Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Pinotage
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Marked with generous oak tones, the 2020 Pinotage offers generously layered, elegant, juicy aromas of ripe blackberries, spiced plum reduction and cherry-vanilla pastries. Full-bodied and very juicy, the palate is balanced with a fruit-forward frame and an oaky backbone, displaying more winemaking and style rather than varietal purity and expression. The generous, oak-driven wine ends with a juicy, ripe frame and vanilla-laced finish. For those who collect and enjoy the Kanonkop Black Label Pinotage, you’ll want to add this to your cellar.
Rating: 93+
South Africa’s signature grape, Pinotage is a distinctively earthy and rustic variety. In 1924 viticulturists crossed finicky Pinot Noir and productive, heat-tolerant Cinsault, and created a variety both darker and bolder than either of its parents! Today it is popular in South Africa both as a single varietal wine and in Cape blends. Somm Secret—The name “Pinotage” is a subtle portmanteau. The Pinot part is obvious, but the second half is a bit confusing. In the early 1900s, Cinsault was known in South Africa as “Hermitage”—hence Pinotage.
South Africa’s most famous wine-producing district, Stellenbosch, surrounds the historic town with the same name; fine winemaking here dates back to the late 1600s. Its valleys of granite, sandstone and alluvial loam soils between the towering blue-grey mountains of Stellenbosch, Simonsberg and Helderberg have the capacity to produce beautiful wines from many varieties. The climate is warm Mediterranean, tempered by the cool Atlantic air of nearby False Bay.
Perhaps most well-known for its Pinotage and Bordeaux blends, Stellenbosch also produces noteworthy wines from Syrah, Chenin blanc, Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc. The district’s wards—Banghoek, Bottelary, Devon Valley, Jonkershoek Valley, Papegaaiberg, Polkadraai Hills and Simonsberg-Stellenbosch—all produce distinctive wines from vines with relatively low yields.