Nativo Grenache

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Nativo 
Grenache 
2018 
Swartland 

Full disclosure: This wine was made by my very good friend Lieze Norval. However, I’d love this even if I didn’t already love her. 

If there were a third friend in Emma Jane Unsworth’s novel Animals, which is filled with feral cats, debauchery and laddered pantyhose, it would be the Nativo Grenache. Mascara crumbed and secondhand leopard print coat off one shoulder, lipstick-ringed cigarette gesticulating in the air, she’s the girl that brings in the best kind of 4am. All goji berries, dried cranberries and figs with a swirl of molasses, she might be up past her bedtime, but you’d still follow her into the night blindly.

Pair with: A wild femme to the end, the Nativo Grenache is all about hedonism and the near painful need to keep the party going. 

Bloemcool Berg en Dal Oupa se Wingerd

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Bloemcool
Berg en Dal Oupa se Wingerd 
2022 
Piekenierskloof, Citrusdal Mountain   

The Bloemcool Berg en Dal Oupa se Wingerd makes me question a lot of things about myself. Such as, can I be turned on by a wine? (Um…yes?) Why do I suddenly wish I was on the back of a very muscular man’s horse in a flowy white dress riding through the red hills of a Western? (Romance novels and the whims of my libido??) Why do I feel so internally conflicted with this image? (Because maybe my third-wave feminism hasn’t caught up with my fourth-wave feminism and I don’t have to be held to the realities of inner thigh chafe in my fantasies???). It’s all getting rather hot and steamy in my kitchen, to be honest. Might need to crack a window. 

If the Berg en Dal could be anyone, it would be the hot lumberjack from Instagram, teaching us how to untie our belts with one hand, while grasping our ovaries in the other. Chiseled and problematically sexy in its rugged masculinity.

Oozing cherries, blackberries and the smell of worn brown leather couches complete with matching cigar accoutrement, there’s a meatiness to this wine that makes you want to burrow down like a truffle pig in its densely packed layers. Olive brine, salty liquorice, spicy white pepper, just a hint of fynbos…its all there in one heady pheromone-inducing stroke. In the words of my by now wide-eyed roommate Maia: “This wine is undressing me…” 

Pair with: Yourself. Seriously. That’s all you need. 

 

Morgenster Lourens River Valley

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Morgenster
Lourens River Valley
2015
Stellenbosch 

It’s like a scene out of Mad Men. A smokey bar, live jazz band in the corner, leather booths. You look up from your martini and make eye contact with the Morgenster Lourens River Valley through the haze of cigar smoke. I imagine it’s what making eye contact with Don Draper would be like (minus the misogyny and undoubtedly unwieldy underwear from the 1950s). And just like that, you’re swept up in a black and white romance movie, complete with kisses in the rain and slow dances that somehow involve spinning around a lamppost under the full moon. Lonely trumpet player in a doorway mandatory. 

Drinking the Lourens River Valley is like peeling off a crisp white shirt (preferably someone else’s). With a nose of boozy chocolate covered cherries and black forest gateau, there’s a seductiveness to this wine, like the feeling of silk against freshly shaven legs. Expect car doors to be opened for you and offers of suit jackets still warm with body heat when you’re cold. The Lourens River Valley’s all about that old-timey chivalry. 

Pair with: Midnight dates that end in brass beds with twisted white sheets and chocolate covered strawberries. Romantic clichés and red nail polish recommended.