Roodekrantz 1983 Chenin Blanc

1983 Chenin Blanc 
Roodekrantz 
2022
Swartland 

Ok, I’ll admit it, this empty bottle has been sitting on my desk for the past six months. I’d meant it as an urgent reminder, but like all things collected on my desk, it melted into a complex ecosystem of empty Christmas biscuit tin (ca. 2022), a pile of receipts (November’s invoices) and empty coffee cups (last week’s). And then it was the day before Christmas; I’d spent two days imprinting myself on the couch ploughing through Wellness by Nathan Hill while listening to records and had decided that pants were superfluous to general living. It was as good a time as any. The roommates were gathered and a second bottle was cracked. 

Every social group has one. The friend who might as well be the atmospheric smoke machine in the corner. They merge the cliques, tell the best jokes, get the dance floor going, have the perfect playlist queued as stand-in DJ, and somehow manage to convince everyone to go for a sunrise swim. Naked. In short, they are all that I aspire to be, but only manage for approximately 45 minutes every 9 months or so — they are THE VIBE. The 1983 Chenin Blanc is that vibe. 

Brimming with yellow cling peaches, pears and a spekboom greenness, the 1983 is like falling into a freshly laundered down duvet — all the comfort, zero responsibilities. Oozing sunshine with hints of grapefruit and naartjie, this wine is a people pleaser without the faff, but take a moment from the party to sit with it on the couch and it’ll whisper some secret depths that feel like they were meant just for you.

Pair with: The kind of wine you slosh into people’s glasses whilst on the garden’s makeshift dance floor with a rollie hanging out the corner of your mouth, sunglasses slipping down your nose. Then take it your boyfriend’s mother’s house afterwards. 

Catherine Marshall Riesling

Catherine Marshall
Riesling
2022
Elgin 

Reverberating like the clear ping of a tuning fork, the Catherine Marshall Riesling bursts onto the scene with a new tekkie squeak. Buzzing with the tart zing of limes and the telltale fresh-tube-of-tennis-balls Riesling aroma, this is a wine that struts, whirls and pops. Prickling on the tongue with near painful aliveness, the Catherine Marshall Riesling is a wine able to turn any kitchen into a multi-coloured strobe lit dance floor.

Pair with: Staging your own music video to the entire Jesse Ware That! Feels Good! album, whilst draping yourself around doorframes and across staircase banisters beclad in a long string of pearls for full effect. (Would highly recommend a Thai green curry for post music video recovery — chef’s kiss of a combo.)

Tierhoek Chenin Blanc

Tierhoek
Chenin Blanc
2020
Piekenierskloof, Citrusdal Mountain  

Let’s turn back the clock a few years to 2020. The depths of Covid. I’d only just stopped taking walks around the block with a can of beans in a shopping bag to justify my outside excursions, alcohol bans had revealed new bulk buying and hoarding depths to my personality, and I’d resigned myself as a bread baking failure (the challah of early lockdown had been repurposed as the household’s weapon of choice against intruders). But for now, I was on holiday! Making up for our 6-week separation earlier that year (two highways and one military check point between us didn’t make for easy lockdown visits) my boyfriend and I were on our way to the Cederberg. And because I’m me and he’s him, we were taking a two-hour detour to visit a wine farm I’d wanted to try — Tierhoek. Needless to say, because I’m me, he ended up repacking the entire car in their parking lot to fit the five cases I’d purchased (see, I told you about my fear-spawned bulk buying…). 

The Tierhoek Chenin Blanc has become one of my go-to Chenins. It has an apple-cheeked wholesomeness to it, like a Dutch postcard milkmaid who bakes delicious fresh bread (not destined for the armoury) and has the strength to lift a cow with her pinkie. While previous vintages have tasted more like honied Rooibos iced tea from the tea plantings on the farm (a fact I’m sticking to, despite hours spent by the patient soil scientists at VinPro explaining to me this is, in fact, not how terroir works), the 2020 is leaner — this a milkmaid who’s embraced the bicep curl. With a nose of Swiss müsli and oatmeal alongside its giveaway Rooibos, there’s a savoury saltiness at its core (a product of the bicep curl, I’m sure). This is a wine that believes in long walks in the fresh air, the panacea of baked goods, and bench pressing the odd cow or two before dawn.

Pair with: Weekends away where days are filled with rusks and tin mugs of Rooibos tea. Substitute Rooibos tea as required.  

