around £852million, this feeds directly into their economy.
Due to Covid, wine sales worldwide have decreased over lockdown and social distancing periods. Wine producers are certainly feeling the effects of this, but South African wineries are certainly feeling this more than others. Why? because they are the only country during the pandemic to enforce a ban of both alcohol and tobacco sales. this included exports to other countries (export equates to around 50% of production).
This had a huge impact on wine production - the industry employs over 290,000 people - and with the risk of them being unable to start up with the same force puts jeopardy on a lot of those jobs. It is predicted that this ban alone along with the effects of coronavirus will mean at least 18,000 jobs are lost from the SA wine industry, and there will be a loss of roughly £15million a week. Out of their 500 wineries it is predicted that around 80 won’t open again. This job loss, and loss of small businesses is going to have a big socio-economic effect on the country.
If this is something that you are interested in looking into in more detail then I recommend looking at some of the past BBC news articles which explain it quite well. If you want to support the SA wine industry, then go out and buy their wines from your local independent, supermarket or merchant. Every little helps and you may find something you didn’t know you liked!
