Delaire Graff Estate, South Africa – Part ll Wine Tasting

History
The estate was founded in 1679 by Simon van der Stel. Simon brought with him a sound knowledge of viticulture. In 1982 John Platter (wine writer) purchased the estate which was then known as Avontuur. Looking at the magnificent view, John decided to rename the wine farm Delaire Estate, meaning “From the Sky”. Laurence Graff, Chairman of Graff Diamonds International acquired the estate in 2003 and vowed to transform it into South Africa’s most desirable art, hospitality and wine destination. In just three years the estate was rated one of the top ten wine producers in South Africa.

The Estate
The estate currently owns 20 hectares of vineyards which are located on the slopes of Botmaskop Mountain. The vines benefit from a north-facing aspect as well as high-altitude and maritime influences. Winemaker Morné Vrey produces excellent red blends dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, with impressive single block Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz, a 100% Cabernet Franc rosé, and some supremely elegant vintages.

It is interesting to note that Delaire Graff Estate wines rank among the most prestigious in the Southern Hemisphere, where their cutting-edge 450-ton gravity-fed Estate winery is a celebration of both old and new.

After a lengthy tour of the “Owner’s Villa” we headed to the main building walking through breathtaking landscaped gardens, stunning sculptures, and art.  It’s interesting to note that the gardens have over 350 indigenous plants, exotic plants and flowers.

Once inside I had to ask …. for a brief visit to the Graff Diamonds store as it begs for further investigation. Once inside (no photos allowed) it was certainly the ultimate experience — so many enticing pieces and iconic stones were on display. I felt like I was inside a beautifully designed jewelry box.

After a twenty-minute conversation with the Assistant Manager on Graff Diamond’s history, we headed off to the Delaire Graff Tasting Room.

On route, we came across Laurence Graff’s recent acquisition the original of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s ‘Chinese Girl’, which is currently displayed at the entrance of the winery. This is said to be one of the most recognizable paintings in the world.

Delaire Graff Tasting Room
The Tasting Room offers incredible mountain and vineyard views. The sommeliers were quite knowledgeable on South African wines, and their service was quite intuitive – this is certainly hospitality at its best!

Delaire Graff Estate Wines Tasted

Delaire Graff Estate ‘Sunrise’ Brut MCC 

The Backstory
This wine was named after the magnificent 118.08 carat “Delaire Sunrise Diamond” the largest square emerald cut fancy vivid yellow diamond in the world.

Alcohol: 12.5%
Method: Traditional Method
Dosage: Brut
Blend: 58% Chenin Blanc, 34% Chardonnay & 8% Cabernet Franc

Tasting Notes
Light yellow gold in colour; a stream of fine and persistent bubbles; with green apple and melon dominating the nose; the palate shows finesse and intensity, some citrus flavours [lemon and grapefruit] along with toasty brioche; zesty and fresh – elegantly balanced; lovely long yeasty citrus finish.

The Delaire Graff Sunrise Brut MCC spoils the eye with its radiant, golden colour and unquestionably lives up to its name!
92/100

2022 Delaire Graff Estate Rose Cabernet Franc

The Backstory
This unique Rosé is handpicked and gently pressed to obtain the perfect, subtle salmon pink hue.  This wine is also a Delaire Graff Estate employee favorite.

Alcohol: 13.5%
Varietal: 100% Cabernet Franc

Tasting Notes
Medium-intensity salmon in color; has aromas of strawberry, red plum, dark berries with a hint of candy floss; a creamy and structured palate with layered flavours of fresh strawberry, red berries, cassis, and a seductive spicy finish.
92/100

2021 Delaire Graff Banghoek Reserve Chardonnay (Estate)

Backstory
Winemaker Morné Vrey is committed to meticulous vineyard management.  The grapes are handpicked, whole bunch pressed, fermented, and matured in small French oak barrels for 10 months.

Alcohol: 13.6%
Varietal: 100% Chardonnay

Tasting Notes
The wine is a buttery yellow hue; complex aromas of citrus, peaches, concomitant spice, vanilla and salted butter; The palate repeats the aromas with to a long lingering finish.
94/100

2019 Delaire Graff Estate Banghoek Reserve Merlot

Backstory
These wines come from the oldest vineyards on the Estate.  These wines are a raconteur weaving the tale of the property’s humble beginnings. Expressions of the site’s splendor, with its rich earthiness and bountiful fruit. These Single Vineyard wines are also handpicked and are matured in 80% new French oak for 16 months.  Vinification – extensive sorting of the grapes formed part of the quality management process. The grapes were de-stemmed only, not crushed, to ensure gentle extraction of fruit flavours.

