South Africa winemakers mix and match grapes with success on par with that of the French. This is according  Jim Clark , the wine writer of Forbes Magazine.

He writes that South Africa is, properly speaking, part of the New World, but it has an unseemly predilection for blending that evokes Old World winemaking-think of France’s Chateauneuf-du-Pape, where some wines have 13 different grape varieties contributing to a single wine.

Clark believes that blended wine is more difficult to sell in America because the American consumer are programmed to order by varietal, so if one dominant grape doesn’t show up on the label, their minds file the wine under “troublesome.” European wines go under regional monikers instead, but they’ve got history working for them (though, even there, many lesser-known regions would be glad to stick the grape name on the label if local law didn’t prohibit it).

He adds that many of the South African blends are among the country’s most critically acclaimed, in-demand wines. Blending, after all, is a great way to get lots of complex flavours and textures into the bottle.

Clark concludes by asking “So where do these guys get off, asking sommeliers to memorize their blends and shoppers to read their back labels? Well, they may be New World, but they’ve been growing wine grapes for 350 years, so their wine industry is actually older than many of the famous chateaus of France. Maybe blending is something that comes with age and experience.”

A great example of one of these amazing South African blended wines is the Welmoed Heyden’s Courage Red.

This wine is available at ahwijndomein.ah.nl

Source: forbes.com