Tasting 10-year-old South African wines

The Nederburg auction is approaching its 40th anniversary and ahead of that milestone the organisers are keen to change the mix of things slightly. There’s renewed energy and a keen desire to restore the auction to its place as one of the country’s most significant annual wine events.

When it was started in 1975 its primary aim was to showcase older South African wine and to convince the country’s wine drinkers that local wines could age, gain in complexity and benefit from cellaring.

Last month a tasting panel, which included renowned UK wine blogger Jamie Goode (www.wineanorak.com) and South African born Master of Wine Greg Sherwood, tasted a range of older wines which have been stored in ideal conditions in the Tabernacle, Distell’s ‘holy of holies’ for the past few decades.

The panel was charged with tasting a range of wines to assess whether they should be added to the catalogue for the 2013 Nederburg Auction which takes place during the first weekend in September.

Lined up before us were Oude Libertas Pinot Noir, Cinsaut, Tinta Barocca and Cabernet Sauvignon – vintages from 1971 to 1979; Lanzerac Pinotage – select vintages from 1963 to 1975, some in half bottles; Zonnebloem Cabernet Sauvignon 1963, 1973 and 1980; and Chateau Libertas 1940, 1965 and 1982.

Even as a wordsmith I found myself unable to do the wines justice. It was a genuinely rare pleasure to taste these wines and sample South African vinous history. They were all impressive. Some had aged a little less spectacularly than others but the panel was genuinely impressed by the quality of what would have been quite humble wines.

And that ostensible modesty of the 1940 Chateau Libertas which is now touching on greatness is even more remarkable when one thinks of how it would have been made. There would have been no fancy whole bunch pressings, no cold soakings or extended macerations, no special first-, second- and third-fill large or small volume barrels earmarked for its maturation… Even the grapes which went into making it were not all noble or destined for greatness.

This is a wine which would have been made as simply as possible – picked around 20 or 21 degrees Balling, made in large volumes, containing a significant proportion of Cinsaut (next to Chenin Blanc, the other workhorse of the South African wine industry…) and having probably had acid added and not too much attention given to the oak it received, probably ancient stukvate or 1000l vats which had more than a few vintages under their belts!

I had a moment where I paused and thought about all the headaches winemakers have nowadays – about ripeness levels, different blocks of different clones of grapes, noting the varied soils the vines are grown in, different harvest dates, the yeasts and various enzymes used to aid colour extraction and fermentation, the smorgasbord of ageing vessels available to them – from 225l to 500l or more and even French, American, Hungarian or Russian oak… And what about Nomblot eggs which are the winemaker’s foefie du jour?

Things were so much simpler in the 40s – and the wine is triumphant 70 years later. Can – and will – the same be said about the wines from our decade when they’ve aged the same length of time? Only time will tell – but fans of wine history will have a fantastic opportunity to bid on some very rare bottles come Nederburg Auction 2013!

– Fiona McDonald