Old South African Wine at the Wine Cellar

I recently started becoming rather tired of Facebook. Too many farms, quizzes, and silliness; although a good culling of ‘friends’ went a long way to stop all that. But this week my faith was somewhat restored in the service as it allowed me to join in for a tasting I otherwise would of missed.

And just like that I was off to what was a very interesting tasting. The Wine Cellar holds loads of excellent tastings, check here for details. It looks like they are done for the year, but look at what you missed, you’ll be sick.

Anyway, after fighting through the traffic I arrived at Wine Cellar and was greeted by Roland and a glass of 1978 Nederberg Riesling. Not very complex with toffee – specifically the yellow quality street (thanks Brendan) – being the dominating flavour. Interestingly one can not be sure this was indeed Riesling as certification only started in ‘73. So there was a good chance that this wine, lacking somewhat in acidity, was actually Crouchen Blanc, that lower quality poser, strutting around calling itself Riesling, which is like shopping at Pep, and saying it’s all original Dior. A Kaapzicht Riesling from the same era (oops didn’t note vintage *slaps hand*) pretty much confirmed this, as it had better complexity and acidity, also showing more Riesling character. Very impressive.