Our most exciting South Africa selection yet!

I started buying South African wine professionally in June 2016. It was a turning point in my career – my first wine-buying job – which has endlessly enriched my life, both in and out of wine. And so, it is the biggest privilege that after a decade of (sometimes quite literal) immersion in the wines of this amazing country, I have been given the opportunity to put together the most extensive and exciting showcase of the Cape’s fine wines that The Wine Society – and quite possibly the UK – has ever seen.

I have felt the pressure (entirely self-inflicted) of doing this justice, both for our producers and for our members, but I have loved every minute of it, as has the wider team (their enthusiasm has been palpable and has propelled me forward).*

During my last trip to South Africa in February of this year, I started to realise that I needed to use this Spotlight to tell the story of the seismic shifts in South Africa’s wine landscape over the last 50 years: the emergence of the Bordeaux-style blend in the 1970s; the reimagining of the Swartland (the shoots for which started to appear in the late 1990s); the discovery of the potential and value of old-vine chenin blanc (thanks to viticulturist Rosa Kruger’s work in the early 2000s); the pioneers who started planting vineyards in the Cape South Coast (including Tim Hamilton Russell in the Hemel-en-Aarde in 1975 and Samantha O’Keefe in Greyton in 2003). These shifts, and others besides, have ensured that South Africa now irrefutably belongs in the fine wine space on a world stage.

I also realised that I couldn’t just look backwards but that I needed to look forwards, too, and try to capture the spirit of the next generation of fine wine producers in the Cape. Every wine I selected needed to play a role in bringing the multifaceted and dynamic nature of South African fine wine today to life.

As I drove between producer visits, a plan began to take shape, built on six themes:

1. 2025 Stellenbosch En Primeur
2. The ‘OG’ Swartlanders
3. The Cape’s Chenin Terroirs
4. South Africa’s Answer to Burgundy
5. The Next Generation
6. The New Wave Comes of Age

2025 Stellenbosch En Primeur

For some of our members, their first encounter with top South African wine will have been the Bordeaux-style reds of historic Stellenbosch estates like Meerlust and Kanonkop. Yet with all the noise and counterculture buzz issuing from the Swartland, it felt as though Stellenbosch and its cabernet-merlot-and-co blends had slipped somewhat into the background when I started my buying career. My own attentions were diverted elsewhere, if I’m completely honest. But Stellenbosch was going through its own reimagining, more evolution than revolution, though there were some revolutionary pockets, too.

Today, the quality and the precision of the red wines made from Bordeaux varieties in Stellenbosch have ascended to a new level – even where that level was already very high – driven both by improvements in the vineyard and the cellar.

With the remarkable 2025 vintage – one of those effortless vintages where ‘everything worked; everything ripened in the right order,’ as Taaibosch’s cellarmaster Schalk Willem Joubert said to me  – I want to refocus attention on this important region with our first-ever Stellenbosch en primeur campaign, featuring Bordeaux blends and varietal cabernet sauvignon. I tasted from barrel in February – the first time producers had shown anyone their 2025s (unlike in Bordeaux, en primeur tastings are not the norm) – and will be revisiting the wines in mid-July, once the blends are finalised, to add to my notes for members.

The wines I’ve tasted are superb; they have ‘beautiful density,’ to borrow the words of Miles Mossop, and a drive and sense of intention that remind me of the 2021s, but with more fruit concentration. I won’t risk going into further generalisations now, as I think what is particularly exciting here is the distinct characteristics that are evident between the different sub-regions of Stellenbosch, which I’ll explore in my en primeur vintage report.

Expect all the great names – including both established and new ‘icon’ Bordeaux blends: Meerlust Rubicon, Kanonkop Paul Sauer, Glenelly Lady May, MR de Compostella, Vergelegen V, Warwick Trilogy, Taaibosch Crescendo – as well as incredible-value wines like Meerlust Estate Red and Rustenberg John X Merriman. There will also be a stunning line-up of cabernets, from Kanonkop, Le Riche, Rustenberg and Leeu Passant, as well as a global exclusive inaugural release in collaboration with Boekenhoutskloof’s Helderberg Winery.

The ‘OG’ Swartlanders

It’s no secret how much I love the Swartland – its whole vibe as well as its thrilling wines – and with the pivotal role it has played in South Africa’s contemporary fine wine story, there was never any doubt that a significant portion of our Fine Wine Spotlight needed to be dedicated to this region.

The Swartland has, of course, evolved in the now 16 years since the first Revolution event in 2010, but I have chosen to celebrate the originals, the OGs, in this selection. These are the people who have been instrumental in how the region has risen to become the (deserving) darling of South African fine wine, the four producers behind the Swartland Revolution itself: A. A. Badenhorst, Mullineux, Porseleinberg and Sadie Family Wines.

This is the chance for members to buy wines they’ve never been able to buy from The Wine Society before, as well as gain UK-exclusive access to magnums (yes, MAGNUMS) of Porseleinberg Syrah 2022 and a specially assembled exclusive six-vintage vertical of Mullineux Syrah. There will also be limited quantities of mixed cases featuring wines from all four of the revolutionaries, including Sadie Family Wines Columella and Palladius.

