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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Siris Vintners Trade Show 2025

The Roof Terrace venue in Salt River

Lourens van der Westhuizen with his Arendsig wines from Bonnievale
Laurens is consistent, he makes such good wines
We loved his classic and exciting 2024 Sauvignon Blanc, full of those green notes we love, full and layered
His Merlot really impressed. It's spicy, complex and has energy
Ripe berry fruit with good spice and wood on the end

His range of wines

It's a good venue which filled up quickly

Rob Boustred, Sales & Marketing Director and Jean Botha, Tasting room & Brand Manager

at Remhoogte Wine Estate, Stellenbosch

Their 2020 Aspect Merlot is spicy, juicy and full of complexity, a food wine

Fanus, Estelle and Martin Bruwer of Quando, Bonnievale

It was good to catch up. The floods last year affected the farm badly but they have recovered

The 2025 Sauvignon Blanc is crisp, with minerality

The Mourvèdre Rose 2025, just bottled, is golden, rosy and delicious

The 2022 Pinotage has Pinot character in front with lovely fruit, and dark licorice,

a bit Italian in style (as if Italy made Pinotage!)

Bread with pesto and tomato concasse with mozzarella

Nico van der Merwe Wines

Lynne was tasting all the merlots on show. This 2021 was spicy with good wood, and sweet and sour berry flavours

Their daughter with Nico and Petra van der Merwe

Bevan Newton Johnson

The 2023 Albarinho was powerful, crisp and different, so enjoyable with some salty minerality

The 2023 Southend Chardonnay is crisp with minerality and fullness of fruit, with well integrated wood

The 2023 Walker Bay Pinot Noir is intense on the floral, red berry nose and repeats on the excellent palate,

with long flavours of fruit; a food wine, scored high. We are fans

A great welcome from Peter and Nicholas Pentz, Groote Post, Darling

We only had time to taste their Estate Merlot which was exceptional, and classic,

it smells like a very good Merlot and tastes like one too

It has class, but it also has that necessary complexity of layers of good fruit and carefully balanced wood

So well made by Lukas Wentzel

It and their SeaSalter Sauvignon blanc (with the blue top) won Trophies at the Investec Trophy Wine Show

Tanya Reynolds and John Loubser with his Silverthorn Cap Classiques from Bonnievale

Lynne never can pick a favourite from these Cap Classiques, they are all so exceptional

We think John is a master of capturing the fruit in the bottle

This time it was the high scoring NV The Genie Brut Rosé, made from Shiraz,

full of glorious strawberry and raspberry fruit but bone dry,

and the River Dragon Brut made from Old vine Colombard, with its green nose, of crisp apple

which comes through on the crisp punchy palate with great mousse

The rest of his excellent Cap Classiques are made more traditionally, from Pinot noir and Chardonnay

Some brie to have with crackers

Marketing manager Wimpie Borman and winemaker Rudger van Wyk of Doolhof, Wellington. What a pair!

It will be interesting to see what Rudger, a former Young Winemaker of the Year, does there

The 2025 Mountain Range Chenin was crisp and true to varietal

We have some of the Bloedklip from the Limietberg Range in our cellar, waiting to see what it does

Vineyard manager Shane and General manager/winemaker Megan Mullis
of Domaine des Dieux , Hemel en Aarde Ridge with their new harvest

They had a very special 2011 Anna Louise Blanc de Blanc Cuvée for tasting on the stand and it was the talk of the room
Richness, seven year bottle age and depth in spades with a still very zingy mousse
We have the Gout Anglaise and love older bubbles

Off to an early start (well, probably home to bath and bed!)

The Raats Dolomite Cabernet Franc is a favourite, it is perfumed with dark fruit and tobacco
Layers of red and dark berry fruit, umami, chalk, and minerality support . Another great food wine

We visited the cellar late last year and tasted the full range

The classic Old vine Chenin Blanc is elegant, and on the palate it's crisp and full, long and layered

Sadly, we did not get to taste Groot Phesantekraal's wines

John has loved the Boschkloof Syrah, made by Jac Borman, since he enjoyed it with Jac at a trade show in the mid 90s

Now made by his son Reenen, it continues the family tradition

Mark Herd, Integretis Holdings, and food publicist Amanda Izak

Brookdale Wines were not tasted because we had just enjoyed a media lunch there

Click here to see our story

The Vriesenhof 2024 Unwooded Chardonnay was just what we were looking for. .
Superb as always crisp, alluring and classic, full of beautiful Chardonnay golden flavours
We scored this very highly. And we had an opportunity to taste a 12 year old vintage
It's still good, and has the same profile and depth with some soft aging
So many young Chardonnays are being over wooded again,
please stop putting them for 8 months into new oak, it ruins the wine
Did we learn nothing when Chardonnay was classed A B C a few years ago. (Anything But Chardonnay)

Clark Truter of Siris with Lynne

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Monday, June 16, 2025

Brookdale Estate introduces their new Twenty Field Blend with lunch

We are always appreciative when we are blessed with transport to functions
If John drives, he cannot drink and petrol prices nowadays have to be taken into account, our account
This handsome white bus took us all the way to Paarl and back

