8 minute read
RENAISSANCE GRAPE
THE QUEEN, STEEN
CHENIN BLANC AS A GRAPE VARIETY WAS SORELY NEGLECTED FOR DECADES. NOW IT IS ARGUABLY SOUTH AFRICA’S STRONGEST CALLING CARD IN FOREIGN MARKETS AND LOCAL CONSUMERS CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT. FIONA MCDONALD TAKES AN AMBLE THROUGH THE 25 YEAR OLD PROGRESS OF WHAT USED TO BE CALLED STEEN.
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It was a carthorse, plodding along, used for every possible style of wine – sweet, sparkling, dry, off-dry, blended with other grapes and even distilled to make brandy. Nowadays, Chenin Blanc is something of a show pony, prancing around the international market with a glossy coat, ribbons attached to its halter with its ears and tail up.
But a scant quarter of a century ago, Chenin Blanc was the nowhere grape. Everybody had it but nobody took it seriously. It was planted because it was reliable. Good old Chenin! Want a grape that will deliver tons of fruit to send to the local co-operative? Chenin. Want something that you can make thousands and thousands of litres of bulk wine with? Chenin. Want to make a sparkling wine but can’t afford to buy Chardonnay? Chenin. Got a surplus of wine left in tanks unsold? It was probably Chenin Blanc which was then destined for the distilling plant to be turned into brandy!
In the early to mid90’s that all changed. Looking back with
the benefit of 20/20
hindsight, it’s quite remarkable just how rapidly it changed. Take for example the stats from the 2020 edition of the Platter Guide: Of the 124 wines which received the coveted “full house” 5 Star rating, 26 were Chenin Blanc. In contrast, Chardonnay received just 11.
And the producers of those stellar Chenins reads like a “Who’s Who” of the South African wine scene: AA Badenhorst, Alheit, Botanica, David & Nadia, Kleine Zalze, Sadie, Raats, Rall, Stellenrust and Van Loggerenberg to mention a few rock stars! 25 years ago none of them were on the radar. Heck, many of them were still riding their bicycles with training wheels ... THAT’S how quickly the scene has changed! The 1995 edition of the Platter Guide had as its top two Chenins Swartland Co-op and an export label for a British supermarket, Safeway. They were rated 4 Stars and were accompanied by just six 3½ Stars bringing the category tally for that year’s edition to 38. That’s all the dry wine examples listed. There were plenty of off-dry and sweet bottlings ... 101 to be precise. Yet few of those wines proclaimed Chenin Blanc on their labels. They were generally bottled as Steen or Stein or a generic Blanc or some other made up faux French name. But then along came a dynamic duo – Irina von Holdt and Ken Forrester. Von Holdt was a Cape Wine Master, who tasted for the Platter Guide and the Wine of the Month Club who believed – passionately – in the future of this humble grape which at one point made up fully one-third of all of the country’s vineyard plantings.
People scoffed when they heard her say – vehemently – that Chenin Blanc was capable of greatness. They tagged her with the title Queen of Steen and generally accompanied that tag with a chuckle, as if to say “what does this crazy woman know?!”
She was smarter than the lot of them and plugged away at her passion project, starting with Blue White – a dry Chenin sold in an eye-catching vivid blue bottle. It caught the imagination of consumers starved of anything remotely creative or innovative and sold like the proverbial hot cakes!
Here’s the introductory paragraph from the 1995 Platter Guide:
If ever there were a variety that needed a fairy godmother to wave a wand and transform her, it’s South Africa’s trusty Chenin Blanc,” says Irina von Holdt, Cape Wine Master. It’s she who’s done the most to magic up a modern revival of this country’s most ubiquitous grape. “Waving a wand” is far too floaty and languid to describe her campaign to dig Chenin out of the sugar bowl and whip it into its rightful place – “on the table with the great white wines of the world”. This is Joan of Arc, not Sugar Plum Fairy stuff, and she rides into battle as acting chair of the Cape’s newly formed Chenin Blanc Association. Not solely a producers’ body, it’s involving all sectors of the industry, plus consumers. Viticulture, oenology and marketing research, and the training of a specialist tasting panel, narrow-focussed on Chenin, are underway.”
And in that guide it was Von Holdt’s Old Vines Chenin Blanc 1998 and Old Vines Barrel Reserve Chenin Blanc 1998 – the maiden release – which got 4 Stars in the guide.
