Vintelligence:

The Essential Digest by the Editors of HinsdaleCellars.com 

A Hinsdale Cellars Insider Report:
The Collector's Guide to South Africa

By Bruce Schoenfeld
Reporting from Stellenbosch, South Africa

January 2007

The first time I met the Namibian-born enologist Martin Meinert, nearly a decade ago, he’d embarked on a wine project as quixotic as any I’d ever come across. In celebration of the coming millennium change, he’d been hired to blend the contributions of 100 different South African winemakers into a single, coherent wine.

The result, predictably enough, was lacking in personality, singularity, evident terroir, and just about any other attribute that might possibly make a wine interesting. “One of the worst experiences of my life,” Meinert calls it now.

But Meinert, who cut his teeth in the 1990s as winemaker for the formidable South African estate Vergelegen, has come back strong. His own Meinert Wines, produced in small quantities in Stellenbosch’s Devon Valley, are well-made blends and varietals utilizing Bordeaux grapes. He also makes a commendable Viognier for the new Eagles Nest Farm in Constantia, with Shiraz to come. 

Beyond that, he’s a partner – along with winemaker Ken Forrester and two others – in the ambitious 96 Winery Road restaurant outside Stellenbosch, which has emerged as the meeting place for the local wine community. And he’s a fierce advocate and one-man public relations campaigner for the wines of friends such as Forrester, Peter Finlayson and David Trafford, some of the brightest lights in the industry here. 

When I passed through Stellenbosch in December, Meinert and I sat down to taste at 96 Winery Road. He not only brought along Trafford, but insisted that his de Trafford wines take center stage. I’d been impressed with the de Trafford Shiraz before, but in the new vintage, the 2004, I tasted an elegance I rarely encounter in South African wine. (I’d certainly classify it more a Syrah than a Shiraz in stylistic terms.)

Trafford made only 230 cases of it, and importer Bryce McNamee has been able to procure just 49 for the United States, so this won’t be a wine you can find on every doorstep, but it’s unquestionably worth searching for. A rounder, frutier de Trafford Shiraz, called Blueprint and made from a neighboring vineyard, exists in slightly greater quantities.

Trafford’s top-of-the-line wine, Elevation 393, adds Shiraz to a Bordeaux blend. His Cabernet flavors often veer toward vegetal, but here that adds complexity, interest and varietal characteristic.  And the Shiraz provides a wild note. It’s not a  Napa Valley taste-alike, that’s for sure. 

Alongside that, Meinert poured the 2003 version of his own Synchronicity, which uses the same formula as Elevation 393 but subs the native South African grape of Pinotage for Syrah. Even a little Pinotage in a blend is usually too much for me, but I was surprised to find none of that usual back-of-the-palate bite in the Synchronicity. It was a lush, distinctive wine, with 15 percent alcohol yet a nimbleness on the palate. Eight-hundred cases are produced. I consider it Meinert’s finest wine to date – though the 2004, not yet ready to drink, is rumored to be even better.

“Producers like David and me are trying to find distinctiveness, something that’s a little bit different,” Meinert said. He doesn’t need to be reminded how much easier that is when you aren’t blending 100 cuvees into a single wine.