Taking delight in local chenin and syrah

When Andrea and Chris Mullineux ran their new release roadshow a little more than a month ago, the writers, critics, influencers and groupies turned out in force. There are wine events for which a press-gang is required to assemble more than a handful of hangers-on, and others where the producers have to mark the invitation “not transferable”. The Mullineux party falls clearly into the latter category.

This should come as no surprise: before they started their eponymous winery about 15 years ago they drove the cult wine status of Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards. Since then, they’ve done the same for themselves and their shareholders, along the way creating what is probably SA’s best-known high-end shiraz/syrah brand. They are equally focused on chenin blanc, and since they are Swartland-based, their versions of chenin share the same origins as their syrahs.

Other than a range of more affordable Mullineux wines made from blending whatever is declassified from their single sites, as well as from other fruit sources they manage, the talking point of the Mullineux wines is site: where the fruit is grown, rather than how the wine is made.

Amid the obsession over their single vineyard wines it’s almost too easy to ignore the standard chenin and syrah, and consumers do this at their peril. Since there are more of them about, they are significantly less expensive than the single-site wines. This doesn’t mean they are cheap — prepare to spend about R400 per bottle — but relative to the much harder to obtain site-specific wines (R650 for the chenins, R1,100 for the syrahs) they are bargains. To talk yourself into paying roughly double for the premium bottlings, ask yourself if you’re really that geeky, and if you’re willing to age them until the differences are sufficiently evident.

Moreover, these single-site wines are either already sold out or available only on allocation. It’s not that easy to tell them apart in their youth — at least not in a meaningful way. This is because they are all equally immaculately made. The nuanced differences are attributable primarily to site, to how the soil (either schist, granite or iron) plays a role in determining the way the vine responds to the climatic conditions of the vintage.

At 2022’s launch my favourite chenin and syrah happened to come from the schistous soils of the Mullineux’s Roundstone farm in the Kasteelberg. But that was on the day, and since all wine is performance art, you might add that the expressiveness of the individual bottles may also have influenced this outcome. But I would have been equally happy to flatten a bottle from any of the other single vineyards. The distinction of site does not translate into a meaningful difference in the appeal of the wines.

The Mullineux tasting prompted me to reflect on the extraordinary diversity in the styles of SA shiraz and chenin. If vineyards within a 25km radius of each other in the Swartland yield these differences, then upon extending the range to say 100km (which would include Stellenbosch, Durbanville and the Ceres Plateau) the stylistic variations become dramatic.

Some of this has to do with the soil: the geology of the Western Cape is anything but homogeneous. Then climate plays a substantial role: even within a single appellation average annual rainfall can vary more than 50%. Finally there’s the question of viticulture and the age of vines: the more the fruit expresses the place it comes from, the less need to build flavour using the obvious and extrinsics such as new oak.

What we are seeing from the current generation of avantgarde winemakers are fabulous wines with a profound sense of place. Not all of their wines cost a royal ransom: there are certified old-vine chenins and literally countless shirazes scoring more than 90 points and selling for under R150. In SA we may live in an electrical energy black hole, but at least we can drink great wine in the darkness.

What we are seeing ... are fabulous wines with a profound sense of place