{"id":11662,"date":"2015-04-28T04:14:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T04:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=11662"},"modified":"2015-04-28T04:16:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T04:16:35","slug":"in-franschhoek-day-2-lynx-and-landau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/from-the-road\/in-franschhoek-day-2-lynx-and-landau","title":{"rendered":"In Franschhoek day 2, Lynx and Landau"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday exceeded my expectations. Just two visits, but they were in depth, and super interesting.<\/p>\n

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The first was at Lynx, with Dieter Sellmeyer. He and his wife Diana moved here after a rather nomadic existence hopping around the world. He’s an engineer by training, and they bought a lovely property which Dieter planted with engineering-like precision, and which now produces some very smart wines.<\/p>\n

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The soils here are very sandy, and although sandy soils don’t have a great reputation, you can’t argue with the results. The wines here are fresh and vital, with lovely Cabernet Franc, Shiraz and Grenache, as well as a Bordeaux blend called Xanache. Dieter is even making a convincing Pinot Noir, although this hasn’t yet been released.<\/p>\n

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Then it was off to see Basil Landau. After an interesting career, Basil moved to Franschhoek in 1986 with his young wife Jane to start a family. \u00a0They bought an old 18th century house on a farm dating back to 1689, and renovated both house and vineyard, with the exception of a 6 hectare block of old Semillon that was planted in 1905. Fortunately, they left this old vineyard alone, and it is now the oldest producing block in the country.<\/p>\n

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The Landau du Val Semillon is \u00a0remarkable wine. It’s now made by Wynand Grobler (below) at Rickety Bridge, and we tried a vertical. The 2004 was the stand-out, but each vintage was superb – this is one of South Africa’s classics, I reckon.<\/p>\n

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And the vineyard? It’s truly beautiful. The old bush vines strugggle, and the yields are tiny. But the wine is special.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday exceeded my expectations. Just two visits, but they were in depth, and super interesting. The first was at Lynx, with Dieter Sellmeyer. He and his wife Diana moved here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,49],"tags":[258,374],"class_list":["post-11662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-road","category-south-africa","tag-franschhoek","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11674,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11662\/revisions\/11674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}