When the special child grows up to be a ‘Jem’

I liked the maiden release which came to market a year ago, though I didn't feel an over-whelming urge to part with more than R7000 to buy a case.

I'm not saying it was out of place in that league of supernovas. Merely, that once a decent bottle of (local) wine crosses the R200 a bottle mark, the purchase ceases to be about intrinsics.

Incidentally, the same rules generally apply to imports once you've crossed the R450 a bottle mark.

However, missing out on The Jem's launch party in late October had an unintended benefit: Kevin Arnold, the wine (rather than water) side of Waterford (the Ord part is Didata's Jeremy Ord) suggested a tasting at the cellar a few weeks later to look at the Helderberg property's single vineyard wines.

It was an exercise I was keen to do; show wines such as The Jem often appear to be trying too hard. Usually, the less flashy bottlings, produced year in and year out from the same block of vines, are a fairer and more honest reflection of what the vineyards and the cellar are all about.

Waterford is one of the most beautiful of the trophy wine farms of Western Cape. It has been impeccably designed, from a visitor's point of view, with its hospitality area adjacent to, but not overwhelmed by, the production zone.

The winery itself is functional, geared to producing reasonable volumes of high-quality wine.

The top Medoc properties depend on little else, in production rather than vineyard terms, to work their magic.

My earliest impressions of Kevin's Waterford wines had been quite positive: I liked the first sample I tasted of his Shiraz, though in retrospect I found myself seduced more by the oak than the fruit.

The wine was well made, but its most attractive feature was its rich, almost mocha-like notes that could never have come from Waterford's (or anyone else's) vineyards.

Still, that was the right thing to be doing at the time: SA's Shiraz renaissance was just beginning - no one really knew what to expect from the recently arrived virus-free planting material.

Almost 10 years later, the same sense of the unexpected lurks in any Shiraz line-up. Style has more or less settled down into two major aesthetics. One is the rich, so-called South Australian ripe red/black fruit statement that tastes like Ribena and - yes, you guessed it - mocha/vanilla (from the oak of course).

The other, less showy statement, is based on the more peppery northern Rhône benchmark. This, sadly, is only infrequently achieved, making it a destination that has received about as many visitors as the Kingdom of Shangri-La.

Tracking the Waterford Kevin Arnold Shirazes over the years meant that I lost focus on what was being achieved with the property's other wines.

Last year this time, when I tasted the first release of The Jem, I happened upon the 2007 Sauvignon Blanc and was struck by its laid-back intensity and purity of fruit.

Old vines, meticulous viticulture, careful harvesting protocols combined to create a beautiful, if unflamboyant, white (of which the 2008 is a worthy successor).

This time round, Kevin was able to show that the same sense of place and precision of effort had gone into the Chardonnay and the Cabernet Sauvignon.

He lined them both up as far back as the 2004 vintage - the year when his commitment to the estate concept meant that only Waterford fruit went into Waterford wines. The 2004 Chardonnay made a great opening statement: complex, nutty, sweet-fruited and slightly funky.

I preferred it to the 2005 but would have been hard-pressed to choose a favourite between it and the 2006.

The latter was more citrus/lime-like, but equally refined and persistent. Both were bottled at around 13.5% alcohol, which means that a few years later both still had youth in reserve.

The Cabernets were less obviously South African benchmarks. All were good, though there was a more evident evolution in terms of fruit quality and style management.

Here the 2007 was the best wine, showing a lovely integration of tannin, and subtle, cedary notes on the nose and finish.

I have come to prefer the Cabernets to the Shirazes: they have a purity of line which, like the Sauvignon Blancs, speaks of the vineyard, rather than the cellar, as the source of their true quality.

Like the Chardonnays (and the Sauvignons, for that matter), they are embarrassingly underpriced. I am sure that neither Jeremy Ord nor Kevin Arnold needs any advice from me when it comes to positioning their wines, relative to the competition.

They also know, better than anyone else, how much they have to sell over the course of a year.

However, when I see what else is available in the (loosely) R90-R140 range, they're behaving a little like parents who could never understand how their "average" child grew up to win a Nobel Prize.