Ellerman House, high on the slopes of Lion’s Head and Signal Hill, is one of Cape Town’s most discreet and elegant guest houses. It’s hard to know what to focus on: the jaw-droppingly stunning vistas of Bantry Bay and beyond or the original Irma Stern’s, Pierneef, Claerhout and John Meyer artworks that grace its walls.

Yet it was merely the backdrop for a lunch hosted by Luke Bailes and Francois Rautenbach of the equally elegant and discreet Singita. As Rautenbach explained, the intention was to demonstrate Singita’s wine philosophy of showing wines at their peak, after optimum cellaring and maturation. From the outset, the intention at Singita was to never serve a red wine of less than five years old to guests.

Owner Bailes said Singita’s wine list had initially contained a raft of international choices but that guests naturally wanted to sample South African wines to enhance their whole African experience. “It’s all very well telling people that a wine will age for five or 10 years but they need to taste it to fully appreciate how the wine is capable of developing. We’re in a position to do that,” Rautenbach said. Naturally, that stimulated much debate and discussion but the takeout was essentially that we in South Africa do not realise or fully appreciate the true potential of our wines.

The synchronicity of this lunch could not have been better, coming as it did two days after the annual Nederburg auction held in Paarl on 16 and 17 September. The auction was begun 36 years ago to showcase aged South African wines – and some of the prices realised at the 37^th staging showed that buyers certainly appreciate mature wine. A record R68 000 was paid for six bottles of Monis Collectors Port 1948 by Nigerian wine importer and businessman Obi Josephat Ndibe. That translates to R11 333 a bottle… Three bottles of 1961 Chateau Libertas sold for R20 000 while a single bottle of 1930 KWV Red Muscadel Jerepigo was knocked down for R6 500.

Auction organisers were delighted that in spite of the volume of wine being down on 2010 the overall sale tally was up: R6 133 840 vs. R5.7 million. International buyers also accounted for 46% of all sales, up from last year’s 30%.

“What we try to achieve on the food and wine side is to be as memorable an experience as that of the game and hospitality side. If a guest left Singita and said that the wines were ‘nice’ I’d have failed in my job. I want people to say that they have left really impressed – by the diversity, the quality or saying they didn’t know South African wines were capable of such complexity.”

Illustrating his point were the wines: a 2007 Waterford SBS (an experimental Sauvignon Blanc Semillon blend), 2007 Cederberg V Generations Chenin Blanc and 2007 De Trafford Chenin Blanc and two red blends, the 2003 Sequillo and 1999 Vergelegen Vergelegen. While different in style, the point was made that SA whites are capable of maturing beautifully. The Cederberg Chenin in particular had a marked freshness to it while the other two whites displayed more tertiary development. Both the Sequillo and Vergelegen were smooth and rounded, packed with flavour and a delicious savoury element.

Singita goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure sufficient stocks to enable them to provide their guests with this singular vinous experience. There are 60 tons of wine in a dedicated, temperature controlled storage facility in Stellenbosch. When transported to either the bulk stores or one of the four Singita lodges in Kruger, Zimbabwe and Tanzania the temperature never fluctuates between 12 and 16 degrees.

Perhaps the anecdote of the day was when Vergelegen cellarmaster Andre van Rensburg visited Singita to host a wine dinner. While being shown around the cellar by Rautenbach he discovered a bottle of 1999 Vergelegen Semillon. “We don’t even have any more of this in the winery!” he said. Rautenbach then recounted that Van Rensburg dipped into Singita’s stock to enable the winery to enter – and win! – the museum class at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show with the same wine!

Ultimately it was a genuine pleasure to be able to drink and enjoy aged white and red wines from South Africa, to appreciate that perhaps we do drink our wines too young. It’s a tragedy that due to cash flow or storage constraints so few local producers are able to hold back significant quantities of wine to mature them fully. After all, Neal Martin, the writer who handles the South African portfolio for Robert Parker’s influential Wine Advocate, stated that some of his most impressive wines tasted on his visit earlier this year were the older ones – like the 1969 Lanzerac Pinotage that blew him away.

It was announced earlier this year that UK master of wine and wine writer Neal Martin would take over responsibility for reviewing South African wines for Robert Parker’s influential Wine Advocate and eRobert Parker.com.

At the time, I made contact with Martin, wanting to find out what his view on South African wine was. He declined to comment, saying that he’d not visited the country nor tasted enough South African wine to be able to form a proper judgement. I was impressed that he didn’t shoot from the hip and have a stock reply. That was back in April. In May he set foot on Boland soil for the first time, visiting to judge at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show as well as taste an extensive range of wines in the weeks that followed.

