Recently in South Africa Category
Once you get past the ridiculously overwrought bottle - it's so big and heavy that no foil cutter I know of could possibly work - what you get is a wine that smells, well, expensive: generic New World Napa-esque fruit + some very expensive Bordeaux toast oak. Hm.
The surprise is entirely in the mouth: the weight is much more French than Napa, and it tastes mostly of very high quality oak. It seems just a little bit watery and then it's gone. There's a very small amount of tannin - frankly, it feels wimpy - and then it's gone. Again: Hm.
I'll come back to this later on and see if it improves, but as of right now, the bottle is the only thing that's impressive here, which is odd considering their $8 wines are pretty good (the Porcupine Ridge line).
Later: After an hour's aeration, this started to taste like mesquite or cedar incense, the kind you'd be in an American national park on summer vacation. Cedar, cedar, cedar, and more cedar. Yawn. Kind of tasty, but utterly lacking in personality. Avoid.
Boekenhoutskloof
The surprise is entirely in the mouth: the weight is much more French than Napa, and it tastes mostly of very high quality oak. It seems just a little bit watery and then it's gone. There's a very small amount of tannin - frankly, it feels wimpy - and then it's gone. Again: Hm.
I'll come back to this later on and see if it improves, but as of right now, the bottle is the only thing that's impressive here, which is odd considering their $8 wines are pretty good (the Porcupine Ridge line).
Later: After an hour's aeration, this started to taste like mesquite or cedar incense, the kind you'd be in an American national park on summer vacation. Cedar, cedar, cedar, and more cedar. Yawn. Kind of tasty, but utterly lacking in personality. Avoid.
Boekenhoutskloof
Price: US $47
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: July 2008
Beautifully, richly purple, my first thought here was simply "wow, so this is what a really good, ripe, New World fake Bordeaux smells like after it's aged for a few years." There's a bit of good old fashioned lead pencil, some cedar box, rich, dark damson fruit, and just a hint of dust (strangely, it reminds me of the classroom I once taught in in Germany; it was a cold, concrete room with not much to smell save for the cigarettes students had smoked before class). It also smells just a bit burnt-sugar sweet; it's something like raspberry crème brûlée, but not overtly so.
Surprisingly medium-bodied, the taste begins all red fruits, and then suddenly shifts gears to a sort of shoe-leather, tobacco-leaf earthiness with a high, violet-leaf note as well; then, it fades out slowly, with subtle supporting acidity, ending on a somewhat sweet (not sugary, just sweet) note with gentle spiciness and good length. There aren't any aged characteristics that I can discern really; this still tastes just great seven years after harvest.
This wine's a keeper - probably the best I've had in a month. Great stuff! I imagine it'll still be in great shape a decade from now - shame I only bought the one bottle!
Meerlust
Price: US $25
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: May 2008
Surprisingly medium-bodied, the taste begins all red fruits, and then suddenly shifts gears to a sort of shoe-leather, tobacco-leaf earthiness with a high, violet-leaf note as well; then, it fades out slowly, with subtle supporting acidity, ending on a somewhat sweet (not sugary, just sweet) note with gentle spiciness and good length. There aren't any aged characteristics that I can discern really; this still tastes just great seven years after harvest.
This wine's a keeper - probably the best I've had in a month. Great stuff! I imagine it'll still be in great shape a decade from now - shame I only bought the one bottle!
Meerlust
Price: US $25
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: May 2008
At first sniff, I thought I'd happened across an egregiously overpriced South African version of white zin: this wine smelled simple and fruity, that's it. Turns out I was wrong: it was just too cold to smell like anything. After a few minutes' reprieve from the fridge, the smell turned to something like flowers that smell like meat in order to attract insects: florid, yeah, but also very, very meaty. Overall, it's something like bacon that's sitting in front of an open window in the countryside; very odd. It almost smells like Malbec, but there's a definite uplift to the nose.
Anyhow: the wine is rich and full in the mouth, starting on a generic red berry note and then quickly resolving to an almost oily, honyed sort of feel combined with black pepper and cherry. There's good freshness here, a bit of residual sugar, and a lovely aftertaste of strawberries and cream that persists well.
All in all, this is an odd one: I don't know of anything like this from the States, Europe, or Australia. It's not cheap, but it's distinctive enough to be good value.
Solms-Delta
Price: US $17.99
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: April 2007
Anyhow: the wine is rich and full in the mouth, starting on a generic red berry note and then quickly resolving to an almost oily, honyed sort of feel combined with black pepper and cherry. There's good freshness here, a bit of residual sugar, and a lovely aftertaste of strawberries and cream that persists well.
All in all, this is an odd one: I don't know of anything like this from the States, Europe, or Australia. It's not cheap, but it's distinctive enough to be good value.
Solms-Delta
Price: US $17.99
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: April 2007
