Wine of the Week 58: Lanzerac Pinotage 2022

The history of pinotage is one particularly close to Lanzerac’s heart. The origin story of this uniquely South African varietal began in Stellenbosch in 1925 when Professor Abraham Izak Perold successfully crossed pinot noir and cinsault (then known as hermitage). The experimental plants were saved from being pulled out with the shrubbery and, almost by chance, were rescued and taken to Elsenberg Agricultural College.

Sixteen years later, in 1941, the first barrel of pinotage was made. Another 20 years passed before the name pinotage was printed on a wine label… and that initial foray into the world of commercial wine came under the Lanzerac label for the 1959 vintage.

It took four more decades for that heritage to come properly into focus. When winemaker Wynand Lategan started at Lanzerac in 2005, there was only one block of pinotage on the farm. “We had to start building from almost scratch, establishing more vineyards,” he says. “Pinotage is quite vigorous, so we decided to do bush vines as a way of preventing too much vigour, as a natural way of getting the balance right.” Between 2008 and 2015 they planted five more blocks which, together with the original block, are the foundation of their current stable of pinotages. “We also had to develop and build our own barrel programme,” he recalls, “working out which barrels will fit with the wine.”

A wild ride

“It’s exciting to make pinotage, because it’s not like one of those grape varieties where you can just do the basics,” Wynand says. “With pinotage, you don’t have a lot of time. Even in the picking decision… you can have an unripe block on the Friday afternoon and you get a heatwave over the weekend and it’s almost overripe on the Monday. So, you have to be on your toes to get it right. And the same applies in the cellar when you ferment it. It’s quite an aggressive fermenter, so you do more pump overs over a shorter time. It’s like a wild horse you have to climb on and ride. But it’s satisfying when you get it right and it settles into a great elegant wine.”

Terroir talks

The development of the Jonkershoek Pinotage marked their next step, sharpening the focus on terroir, with fruit all from the valley (most from their own blocks and a portion from a neighbour). “If you look at this terroir, there’s a lot of granite in play,” says Wynand. “So, the vineyard has to work a little bit harder to ripen, to grow. This means it puts more of its resources into reproduction, into its grapes, so you get a lot of concentration. And the valley gives us a nice microclimate within the Greater Stellenbosch area. We get quite a bit of wind in summer, and then in the afternoons, when it’s quite hot in Stellenbosch, we’ll get a lifting of the air from the valley floor up to the mountain which has a cooling effect on the vineyards.”

“Pinotage is a wine full of sunshine, but we also want to have that elegance as well,” he says. “The Jonkershoek style I perceive as dark fruits, plums, prunes, and quite concentrated, but with quite a nice elegance at the end. And with the Jonkershoek, we also get a nice natural acidity from that cooling air movement, ending up on a higher note. Our approach is just to get the balance right and let the terroir speak.”

Ageing gracefully

“Another thing about pinotage…. yes, it’s quite a wild horse to tame, but it can mature fantastically,” Wynand says. Released after three years, it is already approachable and ready to drink straight away, but if you can wait a year or three there’s a whole lot more. “When you take that first sip, it’s sunshine, there’s a lot of sunshine in the fruit,” he continues. “But that will shift towards smoothness on the palate. With time that only gets emphasised, that smoothness, that softness.” He expects that with 5-10 years maturation it will acquire the velvet density and luxurious chocolate and caramel flavours of its very early Lanzerac predecessors.
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