Generally believed to be the oldest surviving wine brand in South Africa, the iconic Chateau Libertas celebrated it’s 80^th anniversary this month.
It’s a wine surrounded by history and wonderful stories – some of them true.
Back in the early 1900s there were no big commercial wineries in South Africa. The strange thing is that Johannesburg was one of the world’s biggest consumers of French wine, and Champagne in particular. Wealthy mining magnates sopped the stuff up by the mega-gallon.
Enter a very flamboyant character by the name of Dr William Charles Winshaw.
Born in Kentucky, USA, he was a medical doctor, also a Texas ranger at one stage and an explorer who paddled down the Tennessee River in a canoe, accompanied by a hobo.
In 1900 he met a man who was supplying horses and mules to the British Army in South Africa and took on the job of accompanying a consignment of 4000 mules to the Cape.
Once here, Winshaw fell in love with the Cape and decided to settle here.
After a failed attempt at launching a grape-juice company, he decided there was a desperate need for an easy-drinking red wine to accompany good food. His first attempts were made in his kitchen, then he bought the Stellenbosch farm Oude Libertas, and established the Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery, which was to produce many of the wine brands that are household names today.
His home, La Gratitude, in Stellenbosch’s Dorp Street, is now  the site of the Big Easy restaurant and was the settling forbthe wine’s 80^th anniversary celebration. Winshaw’s grandson, John, and great grandson, JP, were present at the event.
The first Chateau Libertas was marketed in 1932 and the brand has been produced every year since then.
A very privileged group of tasters was treated to a selection of old Chateau Lib from across the years. Undoubted star of the day was the 1940 vintage, still full of flavour and freshness after all that time.
Tradition has it that wine lovers should stand up, out of respect, when they drink a wine older than themselves.
Only a small handful of tasters (myself included) remained seated for this historic gem.
The rest of the tasting consisted of one wine from each subsequent decade – 1857 (not as good as the ’40), 1962 –still alive and pleasing, 1978 (fresh and light and easy-drinking still), 1982 (a good year that garnered many gold medals for Chateau Lib) and finally 1994 (packed with vibrant red berry flavours and still young.).
It was interesting to hear those early vintage that had kept so well contained a good proportion of Cinsaut, a grape that has largely fallen into disuse. Former winemakers explained that the Cinsaut, which is rather light in body and colour, was usually crushed and some of the free-run juice tapped off, leaving a more concentrated must for use in the Chateau blend.
Today’s Chateau Lib is still Cabernet Sauvignon based, but with the addition of Merlot and other varieties, as the blenders see fit. Cinsaut is no longer part of it, alas.
It’s still one of the most underrated and under-priced red wines on the South African market.

Photograph: Chateau Libertas

Home

I can’t help wondering whether we’re making wines any better today than we did half a century ago.
I had the privilege of attending a tasting of six Zonnebloem Cabernet Sauvignons dating right back to 1964.
Beautiful wines, all of them.
Maybe I’m being soppy and sentimental, but those gracious old Cabernets have an elegant dignity about them that seems lacking in our brash, fruity reds wines today.
Actually, the 1964 Cab was produced before certification was introduced, so, as presenter Duimpy Baily explained, it could actually contain as little as 30% of Cabernet and the rest was probably made up of Cinsaut and other red varieties.
At that age the wine is still very drinkable – delicate ripe prune flavours with a sweet undertone and a hint of port, even with an alcohol content of less than 12%.
And silky smooth.
How many of today’s offering of juicy fruit-driven wines will still be as elegant and attractive in 50 years’ time, I wonder.
The 1974 Zonnebloem Cabernet was positively frisky, with juicy blackberry and plum flavours, soft and smooth.
Here again, the rules at that stage said there had to be at least 30% of Cabernet in it to be labeled as Cabernet.
Only 30%. And again, Cinsaut played a big role in making it the wine it was.
These truly great wines gave from grapes grown on bush vines, gnarled old vines that were freely attacked by leaf-roll virus, yet they have lasted and lasted.
The 1982 vintage had a lovely cigar-box aroma and flavours of rich fruitcake.
Thirty years down the line it’s in great shape – and it’s alcohol content is a low (by today’s standards) 11,6%.
They were stored in large, old vats, as there was not much new French oak around in those days.
With all our new, virus-free clones, fancy trellising systems, new French and American oak barrels and cellar technology, have we produced anything better?
If so, please open a bottle for me.
I suspect one of the main differences between those great old wines and our present production is that we rely too much on technology today, whereas the old winemakers worked by “gut-feel” and experience. Their taste-buds meant more than their laboratory instruments.
We’re producing chemicals.

Photograph: chuonfood.com

Home

Ideally, I think, every winemaker should be striving to produce the very best wine possible from the grapes available to him (or her) and the terroir in which they are produced.

If this were indeed the case, every wine farm and every wine maker would have just one wine to offer. All his effort and all his knowledge would be concentrated into that one, superb wine. It would be unique to that cellar.

Unfortunately life isn’t like that. We have to earn a living and follow what the customers demand, whether we agree with their demands or not.

Which is why almost every Cape cellar offers a Sauvignon Blanc, and a Merlot and a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay, even though that farm may not be ideally suited to the production of that particular grape.

And a “Bordeaux Blend.” Oh dear!

Every winemaker seems to feel obliged to produce a red blend based on Cabernet and Merlot like the famous wines of Bordeaux.

I have often said the very idea of making a “Bordeaux Blend” is a loser from the start. The best you can ever achieve is to make something that’s close in style to the wines of Bordeaux.

Always a second-best, or an almost-as-good.

I was fortunate enough to be a member of a tasting panel that assessed 20 “non-Bordeaux blends” recently.

In other words, they were wines blended from any red varietals the winemakers felt would add the most to the end result.

Shiraz, Pinotage, Cabernet, Cinsaut, Mourvedre, Malbec and Ruby Cabernet all featured in the line-up.

The results were spectacular.

Freed of the restraints of trying to copy the style of Bordeaux, our winemakers had created individual, very drinkable wines, full of rich fruit character, beautifully balanced tannins, well handled oak and silky texture.

Wines like Flagstone’s Longitude (Shiraz, Cabernet, Malbec), Beyerskloof’s Synergy (Pinotage, Merlot, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon) and Schalkenbosch Edenhof Bin 409 (Shiraz, Grenache, Mourvedre, Voignier and Cinsaut) charmed all the panel members.

Some very affordable wines like Boekenhoutskloof The Wolftrap (Shiraz, Mourvedre and Viognier) showed delightful, easy-drinking elegance — perfect for our relaxed South African lifestyle.

Surely these are the sort of wines our cellarmasters should be striving to achieve.

Each is unique, each is original, truly South African and none tries to mimic the ideas of some self-opinionated winemaker far away in an ancient French chateau.

Isn’t it time we became “Proudly South African” rather than “Trying Hard to be French”?

Photo: Cape Winelands, courtesy of TravelBlog

Home