She had a trusty wingman, a sturdy knight in shining armour aboard a white steed if ever there was one! Ken Forrester, the former restaurateur turned wine farmer. Here’s his Platter Guide intro from 1995: “When Ken and Teresa Forrester decamped from Johannesburg to a three centuries old farm below the Helderberg in 1993 their first motivation was ‘to have the luxury of space to raise a family’ ... The idea was a quiet
rural life. But Ken Forrester is too large, energetic and passionate a personality to sit about ruminating. In no time he’s become one of the most effective moversand-shakers in the winelands, challenging the establishment, driving changes – and with partner Martin Meinert, producing arrestingly avant-garde, food-cordial wines which have flown to fame far beyond local restaurants. But Chenin Blanc is his most serious addiction, and while there had been cheeps about rescuing the reputation of this ubiquitous grape in the Cape, when he lent his formidable weight and eloquence to the cause, it really began to roll.”
Between the two of them, and supported by numerous other players in the local wine industry who decided to “give it a go” and try something different, Chenin Blanc took off. Winemakers began experimenting with wood maturation, something they never would have considered Chenin worthy of previously. Some brave souls even used to ferment a portion of their Chenin in barrel while others left some of the fruit to ripen more, picking slightly later than usual in order to harness the ripe, honeyed apricot and peach flavours which resulted to make a fuller-bodied, richer wine.
South African consumers responded favourably to this style, having made the move to oaked whites quite comfortably with Chardonnay having set the trend a decade earlier.
Interestingly, when we fast forward to the 2020 edition of the Platter Guide, the index lists a full page of individual Chardonnays tasted while Chenin Blanc accounts for just shy of two pages! South Africa has, like other wine industries, looked to France for guidance. Because France is the heartland or homeland of the wine world – and always has been. But there’s been a subtle shifting of guard when it comes to Chenin Blanc ... This country’s winemakers would quite naturally taste French Chenins from the Loire region, areas such as Vouvray, Savennieres and Saumur. The thinking has always been that by tasting the world’s best you have something to strive for, to try and match and better. And that’s exactly what’s happened! The tables have turned and South African Chenin Blanc is regarded as amongst the best in the world. Grape growers and wine makers book their tickets to South Africa during harvest time to come and work in local cellars, to see and learn how producers in Paarl, Stellenbosch, the Swartland and beyond work with this particular grape. There is a spirit of co-operation when it comes to French and South African producers – something which is incredibly rare in the world of wine. Through bilateral conversations and relationships which have been built up over the past quarter century a first ever Congress of Chenin was held in the Loire, in the town of Angers, in 2019. In 2021 it is South Africa’s turn to host and already local producers, members of the Chenin Blanc Association which was started all those years ago by a wand-waving fairy godmother and sturdy knights, have put their thinking caps on.
Chenin Blanc is a proudly South African grape making world beating wines and feeling a whole lotta love these days!
HOW WAS CHENIN’S IMAGE OVERHAULED? The sheer versatility of Chenin Blanc is what did the grape a disservice. It took number of years but eventually local producers were shown through the efforts of the Chenin Blanc Association and the early pioneers of quality Chenin that the grape is more than capable of being taken seriously. Early believers in the grape’s potential, other than Forrester and Von Holdt, include Jeff Grier of Villiera, Teddy Hall when winemaker at Kanu, Jean Daneel, David Trafford of De Trafford, Francois Naude of L’Avenir. As is frequently the case, initial oaking of the wine was perhaps a little enthusiastic. Similarly, the use of ultra-ripe and even botrytised portions of Chenin went a little too far. But as soon as the enthusiasm was reigned in and the over oaking and ultra-honeyed sweetness was toned down a touch, the wines started getting more and more critical acclaim, at home and overseas. Factor in the growing use of old vines (vines that have been in the ground for 35 years or more) and additional complexity is the result – again, something that consumers appreciate. Chenin’s versatility was something of a limiting factor in the past but that has been turned into a positive. Yes, it’s still used for sparkling wine, brandy, sweet wine, dry wine, oaked and unwooded – but that just means that nowadays wine drinkers are spoiled for choice. There’s something at every price point too – super special, single vineyard, reserve and limited bottlings which can cost R300 to R400 bottles or unfussy, gluggable charmers which are on shelf at around R50. Frequently when faced with Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc, the answer is “I’ll have a glass of Chenin please!”
