Does Pinotage make serious wine? In an attempt to answer that question I attended an offline dinner last night that was solely devoted to this variety. It was good fun, and as well as meeting some old offline friends (Nick Alabaster and Peter May were there), 
I put some faces to names I knew from online wine discussions, such as Keith Prothero (pictured), Neil Holland, Cassidy Dart and Russel Faulkner. What about the wines? I liked one of them. More later.
posted by Jamie @ 12:38 PM
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get a new camera you mug!!! ha ha-------looks like I have had no sleep and maybe too much pinotage
Keith, it was a pleasure to meet you at last.
so *that's* what he looks like sober....
:-)))
Had a bottle of Durbanville Hills Pinotage '03 from South Africa recently and thought it was lovely.
I think the objective of the tasting is spot on, we in SA are still figuring it out. Recent tastings of older pinotages (www.grape.co.za) have suggested that the variety needs time to settle. The tannin in its youth can be obtrusive, after a few years it can really emulate those of Pinot Noir. As a SA grape variety we need to decide on what level of ripeness produces the best wine. Light and fruity, or heavy and extracted. I think the former.
I still find greenness in too many of these wines, and my guess is uneven ripening is the big problem with Pinotage - anyone who can ripen their grapes fully and evenly should be able to make nice Pinotage.
I am glad somebody in the international wine community is concerned about the greeness in SA wines. Thanks Jamie. Why aren't we as a wine nation? Yes a few viticulturalist have started waking up, but on the generic level viticulture comes behind winemaking, maketing, sales and administration. I recently visited a prominant winery in Stellenbosch and asked the owner who practiced the viticulture. "Oh, he used to be the tractor driver, great worker he is, oh so loyal".
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