Norman McFarlane discovers that Mentors are made through attention to detail | The Month July 2012
Who would ever have thought that a lumbering behemoth, a veritable shibboleth of the world of bulk wine, could produce a crop of stellar wines that if tasted blind, one would assume come from a small boutique wine estate focussed on crafting wines of distinction? And what if that very same boring monster proceeded to sweep aside smaller, apparently far more agile competitors, effectively beating them at their own game?
Well, it’s happened recently, with the meteoric rise to prominence of the KWV Mentors range under the stewardship of Australian-born winemaker Richard Rowe. I had the opportunity to taste my way through the current releases (2011 whites, 2010 reds) of the Mentors range at the KWV Emporium in Paarl, along with a number of fellow wine hacks, and the reactions around the tasting room table suggest that Richard and his team have truly hit the sweet spot.
The 2009 Mentors Sauvignon Blanc and Petite Verdot’s double gold medals helped KWV walk away with top honours at last year’s Veritas Awards. On top of that the 2011 Mentors Chardonnay scooped a gold and a trophy atop a slew of silver and bronze medals and resulted in KWV winning the Fairbairn Capital Trophy for Best Producer of Show at the 2012 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show. And these are but two
achievements of significance that have come KWV’s way since Richard’s appointment as chief winemaker in October 2008.
How come? Well, it all has to do with focus and attention to detail, which becomes evident when you sit and listen to Richard and his winemaking team (senior winemaker Johann Fourie and winemaker Christiaan Coetzee joined us for the tasting) talk about how they go about their business of crafting great wines.
The Mentors cellar is designed to allow for many small parcels of fruit to be processed, and for the wine to be vinified and stored separately, with tank sizes varying from 250 litres up to 12 000 litres. Crucially, this allows the winemaking team to assemble an array of discrete components, each picked, processed and vinified with focussed intention which becomes a building block which the winemaking team uses to assemble The Mentors range. “The Mentors range is an evolutionary development,” explains Richard, “with a focus on wine style. We’re constantly on the lookout for those small parcels of excellent quality fruit, particular sites which give us outstanding examples of the varietal, that will allow us to maximise our quality for our customers.”
Surprisingly perhaps, the entire Mentors range is bottled under screw-cap. Richard explains: “We’re determined to bring the best quality wine to our customers, and we believe that screw-cap allows us to do so. I tasted a 1975 Sauvignon Blanc under screw-cap in 2005, which makes it 30 years old at the time, and it was in remarkable condition, still expressing fresh green characteristics. If something better comes along, we’ll take a look at it, but for now screw-cap is it.”
And so we tasted our way through the five 2011 whites: A steely dry Sauvignon Blanc, a crisp Semillon, an astonishingly complete Grenache Blanc, an elegant and pleasingly dry Viognier, and a beautifully rounded Chardonnay - the last being the big winner for KWV at the 2012 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show.
The 2010 reds followed in short order. A vibrant Pinotage, a fruity spicy Shiraz, a sumptuous Shiraz-led Canvas red blend, a sublime Cabernet Franc, and an elegant Orchestra Bordeaux-style blend comprising the five usual suspects. The conversation ranged back and forth, as Richard and his team explained how each of the wines was made, what components were included and why, and what the stylistic intention was.
The Sauvignon Blanc, for example, is crafted from 85% Stellenbosch fruit from a vineyard in the Bottelary Hills with its fresh and typical tropic fruit expression, but it is the 15% of Semillon from a vineyard in Lutzville on the West Coast, that provides the palate weight and the veritable backbone of this wine, which contrary to conventional wisdom about Sauvignon Blanc – drink it in the year in which it is made - will show best in about two years’ time. It is the crafting of this wine that underpins what the KWV team is doing with The Mentors range – pursuing a particular style in each of the wines. It is the availability of a series of separately vinified components, these building blocks if you will, that afford the winemaker the latitude to craft wines of consistent quality and style from vintage to vintage.
Even in the single varietal wines, more than one component may be used. The Chardonnay for instance, is an intra-varietal blend made from two vineyard blocks about 100 metres apart. Not a single vineyard wine, but an estate wine if you will. And why so? Because the wine from each block brought a particular set of characteristics that were deemed necessary to craft the almost clinically clean and elegant result, and good it must be, because it convinced the judges at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show in a blind tasting. But it goes beyond the origin of the fruit, into the cellar, where once more, there is ferocious attention to detail: natural yeast ferment or inoculated (and if so, what yeast strain), barrel or tank fermented, partial or total malolactic fermentation, barrel selection, proportion of new and older oak, and so the list goes on. And this is of course all in preparation for the winemaking team to sit down, to taste the individual components they have made, and to practice their alchemy.
