The Winery of Good Hope

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November '08 Newsletter

Dear Friends of The Winery!
 
It is finally here, Spring! The rain is long gone and everything is beautiful and green.
I am trying to get my legs from being very much like the flag of Finland, blue and white, to go more from translucent to some kind of colour!

The Winery has been resting for a few days after a hectic and intense September.

We had Cape Wine 2008 in September -three days with entertainment and of course the wine show. It was very well attended, WOSA did an amazing job, we saw many the top sommeliers, buyers & journalists from all over the world.  We took the initiative to join forces for the duration of the fair with some of the leading wineries of the country, under a united banner called ‘Grape Minds’. The Grape Minds stand was greatly busy from day one, were the guests could taste wines from coast to coast with individuality and great potential for the future from 9 different producers :

Guests that had attended Cape Wine before were highly impressed with the how the quality of the South African wines has improved over the last years and found more individuality in the wines from the different regions -and I can only agree.

To celebrate Cape Wine, Peter Goffe-Wood, at Kitchen Cowboys in Salt River, and the Grape Minds producers decided to have a dinner together for buyers, Sommeliers & journalists from different corners of the world.  Peter and his team did a fantastic job, showing-off the different producers wine with outstanding food.

The whole dinner ended with a Swedish sommelier and represents for WOSA in Scandinavia, signing in Swedish a song to call home the cows!

What a way to end a fantastic month and Cape Wine 2008!

After getting our strength back, (after all the singing) we are now busy in the cellar to bottle and making space for the harvest.

We are sold out of the Radford Dale Gravity 2005 and the Radford Dale Freedom Pinot Noir 2007 and Radford Dale Viognier 2007 is nearly sold out.

Radford Dale Gravity 2006 will be released in January 2009. Radford Dale Chardonnay 2006 has been selected for SAA Business class, flying in style.

When we are embracing the spring and summer we are drinking 2007 Vinum Chenin Blanc, that is showing fresh, zesty acid with lovely apricots and creaminess. It is a perfect match for the sushi or the braai with the day’s fresh catch from the ocean.

The Winery Of Good Hope Pinot Noir 2007 with 50% fruit from Stellenbosch and 50% fruit from Elgin is packed with red berries and beautiful acidity with a fresh finish, served slightly chilled for the tuna or the beef Carpaccio with rockets and pine nuts.

We will be receiving our shipment from France in mid November with all the new imported wines – from some of the great estates of Burgundy and the Rhone.

As a Friend of The Winery we would like to give you a first sneak peek to make a plan for Christmas. These wines are flying out very quickly since we have a lot of very thirsty friends. When the list is finalized, you will be the first to receive it.

Alex has really outdone himself; the wines he has managed to get hold off speak for them self. Jacues Prieur , Chateau de Chamiery , Domaine De La Ferte, Domaine Des Perdrix, Taupenot-Merme, Domaine Chavy, Chateau De La Crée and Domaine Gilles Jayer from Burgundy and then Domaine Jamet, Domaine Alain Graillot and Domaine Yves Cuilleron from the Cotes du Rhone !!

He has really worked hard (during holiday) to find these small producers, tasted (drank) every single bottle to decide which one he will take (was left) in to South Africa. Hard work, someone has to do it! (I have volunteered for next year!)

Wine Spectator has been on a search for the best wine video to promote people to understand and drink more wine! The winning video is called “Wine and the City”, like Sex and The City, were two ladies are explaining the benefits with screw cap over the cork. Click here to watch the movie. This is an ongoing discussion, cork or screw cap?

The Winery of Good Hope has been moving progressively towards screwcaps since 2004. In the 2006 vintage, we will also be releasing –for the first time- half of our flagship wine, Radford Dale Gravity, under screw cap. This purely to be able to guarantee that 100% quality in the bottles reaches our consumer’s palate.  We are so bored of cork taint issues and all the excuses from cork suppliers, on the one hand, while on the other our consumers are increasingly demanding screwcap.

The initial decision to trial screw caps as made during a visit to Yalumba in Australia by Alex in 1999, when he went to partake in their 150 anniversary celebrations. He tasted Rieslings from Yalumba dating back over 30 vintages, cork verses screw cap. It was clear then and there that the same wines under screw cap were fresher, more alive, more varietal and in better condition than under cork. There was also no bottle variation under screwcap.

Some people today remain under the spell of the ‘romantic’ notion attached to corks. However, even the most traditional producers, such as Château Margaux and Domaine De La Romanée-Conti, are experimenting with screw cap.
 
Yalumba was the first to start investigating Stelvin (screwcaps)on a commercial level for premium wines, already in 1964 Mr Peter Wall the Production Manager single-handedly drove the development with Stelvin in Australia. Their First commercial bottling was in 1973 and the first commercial release was in 1979 for Pewsey Vale Riesling from Eden Valley.

Today 75% of the wines from Australia and New Zeeland are released under screw cap, including very many of the top wines. Many sommeliers are optimistically seeing how much the percent for spoiled wines have gone down due to screw caps; this is not just saving money for the farms, but also for the hotel/restaurants. There are a lot of bottles where cork taint is present but where is not at all obvious, and thus not detected by normal consumers. They will think the wine is not good and will not buy it again, when in fact the issue is again with the faulty cork closure. A more damaging outcome than with a wine which is overtly corked and where the consumer knows that it is not the producer’s fault.

We put so much effort in to a single bottle of wine, from the vineyard to the cellar and then it comes to the winemakers decision how to close the bottle!

The guilty bacterial spoilage which gives rise to corked wines is technically identified as 2-4-6 Trichloranisole -also called TCA- and makes life very difficult for the wine industry.

