White Wine

A barrel does two jobs at once. It lets a small amount of air reach the wine, which builds texture and rounds off sharp edges, and if the barrel is new it contributes flavour of its own, generally read as vanilla, toast or spice. Older barrels give the air without much of the flavour. That is why plenty of Cape whites are fermented in wood you would never identify as oak in the glass.

Sauvignon Blanc holds its acid and its green, flinty character when the grapes ripen slowly, so the sites that suit it are the cold ones. Around Cape Agulhas and Elim the vineyards sit close enough to the sea to be wind cooled right through the afternoon, and Darling and Durbanville catch the same maritime air off the west coast. Constantia gets its cooling from mountain slopes and False Bay instead. Warmer inland fruit ripens further and reads as tropical rather than grassy, which is a different wine and not a fault. The ward name printed on the label is the useful clue here.

Once fermentation finishes, the spent yeast settles out as a fine sediment called lees. Leaving the wine sitting on it, and stirring it back in now and then, adds weight and a soft, bready note with no sugar involved at all. It is a common move with Chenin and Chardonnay in the Cape. A wine that tastes rich is not the same as a wine that tastes sweet, and the two get confused constantly.

The front label often will not say. Terms like extra dry, dry, semi-dry, semi-sweet and Late Harvest are defined in South African wine law and reliable when they appear. Failing that, many back labels now print a residual sugar figure in grams per litre, and a lower number means a drier wine. Alcohol is a rough second clue, since sugar left behind in the wine is sugar the yeast never converted, so an unusually low figure can point to a sweeter style. One warning: a wine can taste sweet without being sweet, because very ripe fruit and new oak both read that way.

A screwcap seals tightly and consistently, and it removes the risk of the musty fault that comes off tainted cork. Cork allows a tiny exchange of air across years, and neither closure tells you anything about quality.

Some can, and Chenin Blanc off older Cape vineyards is the example most often given. An aged white loses its obvious fruit and picks up nutty, honeyed and waxy notes while the colour deepens towards gold.