At the Trophy Wine Show feedback session he said he’d been impressed by two things in particular – and this was after just four days. Firstly, the older examples of South African wines – a Lanzerac Pinotage from the ’60s specifically. “That wine could stand shoulder to shoulder with any Bordeaux First Growth of similar vintage. Those are the wines that South Africa should be taking to the world to prove what you and the country are capable of.” Secondly, Chardonnay. “There were two in particular which impressed me in a large lineup of Chardonnay. I only had to nose them to know that they were world-class.” One of those was the ultimate multiple Trophy winner, the 2009 Chardonnay from Paul Cluver which not only took top honours as the best Chardonnay but also Best White Wine of the competition and the International Judges’ Trophy.

In an article in the 2011 Icons guide Martin wrote: “For this writer, wines at the pinnacle have to meet strict criteria. They must offer not so much an intensity of fruit, but an intensity of flavour. There must be a sense of completeness. There must be a sense of effortlessness, like a singer who merely needs to open her mouth to enrapture an audience.

“Without question, South Africa is well on its way to making truly world-class wines that belong at the pinnacle of appreciation.”

Well, Martin has now written a profile on South Africa entitled “Pour without Prejudice” detailing the results of his South African wine safari, describing his visit as “visceral”. South Africa offers exceptional quality for the price, he said, exhorting readers to try them, saying that incredible heights are being achieved by the greatest examples.

Some of those local wineries singled out for attention after he awarded them top (90+) Robert Parker/Wine Advocate scores are Mvemve Raats which notched up a 96 for the 2008 vintage of MR De Compostella Bordeaux blend, along with De Wetshof, Ken Forrester Wines, Klein Constantia, Morgenster, Rustenberg and Hartenberg.

Martin singled out the younger generation of winemakers for not being hidebound by convention nor following the practices of the previous generation. “They are the ones seeking more marginal terroirs and pockets of old vines, experimenting with grape varieties, keeping it simple but creating wines full of personality and full of stories that attract consumers.”

Although South Africa’s winemaking history stretches back 350+ years, its regenesis is actually more recent than that. While most people will circle 1991 as the year in which things within the local wine industry started changing significantly because it coincided with Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom after nearly three decades of incarceration, there were pioneering winemakers who altered the face of the local landscape some decades before.

The late Frans Malan was one such pioneer who launched Kaapse Vonkel, initially made from Chenin Blanc, in 1971. At the time, sweeter carbonated sparkling wines were popular – Grand Mousseaux or Grandma’s Socks as Francois Malan recounted. “I was 15 when my dad did the first bottle-fermented sparkling wine,” he said, recalling that it was the most expensive local wine in the country at a whopping R3 a bottle. “Each bottle was sold with a little pamphlet explaining the style and process involved.” Educating local consumers about the South African wine with a French tradition was core to the success of Kaapse Vonkel although the first few years were tough.

There were a few tribulations along the way – including the quality of the bottles used. Bottles, commonly used for German sekt wines, were imported but were quite dangerous, being thinner and less able to withstand the pressure of the second fermentation. “We had to equip cellar workers with thick gloves, aprons and face masks because the bottles often exploded,” he said. His brother Johan, now the cellarmaster, also had a few colourful tales of his boyhood spent in the cellar. One tale involved him miscuing a catch from someone on a stack of bins – with the consequence that the bubbly bottle hit him on the head! Like the mythical Dom P monk, he too saw stars…

The foundations of the current Methode Cap Classique Association – the first producer organisation in the country – are also rooted in the groundwork which Simonsig’s Kaapse Vonkel laid. Simonsig soldiered on alone for around 10 years before Boschendal produced a bottle fermented bubbly and other producers slowly took up the challenge.

Nowadays, Methode Cap Classique production is on a steep and steady rise, driven by producers’ desire to extend their ranges and ride the wave of popularity among consumers. MCC is no longer just a celebratory drink for weddings, engagements, birthdays and anniversaries. It’s common to enjoy a glass of fizz as an aperitif – at braais, before rugby or simply because it’s a Saturday or Sunday and the sun is shining.

Kaapse Vonkel has changed over the years. In 1985 Pinotage was added to the Chardonnay in an attempt to add red grape character. “It worked but it wasn’t the answer,” admitted Johan. Two years later Pinot Noir joined Chardonnay in the classic Champenoise tradition. The Malans even went so far as to plant the third traditional Champagne grape, Pinot Meunier, on Simonsig, specifically for use in their MCCs.