Alcohol: 14.5 %
Varietal: 100% Merlot

Tasting Notes:
Firm and well balanced, this Merlot is characterized by spice, dark plum and dark red berry flavours and aromas whilst silky, ripe tannins with a long and lingering finish; a luxurious elegant wine.
93/100

Conclusion
What an extraordinary experience to sip Delaire Graff terroir-specific award-winning wines with these stunning views of the Winelands and being surrounded by Laurence Graff’s personal art collection.

From Laurence Graff’s own words

“Delaire means ‘from the sky’, and the wines we craft here are an invitation to savour this unique piece of heaven and earth in Stellenbosch.”
Laurence Graff

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South African Wine Harvest 2021 declared to be “Exceptional Quality” 

The South African wine industry is celebrating an exceptional harvest this year thanks to cool temperatures, unusually high rainfall and a late harvest.

In terms of volume, the 2021 wine grape crop is estimated at 1,461,599 tonnes, according to the latest estimate of industry body SAWIS (South African Wine Industry Information & Systems) on 19 May 2021 – that makes it 8.9% larger than previous years.

Balancing 2020 and 2021

The 2021 harvest kicked off around two weeks later than normal due to unusually cool weather conditions throughout the season, which persisted throughout harvest time and resulted in some wine grape producers harvesting their last grapes in May.

Water resources were also replenished in most regions following the recent drought, which contributed to good vine growth, bunch numbers and berry sizes.

“Wine lovers can really look forward to remarkable wines from the 2021 crop,”​ said Conrad Schutte, consultation service manager of Vinpro. “The cooler weather enabled producers to harvest their grapes at exactly the right time, and viticulturists and winemakers are especially excited about good colour extraction, low pH levels and high natural acidity in cases where vineyards were managed effectively, which all point to exceptional quality wines.”​…. https://bit.ly/2SEJH0z ..continues 

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FIVE LAWS IMPACTING THE DRINKS WORLD IN 2021

Five Laws Impacting the Drinks World in 2021

http://www.spiritedbiz.com/five-laws-impacting-the-drinks-world-in-2021/

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WINE NEWS: ALCOHOL BAN LIFTED, BUT A LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN WINE INDUSTRY

The South African wine industry acknowledges today’s announcement by President Ramaphosa to resume local trade and distribution of alcohol under alert level 2 from midnight 17 August 2020, but says the industry still has a long road to recovery.

“Although we are grateful to start trading and delivering online sales again, we are dismayed at the extent of the damage caused to our industry during the temporary ban on exports and extended restrictions on local sales,” says Rico Basson, MD of the wine industry organization Vinpro.

“It might be too little too late. Many wine businesses have already closed down and a long road to recovery lies ahead for the industry as a whole,” says Basson.

The industry is believed to have lost more than R7 billion since the introduction of sales restrictions in March 2020. Following the initial nine-week ban on local sales, five-week ban on exports and second domestic sales ban, Vinpro estimates that more than 80 wineries and 350 wine grape producers would go out of business over the next 18 months, with a potential loss of more than 21 000 jobs across the value-chain.

Vinpro has been working closely with industry partners on a disaster recovery plan to address the urgent need to stabilize the sector, including the extension of further excise relief for the current year, as well as the 2021 season, addressing bottlenecks and challenges at the Cape Town Port and formulating solutions to reduce a current wine surplus of around 300 million litres.

“The wine industry is geared to reopen domestic trade and distribution with all necessary health and safety regulations in place, while focusing on changing behaviour with regard to responsible production, promotion, trade and consumption.”

 

Research from University of Cape Town shows old vines add value

Research from the University of Cape Town shows that using old vine fruit earns winemakers more money.

South Africa has finally discovered – and celebrated – its treasure trove of old vineyards. A country that typically renewed its plantings every 15 to 20 years, pretty much as soon as the yields began to decline, was an unlikely candidate to develop a culture of ancient vines.

Part of the reason for the constant renewal of vineyards lies in the history of the industry. Until the modern era, it existed primarily to supply cheap wine to the domestic market and to provide distilling grapes to the local brandy trade. Accordingly, it was planted to high yielding varieties – or at least to varieties which could be induced to increase their yields if the local market preferred quantity to quality.

