As the year winds down, wine either becomes a compelling necessity for those trying to squeeze a month’s worth of work into two weeks or the reward for having arrived at the finish line before the stadium’s gates close and the timekeeper’s bell sounds. Our wines are better now than they have ever been, with many more competitively priced than at any time in the past. With more than 7,000 labels nominally in the trade, how is it even possible to make a choice?
Twenty years ago it was relatively simple. You picked up the Platter’s Wine Guide and tried to buy a few five star laureates before they sold out. Otherwise you looked at the wines splattered with competition stickers and took your chances. Now, this isn’t quite as easy: Platter’s 2026 Wine Guide will be in the shops just before Christmas (a full month later than it would have been in 2005) and it now celebrates about 300 (yes, you read that correctly) Five Star wines (scored at 95 or more).
Add to this the more than 400 wines on 94 points, and you are faced with a potential shortlist (sic) that’s incomprehensibly large. This is only partly the result of score inflation, in which the wine ratings “agencies” pander to the expectations of producers rather than to consumers’ needs. It also reflects the vast improvement in the average quality of our wines. To acknowledge this is not to excuse the open floodgates but to make a more important point regarding festive season shopping. If you are looking for something decent every time you open a bottle, it isn’t the challenge it used to be.
However, if it’s vinous treasure that you seek, there are no easy solutions. The Platter Five Star list is too long — though naturally some of the laureates are simply spectacular. Nor, unless you like punchy, rich reds with a declared alcohol of 14.5% (which probably means something very close to 15%), can you use the list of the Veritas Double Gold winners with any certainty. (At least there’s consistency there — the panels’ preferences are plain for anyone to see). Sadly, the pursuit of truly fine Cape wine should not be left to the festive season. Wines that do well at properly run competitions or challenges sell within days of the announcements.
It was not always so, and the recent publication of a book by Bridgid Hamilton Russell about her late father (who founded the property that bears his name and the Hemel-en-Aarde appellation) describes an altogether less opulent era. When Tim Hamilton Russell decided that wine farming would be more fun than running the advertising agency his father had started in South Africa, there were fewer than 200 producing cellars in the Cape. Most were co-operatives churning out vast volumes of bulk wine purchased by the wholesale merchants to make up their trademark blends.
The concept of a wine estate was only a few years old when Hamilton Russell bought the farm. There was very little quality planting material — certainly no acceptable chardonnay and very poor pinot noir. Varieties such as merlot and cabernet franc were not yet commercially available. Compared with now, the Cape was something of a vinous desert.
Bridgid’s book recounts her father’s extended battle with the authorities to open this new frontier. His farm did not have a planting quota, so, in theory, it wasn’t legal to make wine from grapes grown on that site. (Tim Hamilton Russell developed several devious strategies to get on with his enterprise while he lobbied for the changes that would make his business a reality). The result was not merely the estate we know now, with the cooler climate area of origin he pioneered. It was the kickstarter for the industry of the 21st century, in which the array of wines available now for those doing their festive season shopping would have been inconceivable to the man who played a key role in making it all happen.
This article was first published in Business Day.
