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Landskroon Cinsaut 2015 & Nadia Graves’s Sauté of Veal with Noilly Prat
Posted by Bevena Stoffels on 15 March 2017 4:05 AM CAT
Cinsaut was one of the red wine grape varieties planted heavily after the phylloxera decimated the Cape Vineyards. In the 1980s it was about 13% of the South African vineyard, and yet at the turn of the century had dropped down to near 3%. Known as Hermitage in the early days, it is a parent grape of Pinotage the quintessentially South African wine grape, along with Pinot Noir, the noble Burgundy grape.
Landskroon Wine Estate on the south-western slopes of the iconic Paarl Mountain has been owned and managed for five generations by the de Villiers family, Their French Huguenot antecedents arrived in the Cape on 6th May 1689 as refugees fleeing religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The 6th generation, Hugo, is already in place working the vineyards and caring for the farm labourers.
In their New World of Wine from the Cape of Good Hope, Phyllis Hands and Dave Hughes talk about Landskroon Cinsaut as ‘the best serious wine made from Cinsaut.’
The Landskroon Cinsaut 2015 is a proud successor to that wine they tasted in the 2001.
Hand harvested, the grape come from the estate and are delivered to Paul de Villiers V, the Cellarmaster and his winemaker Michiel du Toit. They are destalked and taken to a closed fermentation tank. Immediately some of the free run juice is racked off to achieve greater concentration and colour. The wine then goes through fermentation and is matured on French oak staves before being prepared for bottling.
It looks like
Bottled under cork in a Bordeaux shaped bottle. Elegant Anthony Lane label design. In the glass a gem bright translucent ruby at the core which pales out to garnet on the meniscus.
It smells like
Sweet cherries and berries with an undertow of oak spice.
It tastes like
Bright fruited, medium bodied wine on entry. Palate filling cherries and wild roadside bramble berries. The softest of tannins well interwoven with the fruit in a lingering aftertaste.
This is a great sipping wine. Chill it for about 30 minutes or so before serving, this will enhance the enjoyment of the wine for you. As a food partner, it is a great match with lighter meats like pork belly. Plums are in season now and made into a sauce, they are good both with the pork belly and cold gammon. Nadia Graves’s Sauté of Veal with Noilly Prat is a great partner for this wine.