There was also another reason for the frequent replacement of vineyards: the widespread incidence of leaf-roll virus. Within a few years of a vine reaching productive maturity, the vine leaves, lacking essential chlorophyll, turn russet long before the vintage. Since the vine is unable to convert sunlight into fruit ripeness, as the season advances it shows signs of stress; acidity declines in the grapes while the sugar levels remain resolutely low. Within a few years the yields drop. By the time a vineyard has reached what should be peak maturity it is economically unviable and must be replaced.

In the pre-modern era of the Cape wine industry roughly a third of the national vineyard was Chenin Blanc (putting South Africa’s share at over 50% of the world’s plantings) followed by Cinsaut. The two varieties accounted for half of all vine grapes in South Africa. With the Mandela presidency in 1994 came an extraordinary worldwide demand for Cape wine. Exports, which in 1992 had totaled a mere 21m liters – roughly 2% of total production – doubled and redoubled every year. At the end of the decade they had grown sevenfold to over 140m liters. In 2008 they crossed the 400m liter mark for the first time.

In this post-Apartheid export boom, vineyards were uprooted simply to meet the expectations of a market that wanted Cabernet and Chardonnay rather than Chenin and Cinsaut.

Rescue Plan

A number of initiatives were undertaken to save focus varieties, of which the most important was a campaign launched in the early 1990s to preserve the country’s Chenin heritage. Happily, Chenin is less susceptible to leaf-roll, so there were many older vineyards yielding reasonable quantities of often fabulous fruit. There was less success with Cinsaut: many of the older plantings fell victim to the simple demands of the international supermarket trade and were replaced with Merlot and Shiraz.

In the early 2000s Rosa Kruger, a viticulturist with a passion for the country’s viticultural heritage, began to research and create a record of the country’s oldest vines. Unsurprisingly, most were Chenin, though Grenache, Pinotage (a local crossing of Cinsaut and Pinot Noir), Semillon and Cinsaut were also present in more reduced amounts. At much the same time Eben Sadie, a producer who enjoyed a singular reputation for hand-crafted artisanal wines, began marketing some of these single-site rarities. His lead was followed by many of the younger, and more adventurous, winemakers. Suddenly, for the first time, it seemed as if it could be profitable to farm low yielding ancient vines.

At this point Johann Rupert, whose family had started one of the country’s major liquor companies and had then gone on to create Richemont (whose brands include Dunhill, Cartier and Mont Blanc), provided the seed capital to launch what is now known as the Old Vine Project. Making use of Rosa Kruger’s catalogue of the old vines, it identified just over 3,800ha of heritage vineyards, and then persuaded the authorities to certify wines produced exclusively from them.

In 2019 the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business conducted research into the value that old vines bring to the selling price of the wines: its primary objective was to determine whether, given the inevitably lower yields associated with older vineyards, it was actually viable (from an economic rather than a sentimental perspective) to keep them in the ground.

Price Advantage

The research was able to quantify the retail price advantage of old vine fruit: all other factors being equal, it added R100 ($5.70) per bottle to the final product. Given that most wines sold from these varietals retail for less than R200, the connection to an old vineyard was significant – at this stage an estimated 30% to 50%. Typically, the fruit cost of a bottle of wine comprises a low percentage of the final selling price. Stellenbosch grape prices average less than R12000 per ton, or R20 per liter. Dry goods, oaking and processing cost would take this to R50. These are largely constant, unless a producer opts to use a high percentage of new wood. Doubling the fruit price only raises the input costs by 40%. If certified old vines add R100 to the price of a bottle of wine, this potentially means that grape prices could increase from R12000 to somewhere close to R60000.

This amount of upward price mobility is vast in the South Africa context: it more than compensates for the lower yields. Johann Rupert’s investment in the Old Vine Project has proved, beyond doubt, that well-sited virus-free older vines are worth nursing to the magical age of 35 years – at which point they acquire the Certified Heritage Vineyard seal. It may seem strange that the country’s most famous luxury goods mogul’s true legacy – at least in the world of wine – will rest on an act of generosity aimed at saving a dwindling number of old vines. But it is also apt. It is the combination of quality and rarity which ensures that there’s nothing artificial about the premium: on reflection, that has always been the unique selling proposition of the luxury goods business.

Source:  Wine Business International