Mullineux Family Wines Straw Wine (375ML half-bottle) 2013
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
For the very first time, Chris Mullineux told me that the 2013 Straw Wine contained some botrytis. Same as previous years, it comes from one schist and one granite vineyard and it was cropped between January 26-February 5. It delivers 268.8 grams per liter residual sugar and was aged for 12 months in fifth-fill French oak. It has a gorgeous, very pure bouquet with honey, mandarin, orange peel and a touch of peach that is incredibly detailed. The palate is viscous, beautifully balanced and perhaps the purest that I have tasted since their debut in 2008. Layers of honeyed fruit infused with orange zest and mandarin, razor-sharp definition on the finish that has electricity flowing through it. Stylistically equidistant between a fine Sauternes and Tokaji, this might turn out to their best Straw Wine to date. As for the price...just how many bottles of Yquem could you buy for the equivalent. The cork?
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Wine Enthusiast
Made from 100% air dried Chenin Blanc, this is a remarkably well-balanced, knock-your-socks-off effort, loaded with lush, seductive notes of honey-drizzled apricot, peach preserves, baked apple, orange oil and honeycomb. It’s full and unctuous, but not flabby, with beautiful lifting acidity that keeps the palate fresh. The long, sticky finish boasts a gorgeous honeyed spice flavor. It’s delicious now, but it’s also a wine that will easily age another decade or more.
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Wine Spectator
Unctuous and intense, with maple, date, dried orange peel, clove, cardamom and singed ginger notes all coursing along, backed by a hint of green tea on the finish. Chenin Blanc.
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We are a small, highly focused Family winery based in the village of Riebeek Kasteel producing a select Family of hand-crafted wines from the granite and shale based terroirs of the Swartland Region of South Africa.
The Swartland is a beautiful and wild place. The landscape is a series of rolling hills, with a few significant outcrops of rock that form the Paardeberg, Riebeek Kasteel and Piketberg Mountains. It is not an easy place to establish vines, and is a region that has as much of an influence on the vineyards and people who farm there as the people have on the land itself. This brings to mind what film director David von Ancken has to say about the old American West: "The primal, universal power of the landscape strips away everything but the truth of men's souls." In much the same way, we feel the Swartland landscape bares the souls of grape vines, and in those varieties that can take the ruggedness, true personality of site is revealed.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
With an important wine renaissance in full swing, impressive red and white bargains abound in South Africa. The country has a particularly long and rich history with winemaking, especially considering its status as part of the “New World.” In the mid-17th century, the lusciously sweet dessert wines of Constantia were highly prized by the European aristocracy. Since then, the South African wine industry has experienced some setbacks due to the phylloxera infestation of the late 1800s and political difficulties throughout the following century.
Today, however, South Africa is increasingly responsible for high-demand, high-quality wines—a blessing to put the country back on the international wine map. Wine production is mainly situated around Cape Town, where the climate is generally warm to hot. But the Benguela Current from Antarctica provides brisk ocean breezes necessary for steady ripening of grapes. Similarly, cooler, high-elevation vineyard sites throughout South Africa offer similar, favorable growing conditions.
South Africa’s wine zones are divided into region, then smaller districts and finally wards, but the country’s wine styles are differentiated more by grape variety than by region. Pinotage, a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, is the country’s “signature” grape, responsible for red-fruit-driven, spicy, earthy reds. When Pinotage is blended with other red varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah or Pinot Noir (all commonly vinified alone as well), it is often labeled as a “Cape Blend.” Chenin Blanc (locally known as “Steen”) dominates white wine production, with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc following close behind.