Not necessarily the most famous bottles released this month, just the five Daléne Fourie hasn’t stopped thinking about.
It’s release season for Western Cape wine. Distributors and retailers are taking out loans to secure their allocations of Sadie, Alheit, Rall, Storm, et al.
The wines document what Eben Sadie describes in his annual release notes as a near-perfect 2025 growing season, wines of precision and patience rather than opulence and show, reflecting how far our viticulture has come, with more farmers learning to live with the land rather than off it.
The following five wines are not what you’d expect. I haven’t included a Mev. Kirsten or a Magnetic North. Those wines deserve a story of their own, and besides, you’re not getting your hands on a bottle without a spot on an allocation list years in the making.
Instead, these are five bottles that stood out during my meanderings in June. Serious wines, worthy of closer inspection, but ones you can actually walk into a shop (or “add to cart”) and buy.
The Shard Chardonnay 2025 – R750
The De Wet brothers’ latest experiment is fermenting Chardonnay in glass globes, which are among the few vessels of their kind currently in South Africa (though an established practice in Bordeaux).
The idea is to offer the cleanest possible representation of the site, using an inert vessel that allows almost no outside influence to imprint on the resulting wine. From the same parcel used in The Site Chardonnay, De Wetshof’s other flagship Chard, the Shard is all chalk and gunflint, depth without oak, mineral, clean, precise.
It’s the kind of wine that makes you want to argue about winemaking philosophy at dinner, and possibly only the beginning of a movement around glass-globe wine. A “Shard” of Chard from the Site...
Du Bois Chenin Blanc 2025 – R440
I had the honour of tasting the second vintage of the Du Bois Chenin Blanc, made from two old-vine parcels (planted in 1982 and 1986) on Sonop farm, in the little-known ward of Koelenhof, Stellenbosch.
Some of SA’s top winemakers source grapes from this hallowed site, and the Du Bois family’s own bottling is intended as the pinnacle of the estate’s 146 hectares under vine.
They made just 2 000 bottles of the maiden 2024 vintage, which sold out promptly; this year’s more sustainable 6 000-bottle run should put you in better stead.
Where the 2024 was all wet stone, floral, grassy and linear, the 2025 carries a curry-spice note, waxy, floral, textural and deeply enticing. A siren’s call of Stellenbosch old-vine Chenin, from its original keepers.
Zwartwater Red 2024 – R395
Syrah (68%), Carignan (27%), Mourvèdre (5%)
I bought two bottles at the open day, and on returning home was promptly relieved of them by friends stopping by for a visit, perhaps a sign of deeply attuned palates, because two days later this same wine scored both the Investec Trophy for Best Rhône-style Red and the John Skotnes Trophy for Best Blended Wine at the Trophy Wine Show.
The wine is textural yet juicy, structured yet not opulent, spicy and eminently drinkable. My only complaint is how quickly the bottle empties.
By owner Stefan Johannes’s own admission, it’s a blend made less in response to a style than to the terroir of Lammershoek itself: site over style. Also uniquely accessible in a corner of the Swartland where many neighbouring wines have become allocation-only.
Circumstance Mourvèdre 2019 – R270
The Provençal grape Mourvèdre, best known for Bandol and top-end Provençal rosé, often sits stylistically somewhere between Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure and Syrah’s savoury, meaty notes, with a wild-herb complexity in youth. Longtime viticulturist and farm manager Christiaan Loots has been cultivating a small pocket (3ha) of older, ungrafted Mourvèdre on some of Waterkloof’s most forbidding slopes.
Despite the grape’s hardy skins and distinctive tannins, the resulting wine is uniquely drinkable, nay gluggable, thanks to winemaker Nadia Barnard’s soft hand in the cellar: old oak, minimal intervention.
Jancis Robinson’s senior editor, Tamlyn Currin, described the 2022 vintage as unfolding bit by bit on the palate, with a tight pepper note at mid-palate, real length, and tannins that eventually turn to silk.
The current 2023 vintage earns similar praise and made me wonder how such a beautifully distinctive wine has been hiding in plain sight for so long. Not anymore.
Brookdale Grenache Noir 2025 – R465
The maiden vintage from this field-blend-led Paarl estate. I met recently with assistant winemaker Shanice du Preez and was deeply impressed by the second vintage of the Twenty Red Field Blend, the Sixteen White Field Blend, the Old Vine Chenin Blanc, and the Bradbourne, but it was the Grenache Noir that stayed with me.
Juicy, with a fruit sweetness that never tips into actual sweetness, and squeaky tannins.
It’s a reminder that South African producers began feverishly planting Grenache Noir about a decade ago for its drought resistance, and as those vines mature, more and more delicious South African Grenache is coming online.
Actually... I should probably make a list.
Brookdale also makes a Grenache Blanc, though it’s exclusive to their restaurant for now.
