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.”

Norman McFarlane tastes the alchemy of Andrea Freeborough | The Month June 2012

blend [blεnd]
vb
1. to mix or mingle (components) together thoroughly
2. (tr) to mix (different grades or varieties of tea, whisky, tobacco, etc.) to produce a particular flavour, consistency, etc.
3. (intr) to look good together; harmonize
4. (intr) (esp of colours) to shade imperceptibly into each other
n
1. a mixture or type produced by blending
2. the act of blending

What’s missing in the above set of definitions is the word ‘wine’, and in particular, in the following definition: 2. (tr) to mix (different grades or varieties of tea, whisky, tobacco, etc.) to produce a particular flavour, consistency, etc.

Platter’s South African Wines 2012 on the other hand, gives the following definition: Blend A wine made
from two or more different grape varieties, vintages, vineyards, or containers. And it is in that last part – “vineyards, or containers” - that lies the reason so many apparently single varietal wines are so very good. Because whilst they might be single varietal wines, they are at the same time, blends, and to be precise, intra-varietal blends.

A fascinating tasting in the Die Bergkelder cellar deep in the Papegaaiberg overlooking Stellenbosch, where Andrea Freeborough practices her alchemy to produce Fleur du Cap wines, highlighted just how important the art of blending is, in crafting a fine single varietal wine.

The Fleur du Cap Unfiltered range includes a Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, each of which is constructed, not from wine from a single vineyard, or a single estate, or for that matter a single ward, district or region, but from up to four different wines of the same variety, from multiple districts, regions or wards. We tasted our way through twelve wines in total, some or all of which will find their way into the Fleur du Cap Unfiltered range.

Take for example, the soon to be released Fleur du Cap Unfiltered Sauvignon Blanc. Andrea and her winemaking team considered four different components from Elgin, Stellenbosch, Lutzville and Cape Agulhas. Each brings a particular set of characteristics - aromas, flavours, minerality, acidity – that are deemed to be necessary to produce a balanced final wine, that satisfies a set of carefully defined stylistic criteria. During the tasting, the subject of Sauvignon Blanc style came up for discussion. Would the crisp, fresh, green style redolent of green pepper and asparagus perpetuate, or was the market shifting towards a more sumptuous tropical fruit style? After much discussion it emerged that Fleur du Cap at least would continue to pursue the greener, fresher style, until its market, both local and overseas, suggests that a stylistic shift is necessary.

But where do these different characteristics come from? Why does Stellenbosch produce Sauvignon Blancs that exude tropical fruit notes like gooseberries, melons, guavas and passion fruit, while grapes from Darling are all about grassy, green pepper and asparagus? In a word, terroir. Okay, terroir is no simple word. In wine terms, it is possibly one of the most debated and the most contentious,  but irrespective of what your understanding of the word may be, most everybody would agree that climate (and weather) is the single most significant variable, arguably followed by soil.

Listening to viticulturalist Bennie Liebenberg describing each of the four locations where these Sauvignon Blancs grow, and why they present the characteristics that they do, puts the role of terroir into perspective.

But is it all about variables over which we have no control? Disregarding for a moment the long term consequences of human activity manifesting itself in shifting global weather patterns, there isn’t terribly much that one can do in the short-term to influence climate and weather. By like token, the soil that you have, is the soil that you have. To a lesser extent, the vines you have, oriented to the passage of the sun, and planted and trellised as they are, are what they are. Ripping out vineyards and replanting them is a costly and long-term business, not lightly undertaken.

At a micro level, giving or withholding water via irrigation, can and does influence how grapes develop, but what can be achieved is limited. If the vineyard is dryland, you’re deprived of this tool.

Which leaves canopy management and all of the attendant viticultural practices, to manipulate how much fruit each vine produces, and to a greater or lesser extent, berry size, sugar level and flavour profile. Turning once more to Sauvignon Blanc as an example, the popular green aromas and flavours are dependent on the level of Methoxypyrezene in the grapes, which is controlled by the amount of light and heat the berries are exposed to.  Canopy management is therefore critical in Methoxypyrezene control, which must be balanced against the need to avoid the berries getting sunburnt. It’s a complex, finicky business.

“My philosophy on good wine growing is pretty simple: Find a balance in the vineyards that are situated on excellent terroir and ensure proper vineyard management by controlling the crop through proper pruning techniques, canopy management and irrigation. This is the basis of a good harvest of quality grapes needed for the making of our wines,” reckons viticulturist Bennie. But listening to him talk about the lengths he goes to in the vineyards of the 300-odd producers from whom Fleur du Cap buys grapes, it becomes evident that Andrea and her winemaking team rely on Bennie to deliver the precise components they need to craft each of the Fleur du Cap unfiltered range.

The blending decisions had largely been made when we tasted the wines with Andrea and Bennie, with final blending planned for the following week. How they are likely to turn out was suggested by the current vintages which we drank over lunch after the formal tasting.  Uniformly impressive (as yet unreleased) 2011 Semillon, 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, 2009 Merlot and 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon suggest that winedrinkers will be beating a path to their local wine retailers to lay in a stock. In the meantime, enjoy the current vintages.