One of my great sadnesses in being struck down by a fluey-cold just before setting off for South Africa last week (see my lone blog ) was that it meant I had to miss my day scouting round Swartland, the diverse but extremely interesting emergent wine region north of Stellenbosch and Paarl, the traditional heart of Cape winelands. Swartland is rolling farming country with soils that vary from granite to shale and clay-loams. It was for long ignored by quality-conscious wine producers but has since the late 1990s emerged as a source of particularly interesting fruit, thanks to Charles Back of Fairview and subsequently Eben Sadie, once...