Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine & Spirits
In the warm, dry 2017 vintage, Andrea and Chris Mullineux hit it out of the park with their straw wine, a sweet wine from air-dried grapes. The couple, who work with viticulturist Rosa Kruger, blended this vintage from two parcels: a 37-year-old vineyard of chenin on shale on the Kasteelberg mountain in Riebeek Valley, and a cool site on the Paarderberg, the mountain range dividing Swartland and Paarl, where old bush vines grow on decomposed granite. Rather than letting the fruit get superripe, they harvested it at normal levels (22° Brix in 2017) and left it to dry in the shade outside for several weeks. They then pressed the bunches whole and racked the juice into barrels, where they let ambient yeasts do the work of fermentation. When the yeasts petered out—after about six months—the Mullineux dosed some barrels with sulfur to preserve the freshness of the wine, and let others oxidize. The end result slips over the tongue like satin, notes of stone fruit, broiled pineapple, honey and marzipan left in its wake. It feels somehow weightless, more like a surround-sound experience than a direct hit, and leaves the body tingling. At 308 grams of sugar per liter, and 11.3 grams of acidity, it’s likely to last for decades in the cellar.
-
Decanter
Immense sweetness and concentration on the palate, with an unctuous texture infused by riveting acidity. Spicy, stem ginger, tropical fruit, honey-baked quince and apple flavours, along with a suggestion of panettone. This is a long, layered and vibrant sweet wine style. Drinking Window 2020 - 2032
-
James Suckling
Dried peach stones, apricot tart, dried mangoes, caramelized oranges, creme brulee, banoffee pie, a touch of citrus, orange marmalade and creme caramel. Sweet with a dense, full, oily texture, but there’s some lovely, high acidity right at the back of the palate.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Straw Wine has a fresh and vibrant core of apricot and stone fruit and displays soft oak tones with fresh, sweet corn and honeysuckle flowers. On the luscious palate, the wine is sweet with focused golden raisins, candied green apple, peach blossoms and honeycomb. The finish is voluptuous and velvety with a clean and long-lasting experience that exhibits an excellent focus and precision in winemaking.
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.