At the recent 40^th anniversary celebrations Johan recounted that a base wine tasting during a visit to Moët & Chandon in 1990 was a revelation. “The base wines were so much fruitier than I expected. We’d always worked on the principle that they should be neutral and not display varietal character.” That led to a change in harvesting at the Stellenbosch farm: nowadays they pick underripe, not unripe and as a consequence the base wines display more fruit.

Malan also said that the dosage used in Kaapse Vonkel had changed over the years. Initially it had to be sweeter to provide more roundness and commercial appeal but this had been reversed in the past few years “as consumers understand the styles of MCC and appreciate dryness more”.

With volumes of Kaapse Vonkel having doubled in the past five years and the bulk of production being exported, the Malans of Simonsig are asking themselves how big they want this wine to get. After revealing that the redesigned Kaapse Vonkel packaging took a year to perfect, Johan Malan’s parting shot was that life begins at 40…

This blog’s title is Cape Chatter – and the theory is that it’s about the scuttlebutt, the stuff folks are talking about. This past week all the chatter was about Allan Mullins – the man who helped put wine retailing on the map in South Africa.

A tribute dinner was held at Spier to celebrate Mullins’s achievements as well as to raise funds towards his considerable medical bills. Anyone who has ever met him will appreciate that he never let his disability get the better of him. Apparently while recuperating from his diving accident in Conradie Hospital he was nicknamed The Shrink. His irrepressibly upbeat nature and positivity and fierce desire to walk again had more of an impact on fellow patients than the white jacketed doctors because it came from someone who was flat on his back with metal tongs attached to his skull too. He was facing the same hardship and challenges as they were.

For two decades he was the taster behind Woolworths’ extremely successful wine department. Numerous winemakers paid tribute – and it wasn’t just lip service – to Mullins and his ability to taste. His mission was not simply to take a wine farm’s existing bottling and put it on the shelf. From the outset his goal was to set Woolworths’ offering apart from what was already out there. He visited wineries and painstakingly worked his way through their tanks and barrels before sitting with the winemaker and blending a wine unique to Woolworths.

It was often somewhat galling for the rock stars of the SA wine scene to have to admit that Mullin’s judgement was better than theirs. This was because it often happened that the Woolworths’ wine would gain higher honours than their own bottlings! Cape Point Vineyards is a case in point with Woolworths’ Cape Point Vineyards Limited Release Sauvignon Blanc 2009 cracking a Platter 5 Star rating in 2010. Duncan Savage’s blushes were spared by achieving the same accolade for the Isleidh 2008 however!

The 1993 edition of the Platter Guide’s write up on Woolworths is illustratively apt: “As a one-stop wine shop, they don’t come better than this nationwide chain, offering nearly 60 wines across the whole taste and budget spectrum, in 45 stores. Senior wine selector and Cape Wine Master Allan Mullins has taken supermarket wines into another league here, stretching his suppliers to peak performances. The top-of-the-range reds, in particular, are brilliant: no serious local claret collector should be without at least some of these special blendings, fine-tuned by Mullins himself in the various cellars. Though each an individual, they reveal his own preference for power with accessibility – an unbeatable combination.”

It continues: “They’ve now introduced a Wine of the Year: the first is the ’91 Reserve Sauvignon Blanc from Klein Constantia, and to cope with the expected clamour, bought up the estate’s entire stocks.

“Woolworths’ company mantra of reliable value runs right through the range; Mullins is conscious of the wide spectrum of his customers’ tastes and caters for every possible trend. Greens will applaud his acquisition of the Cape’s first commercial-quantity organically-grown wine; those with sulphur allergies have their own red, but will have to wait until 1993 for the next no-sulphur-added white; Mullins decided the ’92 was not up to his exacting standards.”

Wine used to be a neglected facet of the grocery retail environment. Nowadays, supermarkets are where most of the sales growth lies for any brand. A universal trend, granted, but it’s been interesting to observe the subtle changes over the years. There are almost no supermarket chains in South Africa which don’t boast their own exclusive wine labels.

But that’s not the only contribution Mullins has made: he inspires people with his good humour and ability to overcome physical challenges, he is always up for a good party and infrequently meets a bottle of wine that he doesn’t like, he serves on numerous judging panels and brings his knowledge of what the consumer palate enjoys to all of them. As the Platter Guide stated, he “stretched his suppliers to peak performance” and their wines were better for it.

Mullins has not only seen the dramatic changes which have taken place in the South African wine industry and fraternity over the past two decades, he’s made a huge contribution to many of them.

(There is a silent auction on the website www.allanmullinstribute.com if anyone would like to bid on some of the unique items donated.)