Oldenburg Chardonnay

Oldenburg Vineyards 
Chardonnay 
2021
Stellenbosch 

I used to write off Chardonnay as an old lady wine. Not because I thought it the go-to for the coiffed and chunkily bejewelled, but because it’s what I imagined an old lady would taste like if you marinaded her in butter for a few weeks, allowing her the odd butterscotch sweetie for sustenance from the depths of her linty handbag. It was Patty and Selma from The Simpsons in wine form. Cigarette included. 

And then came the Oldenburg Chardonnay. 

With a parting of the clouds, this Chardonnay made me see the proverbial light. Like watching a ’50s Vegas burlesque dancer ringed by perfectly choreographed feather-fanned chorus girls, I was hooked. With gossamer delicacy the Oldenburg Chardonnay swan-dives down the tongue and into the heart. Grapefruit bitterness and butterscotch (because, hey, Chardonnay) swirls in an almost peach syrup viscosity, tinged with a herbal edge and smokey finish. It’s the kind of wine that makes me wish I owned a blue feathered dressing gown and ordered dirty martinis.  

Pair with: Over the top dinner parties where you’ve cooked things with all the curlicued names. Salade Niçoise! Soufflé! Crème brûlée! Will you be debuting a new found love for French cigarettes? Possibly. Will you exude the confidence of a blue feathered dressing gown owner? Most definitely. 

Ken Forrester Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc

This piece was originally published by Port2Port.

Ken Forrester
Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc
2021
Stellenbosch

Ah Christmas. ’Tis the most family-filled time of the year. Someone’s stressing about the symmetry of the Christmas tree decorations, while one aunt has realised she’s severely under-catered on the potato salad, and another can’t find her Christmas carol playlist (equal parts classic hymns and Michael Bublé). One cousin explains the truth of Father Christmas to the family baby, while a third compares their number of presents to everyone else’s, and a fourth has brought a new boyfriend fully hatched from the shire. There’s an uncle who’s spent the last month emailing How To Make The Perfect Turkey hacks, only to find out your parents have bought a pre-cooked turkey from Hartlief.

The Ken Forrester Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc is the cool older cousin who walks into this mayhem and is the balm to your strained soul. Her hoop earrings glinting in the sun, she is the safe golden corner you retreat to on the stoep to the background discussion on whether the oven could have fit an entire turkey.

With her intriguing initial struck match reductiveness and crisp yet oh-so-soft cling peach syrupy lightness, the Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc is effortless. A long-time subscriber of Architectural Digest and buyer of freshly cut flowers, her Spotify Wrapped personality was The Early Adopter (you instantly followed her top five artists who will become your top five next year). Even her hand-me-down Carrol Boyes serving spoons are a level of chic you aspire to. Like the MELI-FALI solo (are those wind chimes? A glockenspiel marimba? Musical bicycle spokes?), just when you thought you’d put your finger on her x-factor, she hits you with an unexpected salty grapefruit pithiness that you are 100% here for.

Pair with: Inevitably someone at the Christmas table will debate the Harry & Meghan Netflix documentary, mention Eskom, or complain about the starting salary demands of Gen Zs. When that happens, the Ken Forrester Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc is your escape or blessed distraction, pleasing everyone from your uncle who fancies himself a connoisseur because he drank Chateau Libertas in the ‘90s to your Sauvignon Blanc and ice loving auntie.

AA Badenhorst Secateurs Chenin Blanc

AA Badenhorst
Secateurs Chenin Blanc
2021
Swartland

There are a few survival items I require in my fridge at all times or risk meltdown: cream cheese, bread, coffee, eggs, fresh herbs, peppermint tea and a bottle of Secateurs Chenin Blanc. Why, do you ask? Well, other than my clear breakfast food dependency and loose categorisation of fridge items, I am a firm believer in the importance, nay, the necessity of a go-to, look-at-that-it’s-already-chilled bottle of wine. 

The Secateurs Chenin Blanc is the friend you can take to any party and not have to babysit because you know they’ll have an entire corner belly laughing at some anecdote in the time it takes you to have a pee and cigarette break. With its nose of white flowers and drippy lazy afternoon sunshine, and an unmistakable tinned Koo peaches palate that gives over to a slight orange peel bitterness just before you thought the sweetness would get to you, the Secateurs Chenin Blanc is what running-towards-each-other-in-slow-motion-across-a-meadow montages were made for. 

Pair with: There are some wines that defy the art of pairing. Not because they don’t work with anything, but because they simply go with everything. Movie nights, beach weekends, Tuesdays, Stan Getz, chicken mayo toasties. Don’t try too hard. This wine’s got you. 

Cape of Good Hope Laing Semillon

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.