W
hat I’ve left for last is in
fact the first stop of my
pinotage trip. Turning
off Winery Road, three
school girls stopped
me, setting the tone. “Het Uncle vir ons
‘n Rand? Ons is arm.” “Ons is ook arm,”
I said, not really knowing what to say,
looking at my dog on the back seat for
support. I handed them a handful of
coins I fished out of my pocket. “Dis
nog lekker warm,” I heard them say
as I drove off. I was turning into The
Winery of Good Hope, the makers of
the Radford Dale Frankenstein I’d read
about. Finally, a new style of Pinotage,
something trying to awaken the long
sleeping Pinot in this cross, something
brave enough to sidestep the obvious
attributes of this many-faced and slightly
monstrous grape; for understatement
and a certain guarded elegance? Viktor
Frankenstein’s creation, contrary to
where contemporary renditions of the
story have led us, is in actual fact quite
erudite and sensitive. Opening a bottle I
was later to take home with me, Jacques
de Klerk, winemaker at Good Hope,
explained: all the unnamed monster
ever wanted was to be understood and
treated as any other person. What made
him what he became, was loneliness.
What Radford Dale is aiming to capture
is exactly this kinder, never understood
dimension of the grape. One might keep
in mind that Mary Shelly, the true creator
of Frankenstein, was herself the offspring
of a strange duo: Mary Wollstonecraft
and William Godwin, a women’s rights
activist and an anarchist. She probably
was writing about herself. Have Radford
Dale succeeded? I decidedly think so.
Later, back at the house of my friend
with the pinotage cap, we finished the
two bottles. Everyone liked the Radford
Dale, but when we poured the l’Avenir,
as I feared, opinions seemed to change.
This is really nice, my friend said. Just
as I was gathering my things to leave,
he poured himself a last sip of the
Good Hope wine. “You know, this wine
definitely has something.”
My time is up. I wish I could say more of the
various new and interesting producers
of pinotage, especially about a very nice
pinotage duo I tasted at Stellenrust.
One, the Cornerstone, depicting a
more serious aspect of the grape. The
other, simply extremely pleasant, as
beautiful and unpretentiously nice as
the unmarked winery and tasting room,
and almost as friendly as the people
who work there. I wish I had the time to
taste the examples from Lammershoek,
the pink one as much as the LAM. But I’m
sure I will.
I just drank my own last sip of the Radford
Dale. After a day alone in the bottle, it’s
still nice. Someone once accused South
African wines of never delivering on the
promise of the first sip. I agree. My only
real judgement of a wine is always my
impression of this last sip from a bottle.
If I’m secretly relieved, it’s one to be
forgotten. If I can’t bear to take the last
sip, simply because there will then be no
more, it’s one for the books. Frankenstein
still has some way to go, but I struggled
with my last sip. It was the most winelike pinotage I’ve ever had.
(de)
stemming
the purple tide