Steen

I have only visited South Africa twice. Once was when The One and I celebrated our marriage with a thouroughly enjoyable honeymoon and once with a rather under-appreciated professional trip to begin the process of opening an office in Johannesburg.

It is a big, colourful, beautiful country with a great variety of scenery, culture, food and wildlife, that we experienced only a small proportion even if we did drive 2,000 miles whilst there. On that first trip, a few years before I started a formal interest in wine, we visited a single winery. If we return, that number will increase significantly.

Looking for a white S, I remembered that the grape used to make The One's most favoured wine, Vouvray, which is known as Chenin Blanc in the Loire and elsewhere, is widely grown in the rainbow nation but known there as Steen. So:

Week S (2021) First Cape Bush Vine Chenin Blanc 2019. £7.79 Waitrose.

I also wanted to choose a South African wine as a small act of solidarity with a national industry that has suffered badly throughout the pandemic, with alcohol sales having been temporarily banned. I will raise a glass to their speedy recovery to full production and sales.

First Cape is a brand initiated by a group of 38 growers in 2001 and now uses grapes grown in more than 200 farms. The are centred in the Breede Valley in the Western Cape province, to the east of the arguably more well-known areas of Stellenbosch and Paarl.  It is surrounded by mountains on three sides which provide protection from the winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean, and leading to hot dry summers. The valley floor is where the high-cropping grapes used in generic wines and for distilling are grown and, I suspect, is where the grapes whose juice has reached this bottle were grown.

I suspect this because although this is a pleasant wine, with quite prounounced flavours of stone fruits and some tropical fruits, it is a little lacking in acidity and complexity. For the price this is not unreasonable and it is very drinkable. I just leaves me a bit underwhelmed.  It doesn't have the sweetness of a Vouvray but isn't really dry either.

There is peach and apricot, a hint of pineapple and even something lightly peppery, but reminiscent of the diluted juice from canned fruit. There is nothing wrong with it and if it was a sunny day a chilled glass of this would slip down very easily, just not memorably.

It's ok, which is to damn it with feint praise. I could buy it again, but probably won't.