Sadly, the cork industry has been very slow to respond to the winemaker’s demand for quality. The result of a slow response from the cork suppliers is more screw caps on the market! The other alternatives generally are synthetic corks, but they have a problem with premature oxidation of wines and Vino lok, the glass closure which is a German invention, which is as yet unproven and very costly.  Corks were a great technology when introduced 3 ½ centuries ago –and they have served the industry in the absence of a better closure. Progress sometimes presents solutions which are less complicated and far more practical. The screwcap is a case in point –however unglamorous it may appear to some.

Screw caps consists of two components, the cap itself that comes attached to the sleeve made of aluminium alloy. Second component, the business end of the screw cap is the liner. It is made of expanded polyethylene wadding, typically covered with a tin foil layer that acts as a barrier to gas exchange, overlain by a PVDC film (polyvinylidene chloride or known as Saran) that provides an inert surface and which will be in contact with the wine.
 
Premium screw caps, such as the ones we use, have the two liners with a tight seal that is suitable for wines that are made for ageing.

People are worried that the wines will not age under screw cap, but they do! The wine will be fresher and will develop slower due to the perfect seal and the resultant anaerobic environment –perfect for maturation purposes. This in principle means even longer life in the cellar if one chooses not to drink it all at once!

Another positive thing with screw cap is that the wine will show how it was meant to –taintless and pure. So if you don’t like it, there will be no faulting the closure ! Taking any doubt out of the equation is a result we welcome whole-heartedly.

Some news from the wine world!

Lenz Moser from Kamptal, Austria is famous for his wines, sweet and dry, from Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, but his family became famous for world viticulturists when Dr Lenz Moser III in 1920 started to experiment with a new way of training vines which revolutionized Austrian viticulture making it reasonable despite high labour cost. The system employed wider rows (3,5 m)and higher trunks (1,3 m), than previously, thereby reducing the vine density. This system was found in favour in mid 20th centaury because it decreases labour, and therefore production cost, without any need for special machinery.

They were the first in Austria that started with maturing red wines in French barrique in 1969.
So being a family that breaks new grounds, it is not very strange that Mr Lenz have started to import Ice wine from China.

The picture is showing Huanlong Lake in Huanren County, Liaoning Province, east of Beijing in China. Chang Yu is the name of the wine and the winery, 2006 was the first harvest of Vidal grapes that is a crossing between Ugni Blanc and Seibel Blanc and the Vidal grape is also producing some very good ice wine in Canada and Sweden.

340 hectares are giving 1000 ton grapes every year! They have doubled the yearly production of ice wine in the world in three years. The secret is that the area is very stable for the winter, it is cold enough every year, and you will need -8 degrees Celsius to pick the grapes for ice wine. For the rest of the world were ice wine is made when mother nature allows, but here they have a fertile soil and very cold winters to be able to produce it every year. The same with Neusiedlersee, Burgenland, Austria, and the lake gives the essential fog to create botrytis every year. Mother Nature is beautiful.

Italy is shaken by another wine scandal.

This time it is wines from Brunello di Montalcino, that were stopped in the USA, when it turned out that the producers had blended other wines into the bottles! And not the top wines from Tuscany!

In northwest of Italy in Turin were the famous Amarone wines come from, 30 000 bottles were confiscated by the local police. They were on their way by boat to USA, labelled and all ready to go, but again with the wrong wine in the bottle!!

In California they have brought out an electric label that can detect and tell the wine consumer if the wine has been exposed for high temperature during transportation.

Wine can be very sensitive to sharp variations of temperatures as well as to very high temperature.

This is a label that has been used by the supermarkets to try on different groceries that is sensitive to heat. For a small cost, the label is attached to the product and that can warn the buyer for any unusual differences in temperature during transport.

The electronic label is attached to the product before loading the goods.

When the receiver is opening the box, a green light indicates that the temperature hasn’t gone above the pre programmed temperature.

If it has, an orange light will occur. You can then connect this to your computer and see when exactly it happened and for how long. So far California is the only one using this. Maybe we will be seeing more of this in the warmer, but also in the cooler hemisphere.

In South Africa there have been two new wine books released.

First one out is Michael Olivier and his book called Crush, written especially for the thirsty wine lovers to find the right bottles for the right occasion and for the right price.

Michael was trained at The London Cordon Bleu Cookery School; he has managed Lanzerac Hotel in Stellenbosch, Boschendal wine estate as the PR, he managed Paddagang in Tulbagh, the famous Burgundy in Hermanus and Parks in Constantia. Today he is our own food and wine fundi in South Africa. He is the man behind Diners Club Wine List of The Year Award.

Here you will find singled-out our maiden vintage release of Radford Dale Viognier 2007... for more information contact noshnews@iafrica.com

The second book released is the very talked about Neil Pendock and Sour Grapes. A book said to revile the inside of the wine industry.

Neil is one of our most outspoken journalists, South Africa’s leading independent drinks commentator, writing in the Sunday Times and Wine Magazine and has his own blogg.
Interesting reading... For more information contact Sunday Times.

The wine to drink in the flowering garden, late in the evening under the song of the birds (and some mosquitoes) while reading these books should be for Crush Radford Dale Viognier 2007, which has all the aromatic senses, for the more heavy reading but with a sense of place, Black Rock White Blend 2006 that is drinking beautifully with minerals and apricots, while I am trying to tan my legs!

Until next time I wish you all the best and enjoy the spring!
Mia Mårtensson
Sommelier

"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the wine I drink
I feel ashamed.   Then I look into the glass and think
about the workers in the vineyards and all of their hopes
and dreams... If I didn't drink this wine, they might be out
of work and their dreams would be shattered.  
Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this wine and let their
dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."
~ Jack  Handy

 

individual wines – individual people – individual service – individual ideas