Sauvignongate
It’s
all about what’s in the bottle!
Greg
Sherwood
In
November I returned to Cape Town for a week of business appointments in the
sunny winelands of Stellenbosch. I left behind London and its crisp clear blue
skies only to return to a mass of storm clouds. My colleagues tell me that more
rain fell in the week I was away than over the whole of the long British summer!
But the horizon was stormy for other reasons too. While in South Africa, the
“Sauvignongate” crisis, as I like to call it, broke onto the international
airwaves.
While
much has already been written and hypothesized in the media over a very short
period of time about the addition of fruit essence into Sauvignon Blanc to
enhance the flavour profile into a more cool climate style, I did manage to get
the “low down” from several of South Africa’s top winemakers and vineyard
owners in warmer Stellenbosch, the area primarily at the forefront of SA wine
writer and wine personality Michael Fridjohn’s initial stirring allegations. I
don’t want to rehash the accusations, but manipulation of wine is a wide
spread phenomena in the world of wine. It takes place every day with
chaptalization to raise the alcohol and add mouth feel, the addition of tartaric
acid to correct imbalances, and in the new world, with the use of wood chips to
“flavour” the wines.
However,
I do find it particularly interesting that as a winemaker, you are allowed to
throw all sorts of timber into your grape juice without anyone blinking an
eyelid, yet the mere suggestion of adding a smidgen of natural fruit essence
from passion fruit, melon, or gooseberry is enough to shake the wine industries
deepest foundations and, some say, risks bringing the whole house crumbling
down! I can’t help but feel that
this whole story is yet another good example of journalists and wine writers,
many of whom are pressed to come up with something actually interesting or
“new” to write about, letting their minds run a little too free and wild.
The prospect of writing yet another review for a super market wine brand pales
into insignificance alongside a juicy story like “Sauvignongate”!
In
the Cape, winemakers or more precisely vineyard owners, with whom the moral
responsibility of transparency ultimately lies, have correctly been quick off
the mark to dispel the rumours, seeing as all the reports and related articles
have been written from such a “matter of fact” stand point, despite being
based on nothing but speculation. Mike
Ratcliffe, Managing Director of Warwick
Estate in the Simonsberg was adamant that every wine industry had the odd
unscrupulous wine maker doing the unmentionable, but scoffed at the idea that it
was a wide spread problem deep routed in South Africa’s burgeoning wine
industry.
You
only need to look at Warwick’s sensational sell-out Sauvignon Blanc
“Professor Black”, to see what is possible with suitable terroir. After only
two vintages, the wine has become highly rated and equally sought after. “The
grapes have always been there, but had previously been sold off to other
wineries such as Ken Forrester. Now that we have the time, focus and motivation
to make an estate Sauvignon Blanc worthy of the Warwick label, we intend to
develop it to the full and push quality levels as much as possible. More new
plantings are already being planned.” Mike Ratcliffe said. When I sat down to
taste the 2003 Sauvignon and also the new 2003 Chardonnay (just bottled that
week), wine maker supremo Louis Nel was hard at work planning for the 2004
vintage already. No doubt another blockbuster Sauvignon Blanc on the way if the
healthy flowering I witnessed was anything to go by.
The
general assumption that South Africa is too hot to grow top Sauvignon Blanc is
preposterous. Yes Stellenbosch is a warm growing region, but within the terrain,
there are numerous cool climate sites with low average temperatures. Driving through Warwick’s vineyards with
Mike in his 4´4,
we observed a several degree temperature change from the lower vineyards near
the winery compared with the higher sites. Factor in the cool sea breezes and
cool night temperatures, and there is definitely a strong basis for producing
cool, aromatic, grassy Sauvignon Blanc with a retained zingy acidity and a touch
of tropical ripeness á la New Zealand.
Similar
comments were echoed at several other wineries I visited including Morgenhof
Estate, another contender for top Sauvignon Blanc producer. Their vineyards are
just down the road from Warwick Estate and similarly situated on low, medium and
higher slopes in the Simonsberg area. The temperature differences from one block
to another higher up is marked. No problem seeing where Rianie Strydom gets her
quality fruit from either. I attended their harvest in February 2002 and
witnessed the first few warmer plots of Sauvignon Blanc being vinified. Other
large swathes of vines situated higher up on slightly cooler sites were still
several days or even weeks away from full physiological ripeness - the clever
blending of these varied plots creating complex, grassy, zesty Sauvignon Blanc
at its best.
If
hypothetically more than a few producers in South Africa are actually meddling
with nature’s end product and adding a bit of their own characteristics via
essence, you can be absolutely certain that the practice is even more
commonplace in other New World countries with similarly warm climatic
characteristics. Australia and California are only two nations that spring to
mind. I have never read a report of such practices being investigated in either
of these countries, both of which have many growers that struggle to produce top
flight Sauvignon Blanc on a large scale.
As
SA wine guru Dave Hughes pointed out recently, these same essence and additives
are freely available and have been on sale for many years within the wine
industries of USA, Australia, South America and New Zealand. Few would be brave
enough or silly enough to stand up and accuse their large and powerful
industries of widespread shenanigans without substantiated evidence!
Fortunately
for all, the Wine & Spirits Board in South Africa has announced a program to
start randomly testing wines in 2004, which will no doubt quell any further
concerns from foreign buyers. As for every day consumers in the UK, their minds
will no doubt be more concerned with their New Year’s detox!
see also: Jamie Goode's piece on adding flavour: a new South African wine scandal