Wham, Bam, Thank You, Sam
Sam Harrop MW thinks there is an increasing divide between South Africa’s top-end wines that over-deliver and the rest that are way below world-average. Interview by Christian Eedes.
Sonoma County, California comes close but I reckon the South African winelands are the most picturesque in the world,” says Sam Harrop. He’s well qualified to speak, having worked all over the world, both as winemaker and wine buyer for UK retailer Marks & Spencer.
But Harrop is not one to become too sentimental about mountain vistas – he did his Master of Wine thesis on the effect of the spoilage yeast brettanomyces in Syrah wine and is currently one of the chairmen of the International Wine Challenge, his specific responsibility being the logging and analysis of faults.
He knows South Africa well after multiple visits in the late 1990s while fulfilling his Marks & Spencer duties. “I’m staggered how far wine quality has come at the top end in the last ten years,” he remarks, but quickly adds a cautionary note that it has “stagnated or even fallen” at the bottom end. If SA reds displayed an unfortunate “weedy” character then, the problem seems to have become even more apparent now. “Cost-cutting when it comes to viticulture, vineyard stress due to leafroll virus, global warming – I’m sure all these factors are playing a role,” says Harrop.
South Africa needs to look to Australia for inspiration, he reckons, although he says this with regret as he feels Australia is not half the country in terms of potential. “Australia understands the role that wine can play in building a nation’s profile, while South Africa has yet to grasp the value of having a bottle of wine that happens to be not only cheap – £3.99 – but good on every London table.”
According to Harrop, Australia built its winemaking reputation on being able to supply huge volumes of clean, fresh, fruity wine priced at the bottom end of the market. Even as the country’s ability to produce this sort of wine is compromised by a shift in macroclimatic conditions (the drying up of Victoria’s Murray River being a case in point), the ultra-premium wineries are flourishing. South Africa, meanwhile, is over-delivering at the top-end while failing to deliver at the base.
To illustrate the importance of good as opposed to bad entry-level wine, Harrop comes up with a motoring analogy: “Vauxhall and Lada both sell at the same price but one does the job so much better…”
As most WINE magazine readers will have noted, even what are conventionally thought of as South Africa’s very best reds have been picking up flak from certain UK critics recently. The main complaint is that too many still appear to have a green flavour profile despite particularly high alcohols that would normally be an indication of ultra-ripe fruit. Apparently a lot of wines also display an unattractive character on the nose, unforgettably, if bluntly, described as “burnt rubber” by Jane MacQuitty of The Times.
Dubbed the “fault meister”, Harrop confesses that he encounters these unpleasant characters all too often, and speculates that they are due to a combination of vineyard stress as well as winemakers being overly ambitious in the cellar. In the first instance, vines are shutting down in the summer heat, resulting in grapes that might show sugar ripeness but not physiological ripeness while in the second case, winemakers are attempting to extract too much and off-odours and flavours are resulting from a stressed ferment.
“In the end, I suspect that South African reds’ shortcomings are all inter-linked: less than optimally ripe grapes, reduction and microbial spoilage,” he comments. “The scale of the problem is huge. You need to do lots of analysis and trials.”
But before any local winemaker decides to jump off a tall building, Harrop is unreservedly positive about local whites. “Your Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon blends, for instance, have exceptional personality,” he notes. “It’s almost as if you’re in touch with your feminine side when it comes to whites but are over-compensating when it comes to reds. Who would’ve thought, in light of the style of rugby you play?”
Cheeky, coming from a Kiwi...
