South African Red Wines Impress

Not for the first time, we have been told that red blends are what South African winemakers do best. The influential magazine Wine Spectator recently published an article – up on the wine.co.za news website – in which our Bordeaux-style blends and Cape chardonnay are singled out as the most likely wines to succeed in the competitive North American market.

This is the opinion of Andre Shearer, a former South African and founder of Cape Classics in New York, which deals with a substantial proportion of Cape wine distributed in the US.

While the quality of authentic Bordeaux wines has not been consistent over the past two decades, this section of south-western France is still regarded as a viticultural paradise and the renowned Bordeaux blend used as a measure of top quality. It refers to a red made up of some or all of the following: merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, petit verdot and pontac.