Avenue Vine

What makes the matrix so unpredictable is that most consumers experience a wine at a great distance - without ever visiting its source. If you've tasted a wine in situ, you're likely to recognise the product on the shelf - and to buy a bottle that will bring back memories of a visit to the winelands. Most wine and spirits advertising attempt to communicate a unique sense of place by romancing the heritage, the individual history and the origin in the imagery - no matter how high-volume the brand.

Wine tourism, generic national campaigns and wine shows all help to build an image of quality, value and origin. Sometimes a taste of the wines precedes a visit to the winery. A warm encounter with a wine or winemaker at a wine show leads to a standing invitation, and you eventually pay a visit to the cellar door - with high expectations. That's how I found myself in the vineyards in the shadow of the Du Toitskloof with Kobus Deetlefs on a visit 'oor die berg' to Breedekloof last year.

With vineyards planted along a riverbed winding through the kloofs, Deetlefs has a really wild, frontier feel - despite being on the outskirts of the village of Rawsonville. According to legend, a rebellious soldier called Deetlefs was thrown overboard at Saldanha Bay in 1822 - and one of his sons eventually made his way into the interior to take up farming here in 1863, six generations ago. Wines from these remote vineyards are exported all over Europe today under the Stonecross brand - a range of mostly dual varietal wines also served as the in-flight house-wine on BA/Comair.

Pointing out highly-prized blocks of Pinotage, Shiraz, Merlot and Semillon, Kobus explained, 'For a long time Rawsonville was dominated by the big wine buyers and merchants. You can't leave your destiny in other people's hands. We have the potential to make a statement with most varieties grown in these loamy, stony soils. Every wine is a blend of different blocks. Wine is about balance and elegance - you don't want a Sauvignon Blanc with an explosive nose and a hard, thin palate.'

Over the mountain in Paarl, sitting on hay bales in a vineyard on a hillside with a view of the granite boulders of the Boland is a similar way to get a feel for the distinct persona of a new winery. At a media launch of Ridgeback last year, viticulturalist Toit Wessels and Cathy Marshall led a wine tasting in situ in the top block which won the Paarl Shiraz Challenge for the cellar's maiden 2002 Shiraz. They explained a micro-approach to viticulture which ranges from the gradient to the ground cover. Cathy explained, 'If you want layers in your wine, you have to look at the flavour spectrum on the vine. Breaking vineyards into sub-blocks you find the texture of the tannin is quite different from top to bottom. You can taste the gradient from vine per vine.'

Great grape gradients? I was on a learning cove on the slippery slopes of Agter-Paarl. While tasting a glass of Sauvignon Blanc at worm-eye level in the vineyards, Cathy extolled the virtues of the soils, fruit, colour and the phenology of the site which she believes is perfect for the Rhone varieties she prefers. She concluded, 'We've got magnificent Shiraz on this farm. We're looking for pure expression of terroir. Winemakers, like chefs, have got to have the best primary materials. In France they plant, ripen and crush Shiraz and Viognier together. We manicure the bunches by hand. We're looking for a core of minerality in the Northern Rhone style.'

Months later, when I tasted the flagship His Master's Choice blend back home, the heady apricot and marmalade scent of the Viognier and the spicy Shiraz took me straight back to that hay bale on the slopes of Paarl Rock. That's the power of association once you've tracked a wine to its very source in the vineyard. I recall Cathy's words, 'Viognier is the only white grape that absorbs a red without diluting it. It soothes the tannins of Shiraz and adds a touch of sweetness. It's like a woman putting on a base to hide the wrinkles.' Wrinkles simply add character if you ask me.

Source: “Great grape gradients A walkabout in the wine matrix,” Graham Howe, March 28, 2006.