Celebrate South Africa 2010, San Francisco

Celebrate South Africa 2010

I heard about this super fun South African wine tasting event from a very popular wine blog and just had to go. It is World Cup season next month and South Africa is the host nation. (Go Brazil!!!) What a delightful excuse to drink South African wines, as if one ever really needed one.

I’m not the only one with this idea in wine writing. Just recently Wine Spectator had an extensive and very flattering story featuring South African wines. They particularly praised chenin blanc and syrah. Of course, there’s the home grown pinotage, a hybrid of pinot noir and cinsault. That’s a grape varietal that we never had much success with in “home tastings” until K and L turned us onto the Diemersfontein pinotage. Instead of banana and sawdust, this one tastes like root beer, coffee, chocolate and earth. Really good. Apparently pinotage is planted elsewhere in the world but I only think of it as being South African myself.

The tasting event happened in a beautiful space in the South of Market neighborhood last Thursday evening. There were nine South African wine distribution companies in attendance, each sampling (and selling) wines from several producers. One of the company reps was thrilled to tell us that she thought that South African wines would take off after the World Cup starts next month, as after natives, Americans were the largest number of ticket holders for the games. Surely we’ll taste the wines there and fall in love! At least that was her idea.

Prof. T and I enjoying ourselves at Celebrate South Africa 2010

Diemersfontein was our favorite producer of the entire event

We met up with Prof. T and some other friends after work at the wine tasting venue. The space was a large divided room with a kind of elegant warehouse look with lots of exposed wood, decorated with a variety of interesting antiques and posters of famous early 20th Century French ads. When we arrived it was already a little crowded but not too bad. Aside from wine, the event offered free food and heavenly chocolate kahlua flavored mini cupcakes! I don’t normally go for sweets but these things were good!

Since there was such a large selection of wines, we had to focus our tastings to prevent getting overwhelmed. Mostly we tried reds. I generally stuck to shiraz, syrah and syrah blends and pinotage. Surprisingly, we enjoyed or at least liked most of the wines. Only a rare few seemed dreadful.

we liked the Pepper Pot Rhone style blend a lot

Here’s some that we highly recommend:

2009 Iona Sauvignon Blanc
2006 La Petite Ferme Cabernet Sauvignon
2005 Diemersfontein Reserve Malbec
2006 Diemersfontein Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
2006 Diemersfontein Reserve Shiraz
2006 Diemersfontein Reserve Pinotage
2008 Diemersfontein Pinotage
2007 Slanghoek Private Selection Pinotage
2007 Major’s Hill Pinotage
2008 Edgebaston The Pepper Pot, a Rhone style blend
2007 Black Pearl Oro Red Blend, a shiraz cabernet sauvignon blend
2005 Eventide Shiraz
2004 Niels Verburg Shiraz
2008 Lynx Cabernet Sauvignon
2009 Six Hats Pinotage
2008 Spice Route Chakalaka
2008 Boekenhoutskloof The Chocolate Block

the real reason French women don't get fat?

We liked these and would try them again, just to be sure:

2008 Painted Wolf Pinotage
2006 Lynx Xanache
2009 Fairvalley Chenin Blanc
NV De Krans Ruby Port
2008 Doolhof Dark Lady
2003 Morgenster Estate Lourens River Valley, Bordeaux blend
2006 De Trafford Cabernet Sauvignon
2005 Ridgeback His Master’s Choice Rhone Blend
2008 Graham Beck Gamekeeper’s Chenin Blanc

We didn’t care for these:

2005 Villiera Estate Pinotage
2006 Delheim Pinotage
2008 Graham Beck Shiraz Cabernet
2006 Groenland Antoinette Marie Red Blend
2006 Groenland Premium Antoinette Marie Red Blend

We ended up tasting a few more but got a bit mixed up at that point about what we liked and what we didn’t. Most of the reds we enjoyed were complex with earthy, fruity and cola, coffee or chocolate and caramel notes. The ones that we were less fond of tasted tart and unbalanced, or just flat and dull. This is not the best way to really decide if you should purchase these wines in quantity. Perhaps if we actually spit it would have been o.k.? Celebrate South Africa 2010 was like the Paso Robles wine tasting festival that way: it gives you an idea of which wines to look for and try in a more serious way in the future, either in South Africa, if you’re so lucky, or at a home tasting.

And about home tastings: I really think that these are the way to go. It’s fun to tour wineries and god knows I love to do that! But most of the stuff you’ll end up drinking at your own crib. In your own particular environment, you’ll best be able to determine whether or not you’re a fan of the wine in question. Fortunately, most of these South African bottles weren’t that expensive. So if you haven’t already, drink some South Africa and cheers to the World Cup! Go Brazil!!!

a partisan subliminal message