Cape Town / Wines / Wine of the Week: Off the Record Chenin Blanc 2025

Wine of the Week: Off the Record Chenin Blanc 2025

By Malu Lambert • 30 September 2026

Bobby Wallace wears a few hats. At his family’s Elgin operation, Paul Wallace Wines, he makes the wine and handles sales; his father, veteran viticulturist Paul Wallace, farms the vineyards; and his mother Nicky runs the business. “We’re a small operation,” he says. “I do the winemaking, dad does the farming, mom’s the CEO.”

Then there’s vineyard management and consulting. Bobby manages Brocha, an organic Elgin property, and has recently returned to consulting for another local producer. Which leaves just enough time for Off The Record, his own small-batch label.

Minimum intervention

Bobby started the project with his brother Mark while both were employed by other wine brands, so the winemaking, tastings, bottling and planning happened after hours. The first wine, made in 2018, came about when they found a rare parcel of Elgin chenin blanc. After three vintages, they added syrah from a high-altitude Ceres vineyard; since 2022, Bobby has continued Off The Record as a solo act.

Bobby describes his philosophy simply: wines are “made in the vineyard and looked after in the cellar”, with as little intervention as possible. It makes sense given his background. His father has spent around four decades in viticulture and was among the early independent vineyard consultants working across the Cape. The Wallace family arrived in Elgin in 2003, buying a rundown apple farm.

The family initially sold all its grapes to producers in Stellenbosch and Constantia. Only in 2013 did they begin keeping selected parcels for themselves, cherry-picking what Bobby calls the farm’s “most interesting little pockets”. Today they farm 13 hectares, with a 360-degree hill giving them an unusually broad spread of aspects and microclimates.

That experience has also made Bobby wary of pigeonholing Elgin simply as chardonnay-and-pinot country. “When the region’s only 30 years old, how do you actually know what grapes are best planted in the region?” he asks. The valley’s hills, aspects and soils make it, in his view, “a little bit of Burgundy, a little bit of Bordeaux” and “maybe even a little bit of the Loire”.

An Elgin rarity

For Off The Record alongside the Ceres syrah, he works with chenin blanc from Casey’s Ridge, something of an Elgin rarity.

“For me, chenin’s the most African grape,” Bobby says. “We know what a Bot River chenin tastes like, we know what a Stellenbosch chenin tastes like. But what is cool-climate chenin?”

He’s sufficiently convinced by the answer that the Wallace family has now planted more. What attracts him is not only the freshness but its ability to age: he describes older vintages retaining a crispness while gradually developing the richer, waxier character associated with mature chenin.