24 October 2003

Earlier this week, I attended the 2003 Top 10 Pinotage competition awards ceremony, an interesting exercise in that prior to the announcement of the winners, guests were invited to taste the 20 wines out of the 88 entries that reached the finals.

After working my way through the line up, I found myself thinking of the song "Basket Case" off the 1994 album Dookie by Californian punk band Green Day.

"Sometimes I give myself the creeps / Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me / It all keeps adding up / I think I'm cracking up / Am I just paranoid? / Or am I just stoned?" intones lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong on the chorus of that song, and after tasting the 20 finalists, I kinda know what he means.

Liking Green Day is a bit of a guilty pleasure. They're not the Clash, they're not the Sex Pistols, but they're nice enough. Same with Pinotage, to a great extent.

The biggest trend I detect among those producers who persist with SA's home-grown variety is a move towards riper grapes. Riper fruit, and more specifically riper tannins, are definitely leading to richer, more accessible wines, but I suspect elegance is beginning to be sacrificed. Or is my mind playing tricks on me?

I have on many occasions in this newsletter argued for the attributes of finesse and complexity over weight and power. I subscribe to a more refined aesthetic on an intellectual level, but perhaps in practice I am not able to resist the more obvious.

Consider a trio of wines that appeared in this year's 2003 Pinotage Top 10, namely Allée Bleue 2002, Bellevue 2002 and Rijk's Private Cellar 2002. All three also won double gold medals at the Veritas Awards earlier in the year, quite a feat to have impressed two different sets of judges equally.

Tasting them, yes, it would appear to all add up. Full-bodied. Concentrated fruit and smooth, soft tannins. Impossible not to like. Upon reflection, however, I started to worry that together they all adhere to the same aesthetic, one that is not terribly sophisticated. Finesse, I would argue, is being substituted for the impression of greater weight and substance.

Drawing up my own top 10, one wine barely managed to squeak in: the L'Avenir 2002. What is remarkable about this wine is that it is, in a word, old-style. Initially, the nose was closed, but as it opened up, it revealed spice and some gaminess to go with attractive plum and cherry aromas, while the palate showed lush fruit with firm, but elegant tannins. Though not immediately appealing, this is a wine that reveals extra dimensions with each sip, as I discovered when I drank it with lunch.

Interestingly enough, the official judges included it in their top 10 as well. In a competition that has been running for seven years, this is the sixth time, and the fourth year in a row, that L'Avenir has been among the top 10, making this Stellenbosch farm the most successful participant in the competition ever.

Taking into account this track record, it is heartening that winemaker Francois Naudé has been successful with a version of Pinotage that does not pander to the lowest common denominator. For those of us concerned that the obvious and the dramatic will supersede finesse and complexity in wine, no need to get paranoid just yet.