The Cape’s Chenin Terroirs

Chenin blanc is my favourite white grape. My wine career began with me buying both South Africa and the Loire, and so unsurprisingly this was the grape that grabbed me, hook, line and sinker, from the get-go.

I love it for its revitalising (and sometimes uncompromising) acidity, for its diversity of expressions, for its honest translation of place, for its formidable ageing capacity, and for its ability to always uplift me and make me smile. As my colleague Shaun Kiernan put it recently, chenin (largely but not exclusively from old vineyards) is ‘arguably the Cape’s greatest gift to the global fine wine stage.’ It is undeniably South Africa’s key heritage grape, with producers like Chris Alheit shining a light on this since his landmark 2011 maiden vintage of Cartology.

Chenin has been rooted in the Western Cape’s ancient soils since the 1650s (the very first 14.5 litres of Cape wine made in 1659 were likely a blend of chenin and muscat of Alexandria), but it is only in the last two decades that chenin’s status has undergone a complete revival, as the Cape’s contemporary wine producers, with their ambition for and curiosity about terroir transmission, have focused on single-site expressions which are utterly compelling in their uniqueness.

Through the wines in this selection, members can explore for themselves what a chameleon chenin is in different contexts, from Bot River to Citrusdal Mountain, from the Paardeberg to the Polkadraai Hills, and much more. There are some super-rare, tiny-production wines in the mix, from single origins to multi-site blends. For those who are already in the thrall of South African chenin, and who want to get into Burgundian detail with vineyard-to-vineyard comparisons, look out for the trio of mixed cases, each including three wines (Alheit 2024s, David & Nadia 2023s, Mullineux Single Terroir 2023s) – which I expect to sell out very quickly. For those who are still exploring South African chenin, our bespoke tasting kit will be a perfect introduction.

South Africa’s Answer to Burgundy

Tim Hamilton Russell had a seemingly crazy dream of establishing a remote, poor, sheep-farming area – the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley – as a fine wine region. Fewer than fifty years later, the region has been dubbed ‘South Africa’s answer to Burgundy’ by Jancis Robinson MW (2023).

Sitting to the west of the southernmost tip of Africa, stretching inland from the seaside town of Hermanus, the cool Hemel-en-Aarde Valley is now acknowledged as being home to some of South Africa’s most elegant, restrained and classical chardonnays and pinot noirs (during harvest time the Valley is full of interns from Burgundy). My selection intentionally includes wines from each of the three different wards and from the need-to-know producers who are at the top of their game: Hemel-en-Aarde Valley (Hamilton Russell, Storm); Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley (Newton Johnson, Restless River); and Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge (Creation, Crystallum).

But while the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley is at the heart of this section, I had to make it about the wider Cape South Coast, in order to highlight both Elgin (Radford Dale) and Greyton (Lismore) to members. These are similarly cool-climate (in the South African context) viticultural regions which enjoy long hang-times. While Elgin’s vineyards are distinctly maritime and experience bracing South Atlantic winds, Samantha O’Keefe’s Lismore Estate in Greyton sees significant diurnal temperature swings thanks to elevation of over 300m.

Radford Dale have now completed five harvests on their organic certified farm in Elgin, a farm that was established organically 20 years ago – no mean feat in an apple-growing region where agrochemical spraying is frequent. Their estate chardonnay and pinot are not only beautiful but represent wonderful value for members.

Samantha O’Keefe, not dissimilarly to Tim Hamilton Russell, stunned the local farming community when, arriving in South Africa from the US, she decided to plant vines in a completely unknown region for wine production, establishing Lismore. She is solely responsible for the creation of the Greyton appellation, and her estate chardonnay is one of the finest in South Africa.

Overall, chardonnay has reached greater heights in the Cape South Coast sooner than pinot, if we put it on the world stage; but with the most recent vintages, as the pinot vineyards start to mature and yield more complex fruit, we are seeing the quality – especially the texture of the tannins but also the length and resonance of the wines – improve markedly. The 2023, 2024 and 2025 pinots presented in this selection are wines to get seriously excited about.

The Next Generation

This collection of 13 producers (because I had to draw the line somewhere!) all have independent labels and have released fewer than ten vintages of their own wine, some only one or two. They are mostly in their 20s or 30s and they are making exhilarating wines with quiet confidence and clear accomplishment; they are our ‘ones to watch.’ Their backgrounds – and their routes into wine – are as diverse and individual as their wines are. We are going to do our best to tell these stories and introduce these producers properly to members, as many are new to The Society.

