Our most ambitious and most highly anticipated tasting of the year – six decades of the famous First Growth Bordeaux, Château Mouton Rothschild. What makes Mouton so famous? It is the only château to have had its ‘Cru’ changed since the 1855 Grand Cru Classification, being elevated in 1973. Uniquely, each vintage is also labelled [...]

Harry Haddon of 2oceansvibe.com has hailed Winery of Good Hope’s Pinot Noir as ‘the best damned Pinot in the country for under R150′. According to Haddon, ‘There is plenty of tangy berry fruit – raspberries and strawberries – with Pinot Noir’s characteristic mushroom forest floor aroma…elegantly structured, with fine tannins, a long mineral finish.’ At [...]

How does SA compare with the very best of France – the home of the most revered wines in the world and often used as the benchmark for most SA winemaking? Here is a write-up of a private tasting that compared some of the finest wines from each country. Many styles and varieties could have been [...]

Neal Martin of Eroberparker.com has added his voice to the chorus of international praise for South Africa’s Young Guns. These young winemakers, or “Cape Crusaders” as Martin puts it, are all about letting the vineyards speak. They focus on what could be described as “natural” winemaking and there’s no doubt that they’re creating some of [...]

Neal Martin has singled South Africa out as the most exciting New World country on the scene at the moment. In a recent article on Erobertparker.com, the respected British critic sings the praises of renegades such as Eben Sadie, Adi Badenhorst and Chris Mullineux – winemakers who are shaking things up and injecting a healthy [...]

In his most recent tasting article, Richard Hemming of Jancisrobinson.com reflects on the top-quality wines he tasted during a visit to South Africa in September. He highlights 36 of the Cape’s best offerings, including wines from Cape Point Vineyards, Ataraxia, Mullineux, Kanonkop and Paul Cluver. Read the full article on Jancisrobinson.com. One of Hemming’s most [...]

As the year draws to an end and we celebrate the start of the holiday season, many of us are breaking out the bubbly. But which particular sparkling wine or Champagne is the perfect summer fizz? We thought we’d share the opinion of one of our prominent clients, who attended a blind tasting last night. [...]

Kanonkop has released the 2011 vintage of its locally and internationally famed Black Label Pinotage. Only 1,700 bottles of the 2011 were produced, of which 1,500 will be sold for R1,200 per bottle. Since the release of the inaugural 2006 vintage in 2009, Black Label has become an iconic South African Pinotage. The wines are [...]

Could we have asked for a more spectacular venue than Restaurant Mosaic at The Orient and their Conference Room? Definitely not. From the moment our guests arrived, greeted by bokke and zebra along the driveway, they were made to feel special and welcomed with proverbial open arms. Transported what feels like a million miles away [...]

Here are notes from our Grand Cru Burgundy tasting held at the Cape Wine Academy on 5 June 2012. The idea was to select a representative Grand Gru from the most important villages and note their intrinsic characters. Various producers, some mordern than others, as well as various vintages added more discussion and depth. 1 [...]