Cape of Good Hope Laing Semillon

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Cape of Good Hope
Laing Semillon 
2019
Citrusdal Mountain

There’s a restaurant in Stellenbosch where the waiters will bring me a bottle of Cape of Good Hope Laing Semillon without me asking. Not because I’m some high-powered asshole in a power suit (though, seriously, I long for a power suit that doesn’t make me look like a shoulder-padded extra from 9 to 5), but because I order it every damn time I’m there and they’re saving themselves the walk. It’s a win-win. 

It’s a tough wine to pin down, the Laing Semillon. Not because it’s layered in ineffable complexity that makes you want to climb up the rim of the glass, nose dive in and breaststroke laps around the bowl before eventually coming up with some vague synesthesia of childhood similes (which I do), but because the bottle variation for this wine is mind boggling.

However, no matter its many forms, the Laing Semillon smells overwhelmingly like my grandmother’s guava pudding with whiffs of old lady gooseberry and whipped egg white peaks. It’s ‘70s nostalgia in a bottle, where everything has that slight drenched-in-yellow-sunlight glow (because I’m a product of my generation and think in Instagram filters). It’s the era of tinted sunglasses, of dudes with chest hair in open paisley shirts and hip-hugging bell bottoms smoking joints, when yellow and brown was an acceptable colour palette, and gelatine a salad ingredient. Just when you’ve enveloped yourself in that sugar-coated green sparkler syrupyness, wham!, that twangy acidity pours through with a prickle of freshly crushed nettles with the bell-like clarity of Marlena Shaw’s backup singers. 

Will I get sick of this wine now that I’ve ordered myself three cases? Possibly. But considering that my grandmother stopped making her guava pudding ca 2009, I’ll take my indulgences where I can.  

Pair with: The first warm days in spring that smell like school holidays, when you can actually wear shorts in the shade without getting goosebumps and you realise there’s a good chance you might be recovering from seasonal affective disorder. Chunky sunglasses essential.