After the presentation on the South African Old Vine Project we had a walk around tasting of 50 wines with the Old Vine designation.  Although we’d noted that the designation adds particular value to chenin blanc – and I especially like good South African chenin – I decided to focus on the grape which I think should be South Africa’s icon red cultivar – cinsault. I came to love some of these wines on my last visit and continue to believe that it is one of the world’s greatest undervalued grapes – at least when the vines have aged and it is not cropped too high.  Cinsault features as a major contributor to Old Vine reds as its tolerance of arid conditions meant that it was very widely planted historically and some other grape, most noticeably cabernet sauvignon, which was widely adopted in South Africa from the 1980s onwards – suffered badly from viral disease – so did not provide vineyards which lasted  long enough to make the 35 years required for old vine status.

Perhaps because the grape is seen as a lesser one compared with more trendy red cultivars no-one lavished excessive oak on it which was to the advantage of the wines.  One of the attractions of the grape is that on top of a very aromatic fruitiness the best wines have a dimension which is herbal – reminiscent in South Africa of the Cape Floral fynbos bushland.  In some wines this moves over to what the French might call a sauvage aspect, and this takes it beyond just being a pleasant mid-weight fruity wine.

There were four cinsaults, and three at least were delicious.  The one I’ve finally chosen to write about I selected because I love the name, but a call out also to Bellevue for their 1952 Cinsaut (obviously planted 72 years ago!) and Donkiesbaai for their version.

The Piekenierskloof wine comes from vines which were planted in 1972 at 700 metres altitude.  It was fermented at quite a cool temperature to preserve its fruit aspect and aged in 500 litre old foudres – so benefiting from a bit of oxidation for integration but not picking up any new oak flavour.  Very aromatic, sweet red fruit on the nose.  Slightly dusty tannins but not intrusive, and very, very long with some fynbos complexity.  Extremely good.