Christian Eedes writes about Chenin Blanc

The thing about a BYOB-party where half the guests are wine enthusiasts and the other half are indifferent is it leaves you in a quandary as to what wine to contribute: bring plonk and you might look like a cheapskate; bring something really special and next thing you know, somebody's turned your Steenberg Reserve Sauvignon Blanc into a spritzer or mixed your Kanonkop Paul Sauer with cola.

Seeing as we were going to be eating relatively spicy seafood, I thought full-fruited, wooded white was the way to go and opted for two examples of Chenin Blanc, namely Perdeberg Reserve 2006 (gold at the 2007 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show) and Mulderbosch Steen op Hout 2006 (4 Stars in WINE magazine, 92nd on US magazine Wine Specator's 2007 Top 100 Wines of the Year list). The relation of quality to price in both instances is just about unbeatable, with the former having originally sold for R30 a bottle from the cellar and the latter R48 (both producers have since moved onto their 2007 vintages).

Into the communal Coleman cooler box they went where they were vastly outnumbered by bottles of bubbly and, surprise, surprise, Sauvignon Blanc. Come meal-time, there were more than a few raised eyebrows raised when I set the two bottles of Chenin on the table, insisting they would be an excellent accompaniment to the food.

It's not difficult to understand why Sauvignon Blanc is currently so popular. For one thing, it is most often intensely herbaceous on the nose making it easily recognisable and therefore reassuring to the novice given how disorientating wine appreciation can be. For another, the lightness of body and crisp acid that the variety typically displays makes for a refreshing beverage well suited to South Africa's generally warm climes.

Chenin Blanc, on the other hand, suffers from an unfortunate legacy. It has for a long time been South Africa's most widely planted grape, but most of it was used for bulk wine and distillation purposes. Up until the mid-1990s, the majority of stuff that ended up as Chenin table wine tended to be under-ripe, over-cropped and badly vinified - this made for lean and neutral wines that nobody wanted to drink, however cheap.

With South Africa's political transformation that occurred last decade came deregulation of the wine industry. All of a sudden growers did not have the protection traditionally offered them by the über co-operative KWV in terms of minimum wine price support and statutory surplus removal. A restructuring of viticultural activities was initiated across the board but no more so than in the case of Chenin: whereas the variety made up 31.9% of the national vineyard in 1990, this had dropped to 18.7% by 2006. Those who work with Chenin have been forced to add value in order to make it commercially viable.

Paradoxically, what stands in Chenin's favour is precisely how long it's been around on the local wine scene. In general, the consensus is that vines of advanced age make better wines, and 38.4% of the Chenin that's planted in South Africa is over 20 years old, making it the variety with the greatest proportion of older vines that we have. This means that there are plenty of interesting vineyard blocks for winemakers to use and a core of our top winemakers are doing precisely that. Eben Sadie of Columella fame currently has a stunning example of Chenin in barrel made from 100-year-old vines located in Jonkershoek, Stellenbosch, for instance…

Anyway, back to New Year's Eve. I found myself chatting to one grand 85-year-old lady. "What do you do?" she asked. A writer, I replied. "What do you write for?" she inquired further. WINE magazine, I told her. "Never heard of it". (I get that all the time…)

Nevertheless, she was sufficiently impressed to put her long-held prejudices concerning Chenin Blanc aside and try the two on offer. "Delicious!" she proclaimed and I realised for all the efforts to rehabilitate Chenin in recent times, the average consumer remains largely unaware of the advances made. Those who champion the grape need to realise that there's still a long way to go.