And as we departed for a sumptuous lunch at Harvest @ Laborie to round off the tasting, I recalled a comment made by Johann Fourie after a detailed description of how the Canvas red blend came to be, which sums up for me why The Mentors range has become what it is: “It’s all about attention to detail.”
Well, it’s happened recently, with the meteoric rise to prominence of the KWV Mentors range under the stewardship of Australian-born winemaker Richard Rowe. I had the opportunity to taste my way through the current releases (2011 whites, 2010 reds) of the Mentors range at the KWV Emporium in Paarl, along with a number of fellow wine hacks, and the reactions around the tasting room table suggest that Richard and his team have truly hit the sweet spot.
The 2009 Mentors Sauvignon Blanc and Petite Verdot’s double gold medals helped KWV walk away with top honours at last year’s Veritas Awards. On top of that the 2011 Mentors Chardonnay scooped a gold and a trophy atop a slew of silver and bronze medals and resulted in KWV winning the Fairbairn Capital Trophy for Best Producer of Show at the 2012 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show. And these are but two
achievements of significance that have come KWV’s way since Richard’s appointment as chief winemaker in October 2008.
How come? Well, it all has to do with focus and attention to detail, which becomes evident when you sit and listen to Richard and his winemaking team (senior winemaker Johann Fourie and winemaker Christiaan Coetzee joined us for the tasting) talk about how they go about their business of crafting great wines.
The Mentors cellar is designed to allow for many small parcels of fruit to be processed, and for the wine to be vinified and stored separately, with tank sizes varying from 250 litres up to 12 000 litres. Crucially, this allows the winemaking team to assemble an array of discrete components, each picked, processed and vinified with focussed intention which becomes a building block which the winemaking team uses to assemble The Mentors range. “The Mentors range is an evolutionary development,” explains Richard, “with a focus on wine style. We’re constantly on the lookout for those small parcels of excellent quality fruit, particular sites which give us outstanding examples of the varietal, that will allow us to maximise our quality for our customers.”
Surprisingly perhaps, the entire Mentors range is bottled under screw-cap. Richard explains: “We’re determined to bring the best quality wine to our customers, and we believe that screw-cap allows us to do so. I tasted a 1975 Sauvignon Blanc under screw-cap in 2005, which makes it 30 years old at the time, and it was in remarkable condition, still expressing fresh green characteristics. If something better comes along, we’ll take a look at it, but for now screw-cap is it.”
And so we tasted our way through the five 2011 whites: A steely dry Sauvignon Blanc, a crisp Semillon, an astonishingly complete Grenache Blanc, an elegant and pleasingly dry Viognier, and a beautifully rounded Chardonnay - the last being the big winner for KWV at the 2012 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show.
The 2010 reds followed in short order. A vibrant Pinotage, a fruity spicy Shiraz, a sumptuous Shiraz-led Canvas red blend, a sublime Cabernet Franc, and an elegant Orchestra Bordeaux-style blend comprising the five usual suspects. The conversation ranged back and forth, as Richard and his team explained how each of the wines was made, what components were included and why, and what the stylistic intention was.
The Sauvignon Blanc, for example, is crafted from 85% Stellenbosch fruit from a vineyard in the Bottelary Hills with its fresh and typical tropic fruit expression, but it is the 15% of Semillon from a vineyard in Lutzville on the West Coast, that provides the palate weight and the veritable backbone of this wine, which contrary to conventional wisdom about Sauvignon Blanc – drink it in the year in which it is made - will show best in about two years’ time. It is the crafting of this wine that underpins what the KWV team is doing with The Mentors range – pursuing a particular style in each of the wines. It is the availability of a series of separately vinified components, these building blocks if you will, that afford the winemaker the latitude to craft wines of consistent quality and style from vintage to vintage.
Even in the single varietal wines, more than one component may be used. The Chardonnay for instance, is an intra-varietal blend made from two vineyard blocks about 100 metres apart. Not a single vineyard wine, but an estate wine if you will. And why so? Because the wine from each block brought a particular set of characteristics that were deemed necessary to craft the almost clinically clean and elegant result, and good it must be, because it convinced the judges at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show in a blind tasting. But it goes beyond the origin of the fruit, into the cellar, where once more, there is ferocious attention to detail: natural yeast ferment or inoculated (and if so, what yeast strain), barrel or tank fermented, partial or total malolactic fermentation, barrel selection, proportion of new and older oak, and so the list goes on. And this is of course all in preparation for the winemaking team to sit down, to taste the individual components they have made, and to practice their alchemy.
And as we departed for a sumptuous lunch at Harvest @ Laborie to round off the tasting, I recalled a comment made by Johann Fourie after a detailed description of how the Canvas red blend came to be, which sums up for me why The Mentors range has become what it is: “It’s all about attention to detail.”
