An English guest asks, half joking, whether the English sparkling wine you have just poured is really any good, or whether you are being patriotic. The honest answer involves chalk, a warming climate and the same grapes grown ninety miles away in Champagne. This lesson is about the places that are not yet cliches.
South Africa: Old World structure, New World fruit
The Cape sits between two oceans, and the cold Benguela current running up the west coast is the cooling engine. The Cape Doctor, a strong south-easterly wind, dries the vineyards, reduces fungal disease and slows ripening. Soils are ancient and poor; leafroll virus and drought are the real constraints.
Wine of Origin (WO) is the labelling system: a certified scheme of regions, districts and wards guaranteeing origin, vintage and variety, but again not style.
| Area | Environment | Wines |
|---|---|---|
| Stellenbosch | Mountain slopes, varied aspects, moderated by False Bay | Cabernet, Bordeaux blends, Syrah |
| Swartland | Hot, dry, old bush vines, low yields | Old-vine Chenin and Rhone-style blends; the quality revolution |
| Walker Bay / Hemel-en-Aarde | Cold Atlantic air | Fine Pinot Noir and Chardonnay |
| Constantia | Cool, high, sea-facing | Sauvignon Blanc; historic sweet Vin de Constance |
Chenin Blanc is the country's calling card: high acid, made dry, off-dry, oaked, and from old bush vines it is one of the great values in world wine. Pinotage, a Cinsault x Pinot Noir crossing, is South Africa's own, and is fine when made carefully.
The emerging regions
- England — the south of England shares the chalk of the Paris Basin that runs under Champagne. The climate is marginal and cool, but warming has pushed it into the window where Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier can just ripen, retaining very high acidity: exactly the raw material for traditional-method sparkling wine. Yields are low, vintage variation is severe, and the cost of production is high, which is why the price sits near Champagne rather than below it.
- Greece, Hungary, Georgia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania — indigenous varieties and, in Georgia, qvevri winemaking that predates barrels by millennia.
- China, India, Japan, Uruguay (Tannat), Brazil, Mexico, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey — real wine industries, increasingly at real quality.
Onboard Notes
English sparkling is the diplomatic pour for a British owner and it stands up on merit, but it is not cheap and the vintages are wildly uneven. Taste before you commit the cellar to a case, and be candid about the price: you are buying a marginal-climate wine, and marginal climates are expensive.
Drink responsibly, and remember that professional tasting means assessing and spitting, not consuming.