Fairview, Paarl

Goats do Roam. In danger of being a little too glib, perhaps, but that lot at Fairview have pulled it off with aplomb. The name is a play on Côtes du Rhône, the area in southeast France famed for its Shiraz; the wine itself is a blend of Pinotage and an assortment of typical Rhône varieties such as Shiraz, Cinsaut, Carignan, Grenache and Mourvèdre. Conceived in 1999, it proved an instant success: 100 000 cases of the red will be made from the 2002 vintage, a white and a rosé making up a further 65 000 cases.

 

Fairview's marketing hotshot Jeremy Borg explains the label: "We wanted to incorporate elements of an old-fashioned, Rhône-style label with a rumbustious and randy-looking goat."

For those of you who don't know, the Paarl farm is just about overrun with these bearded ruminants and makes more than a few halfway decent cheeses from their milk.

Get Borg started, and he'll rattle on about what a warm grape-growing region South Africa is in world terms, varieties that can handle the heat producing best results. Very similar to the Rhône. You start to understand the thinking behind Goats do Roam. But what of Pinotage, which makes up most of the red blend? "It's the bastard son of the Rhône, anyway," says Borg. "It has the colour and organoleptic properties that are typically from that region."

Conventional wisdom holds that the casual wine-drinker prefers single-variety wines because they are so much easier to comprehend. Goats do Roam seemingly puts paid to that theory. As Borg points out, "Judicious blending means a wine with more complexity and interest," and the team at Fairview obviously know when they're on to a good thing. Look out for the Goat Roti 2001, a blend of Shiraz and Viognier, the name being another irreverent play on words, meant to suggest the renowned Côte Rôtie.