A look at some tasty South African blends.
California winemakers tend to take things one grape at a time: cabernet sauvignon; syrah; chardonnay. Australia, too, plus a few semillon-chardonnays and cabernet-shiraz wines. Simplicity sells. But South Africa? Two grapes in one bottle? That’s just getting started. How about a cabernet-syrah-merlot-pinotage? Or for a white, a chenin blanc-brenache blanc-viognier-chardonnay? South Africa is, properly speaking, part of the New World, but it has an unseemly predilection for blending that evokes Old World winemaking–think of France’s Chateauneuf-du-Pape, where some wines have 13 different grape varieties contributing to a single wine. I say unseemly, because it can make the wines hard to sell. We’re programmed to order by varietal, so if one dominant grape doesn’t show up on the label, our minds file the wine under “troublesome.” European wines go under regional monikers instead, but they’ve got history working for them (though, even there, many lesser-known regions would be glad to stick the grape name on the label if local law didn’t prohibit it). – From Forbes
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