At the foot of towering mountains in the remotest corner of the Franschhoek valley lies one of the most successful wineries in the Cape, reports wine writer Tim James
Critical acclaim, both local and international, for Boekenhouts-kloof’s wines is unstinting (it was ranked leading winery by wine professionals in the Mail & Guardian’s 2012 poll), but such praise is not always accompanied by success in the marketplace.
At Boekenhoutskloof it is — both for the top-label wines (bearing labels showing seven antique chairs representing the seven owning partners) and for the gentler-priced, bigger-volume wines in the Porcupine Ridge, Helderberg Wijnmakerij and Wolftrap ranges.
These last are not made at the home farm, unlike those bearing the seven-chaired labels —although the top wines mostly take in grapes sourced elsewhere in Franschhoek and beyond.
All this glory I knew, but it is good to test one’s certainties occasionally, and I recently did just that at two lengthy sessions in the farm’s tasting room with cellarmaster Marc Kent — inseparable from the winery’s success, there from its founding in the mid-1990s.
At the first, I sampled every one of the currently available wines in all the ranges. And then the next morning brought with it the huge privilege of tasting some mature or maturing vintages of Boekenhoutskloof’s best.
The latter range included the rare Syrah 1997. It is one of the very few genuinely cultish Cape wines, helped by its superb quality (it raised the hair on my arms!) as well as by recalling that the Somerset West vineyard it originated in has long been lost to an industrial park.
All the Boekenhoutskloof wines benefit from the attention to detail that Kent demands from his team. Intricate carefulness marks all aspects of production, whether it’s the small volume of Semillon or Noble Late Harvest, or the bigger, ridiculously successful run of rich, sweet-fruited but refined Chocolate Block.Serious enough, easy-going enough: What’s not for all drinkers to relish and admire?
Full story by Tim James: Mail & Guardian.
