Winemaker Notes
Intense dark color. The nose shows restraint, with deep underlying aromas of complex blue and blackberries and cedar aromas typical from Jonkershoek. The palate is nervous and fresh, followed by fine, dense tannins. This wine is built to last and early drinking would benefit from decanting.
Pair with venison and ribeye on the bone.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a rich and robust pour, with an intense nose of char, cigar box and pipe tobacco atop a core of black fruit preserves. It's full and decadent in the mouth, with a robust, velvety palate that offers beautiful structure and fruity richness all at once. The finish is long and wood-fueled at the moment, but this has the stuff and overall harmony to do well over the medium term. Drink through 2031.
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Decanter
Neil Ellis, the Cape’s first négociant winemaker in the 1980s, is one of the most prominent figures in the industry but it is increasingly his children who run the business, with son Warren in the cellar. Jonkershoek Valley Cabernet is prized, and this wine is intended to represent the estate's finest quality, showing red and black fruit, violets and dried herbs on the nose while the palate is rich and broad with fine, mouthcoating tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasted in a vertical sequence, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Jonkershoek Valley offers a more generous core with broad, juicy fruit tones with hints of mint and wilted flowers. Medium to full-bodied, the wine is fleshy and generous on the palate with firm and juicy fruit layers before offering a gripping tannic structure. The wine slowly loosens its grip on the palate before reaching its firm, structured finish.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
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.