Long-standing visitors here will remember my story three years ago Pichon Lalande moves into South Africa. Well we all know how long wine projects take to come to fruition. Three years, right? So here we have the first fruits of Glenelly, May-Eliane de Lencquesaing’s move into a wine region that is sunnier, more beautiful and more open than Bordeaux.
Glenelly Hill 2003 Western Cape is certainly a very well made wine, and tastes as you might expect like a cross between a South African red and a Pauillac. This recipe is not always terribly successful. Think of the first few vintages of Christian Moueix’s Dominus in Napa Valley and Paul Pontallier and Bruno Prats’s Viña Aquitania just outside Santiago in Chile that suffered from having been made too close to the Bordeaux model. But in this case I think it works, even though this is just the first pretty tentative example of what is intended.
Reading the back label carefully, it’s clear that this has been made from bought-in fruit rather than the baby vines that have been planted on the estate on the slopes of the Simonsberg just outside Stellenbosch – although there seems to be some worrying confusion over Madame de Lencquesaing’s sex:
“This blended red wine has been made with the careful guidance of the château owner and his team, testament to their pursuit of excellence.”
There is the extra ripeness and opulence of fruit initially on the palate, thanks to the gentler South African climate, followed up by more rigour and dry, but not palate-drying, structure than is the norm in South African reds. The wine is somehow ‘cooler’ than most reds made in the Stellenbosch area, though it’s dense, very savoury, and impressively vibrant. The encepagement is 44% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot, 24% Sghiraz (sic according to the back label) and 4% of South Africa’s speciality Pinotage.
This wine is initially being offered in the UK by Fine & Rare who, unusually, promise immediate delivery rather than their usual four to six weeks. It’s at a very good price too: £89 a case in bond, £84 for three case orders. I am not suggesting that many private cellars will want more than one case of this novelty but it’s an interesting wine and likely to be the progenitor of a long and more glamorous line.
Update: Fast forward nearly ten years to January 2017 and the Glenelly, Glass Collection Chardonnay 2015 is a wine of the week.
