Wine of the Week 54: Ken Forrester Renegade 2021

Ken Forrester has done things differently since his very first foray into wine in 1993, when he and his wife Teresa bought the historic but derelict Scholtzenhof farm in the Helderberg region of Stellenbosch. Back when many neighbouring wine estates were tearing out their chenin blanc vineyards to plant pinotage and chardonnay, he decided to see what he could make with the old chenin bush vines on his farm. The result, his now iconic FMC. And while Stellenbosch was (and still mostly is) all about Bordeaux blends, merlot and cabernet sauvignon, he planted Rhône varietals, a renegade move if ever there was one…

Vines and viticulture

“You should be planting what works on your soil,” says Ken. “Our soils here are generally too poor for cabernet and merlot, but Rhône varietals don’t need fertile soils.” Grenache, syrah and mourvèdre are the varietals favoured in the southern part of the Rhône valley, where the Mediterranean climate gives hot, dry, Mistral-wind-blown summers and cold, wet winters. Similar to the climate in this part of the Helderberg, which gets strong summer winds from False Bay that mitigate the heat and help the grapes ripen steadily.

Ken was also one of the early adopters of sustainable, organic viticulture. “We make our own compost, we grow winter cover crops between the dormant vines, we use ducks to control snails and insects and we manage yields according to the potential of the soils and the vines,” he says. “We do not believe that stress is a good practice in the vineyards or in life!”

Rhône-style red

The Renegade was a pioneer of Rhône-style blends in South Africa. “Ken was one of the first guys in Stellenbosch to plant mourvèdre vineyards,” says winemaker Shawn Mathyse, who has worked alongside Ken for many years. “Renegade has always been predominantly driven by syrah, but it could have grenache at the forefront for some vintages. The syrah, the grenache and the mourvèdre are all from the farm, except we add in a bit of Piekenierskloof grenache too.”

What’s in a name

“We used to call this red blend Ken Forrester Grenache Syrah,” says Shawn. “One time when we were exporting it to the US, the export certificate said Syrah Grenache and the label said Grenache Syrah. The US customs had a problem with that. So Ken decided to print some new labels and he called it Renegade, because it’s a blend without limits. It went through customs with the new label and the name stuck.”

Renegade 2021

An elegant Rhône blend in classic old-world style but with bold new-world fruit, Renegade is beautifully balanced with soft integrated tannins. “The whole idea is having an upside down pyramid with the red fruit of grenache, the spicy layer of the syrah and mourvèdre underneath keeping everything together,” says Shawn. All of the fruit goes into old 400-litre French oak barrels, no new oak and it’s aged individually for 18 months before blending. “It’s got this beautiful soft tannin structure to it, as Rhône blends are known for. And you don’t need to age it for 10, 20 years, like Bordeaux blends, it’s ready to drink now.”
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