It was good to see some old and young media friends again

The function was in the Bistro restaurant where we were to meet the two new winemakers

Welcomed with a glass of Brookdale 2023 Bradbourne,

a white blend of Grenache Blanc, Roussanne, Picpoul and Marsanne

It has richness on the nose, complex stone fruit with depth and length

Apricot, peach, lime lemon zest give long flavours and it calls loudly for food

The entrance to the Bistro

It was a bitterly cold day, so we headed for the fireplace
The two winemakers were there to introduce themselves and we had a good chance to chat to them
Winemaker Xander Sadie was chatting to a guest

Shanice du Preez, pictured here with the long dark hair, says she is the shortest winemaker ever
Lynne and she compared heights! Not much in it

Chef Gary Coetzee with Terence van der Walt of Siris Vintners

Two vintage journalists, Melvin Minnaar and Greg Landman

Brookdale 2023 Sixteen Field Blend was served next. A field blend is something that is often grown in France
The two hectare vineyard is interplanted with several different varietals in each row, with just white grapes
There is another just with red varietals
They are all mixed in each row and harvested together to make one amorphous blend
Xander told us that some of the difficulties are season, position and climate
as some of the varietals ripen at different stages. To even them out,
they pick every fourth row with its mixture of varietals
so they have to vinify those first and pick the other rows at later intervals

The restaurant all set for our wine tasting. Lunch was to follow

General manager Yvonne Coetzee with some of the restaurant staff

The Brookdale wine selection set out on the tables for tasting

All seated for the tasting and lunch

We were there to meet winemakers Xander Sadie and Shanice du Preez and they introduced themselves

They are very sparky together, Xander knows a lot about the terroir and the vines at Brookdale

Shanice is also competent about this subject and knows her winemaking so she is in the cellar

Shanice du Preez qualified with her degree in winemaking and oenology at Stellenbosch University

and was then invited onto the Cape Winemakers Guild Protégé programme

You have to be good to be admitted to the programme. She did stages with Abrie Beeslaar at Kanonkop,

with Charles Hopkins at de Grendel and with Duncan Savage at his Salt River winery

What a training, with three of the best winemakers in the business

She also has participated in two overseas harvests, one in France and one in Portugal

Xander spoke about the farm and its terroir

Backed by the Klein Drakenstein Mountains, they have sandstone formations and granite soils with schist at the base

Owner Tim Rudd saw the potential of the farm and what Brookdale might become,

even though it was covered by invasive aliens which all had to be uprooted

He bought it in 2016 and the work began

Paarl is a hot area with high winter rainfall and the farm is North facing, so it is fully dry land in the summer

No mulch or dry material can be used in the vineyards because of the risk of mountain fires

They stand together Xander spends most of the time in the vineyards, Shanice in the wine cellar

Studies in concentration

Brookdale Sales manager Jacus Marais was able to supply much more information about the wine and the vineyards

Maryna Calow, WOSA Communications manager

Terence van der Walt of Siris Vintners

Smiles from Chef Gary Coetzee and one of his assistants

GM of the Brookdale Hotel (and wife of the Chef) Yvonne Coetzee

The wines for the tasting

All set to taste the wines, guided by the winemakers

The 2023 Chenin is made from old vines which have been carefully nurtured. They get 6.5 tons a hectare
There are three blocks which are harvested separately and vinified for 11 months on the lees
and 11 months in Foudres, which add some oak to the Chenin, then the two lots are blended
Golden on the nose from oak and fruit, quite attractive. Perfumed with jasmine, quince and citrus
The wine is rounded on the palate, with many layers of complex fruits
The oak is just supporting and doing it well. Quince appears again on the palate

The next wine was the Bradbourne 2024 a blend of Grenache Blanc, Picpoul Blanc, Roussanne and Marsanne
Aromatic on the nose, with a strange whiff of brandy
It's a bit shy at first, then complex fruit like white peach, gooseberry and marmalade appear
On the palate, full and waxy, lots of fruit shouting for attention then lovely citrus takes over
The wine has lovely texture and long flavours. It needs time

We next tasted the maiden release of the 2024 Twenty Field Blend

The field blend even has five Pinotage vines, and Portuguese varietals which add tannins, fruit flavours and body

Cinsault adds colour and others the alcohol

Vanilla oak comes first, sweetness of fruit too; it's very forward and complex

Bitter tannins on the lips, mouth puckering tannins, tobacco, cherry, plum, blackberry, deep dark fruit

There is some excitement and a hint of what it might be

Spice on the end with black pepper then dark oak and the fruit returns

This needs time but has potential

The Brookdale 2024 Sixteen Field Blend was next
An intriguing nose with lots of complexity and interest
Hints of Viognier and some Semillon fat on the palate, which opens with fruit and grows to a crescendo of flavours,
stone fruit, citrus keeping the acidity in balance with guava on the end
The wines are fermented in a concrete amphora

The aim is to produce three or maybe four white Field blends and four reds

After the tasting, we did a quick cellar tour to see the barrels and huge oak foudres