The regions they are making wines in include Stellenbosch (Angus Paul’s single-vineyard chenins; Vulpes Cana cabernet from Nuschka de Vos), the Swartland (Crate Work Wines pinotage from Selma Willemse; Wolf & Woman chenin from Jolandie Fouché; the debut vintage of Zwartwater Estate from Stefan Johannes), Paarl (Jorrie du Plessis’s Steilpad wines based on the heritage blends of the 50s and 60s) and Robertson (Yvonne Lester’s Vonn chardonnay), right up the wild west coast with Sakkie Mouton’s Revenge of the Crayfish chenin, all the way down to the Cape South Coast with Lelie van Saron chardonnay from Natasha Williams and Sam Lambson’s Minimalist syrahs, as well as the Piekenierskloof (Alinea grenache from Natasha Jacka) and multi-regional blends from New Dawn (Rüdger van Wyk) and Tembela (Banele Vakele).

Many members are already familiar with Minimalist and as part of this section, we’ll be launching the First Release of Sam’s 2025 Stars in the Dark and No Place like Home – this year in magnums, for the first time, as well as in bottles!

I am thrilled to put each and every one of these wines in front of members – many are made in small quantities, and some haven’t been seen in the UK before – and I hope you’ll embrace and support this next wave of talent coming out of the Cape.

The New Wave Comes of Age

When I first interacted with the South African wine industry, the Swartland Revolution had been and gone (in terms of the physical events) but the energy it unleashed was crackling throughout the Western Cape and beyond – and what we have come to refer to as the ‘new wave’ movement was emphatically in full flow. The atmosphere was electric, charged with potential and hope, commitment and resolve. I was swept away by all of this – it was impossible not to be – and inspired to my core by the wines, the people and the place.

In 2025, ten years on from the first London tasting of these new wave producers – the event that launched the perception of South African wine in the UK into an entirely different stratosphere – fellow buyer Mark Dearing (of Justerini & Brooks) and I organised a retrospective tasting of the new wave’s 2015 vintage. We assembled wines from as many of the producers at that original London tasting as we could and a tasting group made up of the UK professionals most instrumental in raising the profile of South African fine wine. We wanted to answer the question of how these wines would age, something that we felt was a crucial missing piece in giving collectors the confidence to buy and store these wines in their cellars for the future.

It was an illuminating tasting of 78 bottles across 12 blind flights; many of the wines were brim-full of character and vitality, ageing beautifully and still, in numerous cases, with years ahead of them, although it did bring the quality of natural cork closures under scrutiny at times (most producers have since moved to Diam).

The tasting proved that these producers now have a track record, and a track record to be proud of – as reviewed by Jancis Robinson MW in the Financial Times and on her website, by Tim Atkin MW in his South Africa Special Report,  by Neal Martin and by Decanter.

In fact, in Neal Martin’s year-end review on Vinous, he crowned this tasting his tasting of the year.

I liked Neal’s coming-of-age metaphor so much that this is what I’ve called this section of the Spotlight, which features delicious mature vintages of wines from those new wave producers. It’s very difficult to get hold of many of these wines at more than seven or eight years old, but I’ve pulled together an exciting selection of ten, raiding the cellars of producers such as Badenhorst, Boekenhoutskloof, Miles Mossop, Reyneke and Leeu Passant (with a first-to-market on what was effectively the prototype of their now acclaimed The Leeu Passant Red). Some of the quantities are minuscule (fewer than 60 bottles) but typically we have more than 100 bottles, and I’m delighted to be able to share these gems with members. It felt like the only way to close our Spotlight.

What last year’s ten-year-on tasting also proved, of course, is that the new wave is no longer new, but I am still puzzling over how we refer to it in the future. Regardless of nomenclature, this movement has transformed the face of South African fine wine and done so with a sense of joy and a love of the land (for these producers all love their country and its landscapes intensely) that is truly infectious.

Join us!

I was told that the first country I visited in the capacity of a wine buyer would imprint on me and this couldn't have been more accurate. South Africa has imprinted on me, deeply and irrevocably, and it is the place where I’ve grown and thrived as a wine professional (and as a person). When I look back now on the 12 trips I’ve made to the Cape in the last nine years, I understand some of why I’ve been drawn back time and time again, not just for work, but for harvest (I’ve done three), for holiday (does working a harvest count as holiday?), and for a three-month sabbatical writing and working in vineyards.

Part of the reason is this: since day one, I have been welcomed unconditionally with open arms and big hearts, delicious wines and countless braais, late-night fires and crazy dancing, awe-inspiring hikes and freezing sea swims. I went from being a nervous new wine buyer, with just my WSET Level 3 under my belt, to achieving my Master of Wine, all under the wings of South African wine producers, many of whom I now count as dear friends.

I make this point because IF you are new to fine wine, standing at the edges wondering if this is a space for you, South Africa gives you the unhesitating answer: YES, COME AND JOIN US. Start your fine wine journey here; it’s going to be wild! If you’re already on this journey, then I really hope you enjoy my Spotlight selection – and that it includes some of your favourite Cape wines, as well as some unexpected new finds too.

* Special thanks due here to the next-level enthusiasm of my South African colleagues: Katiso Ndlela, Hannes Spangenberg, Hannah van Houweninge and half South African Cate Bishton-Lee.