This deep rouge coloured South African beauty resulted from a viticultural cross between Pinot Noir and Hermitage (the South African name for Cinsaut) in 1925. Pinotage is budget friendly and lends itself as a great accompaniment to a variety of meals.
Pinotage Grape
Pinotage vines are easy to grow, with the grapes ripening early with naturally high levels of tannin that can be controlled by reducing the skin contact, thus partially reducing the blackberry and damson fruit characters of Pinotage. Traditionally, top quality vine Pinotage grapes are fermented in oven topped fermentors before being transferred to oak barrels for a duration of 12 months. However, whilst it may be an easy grape to cultivate, a common complaint is that Pinotage grapes have a tendency to develop a sweet pungent smell which some wine lovers find repulsive, having likened it to the smell of paint and rusty nails!
History
Abraham Izak Perold is the man responsible for Pinotage inception. When working for the Cape government he was sent on a mission to source grapes that could be planted to extend the grape range for this region. Perold, the first Professor of Viticultural, sourced 177 varietals. He planted four seeds from his cross of Pinot Noir with Cinsaut in his garden at Welgevallen Experimental Farm. Two years later he left the university to work for the KWV co-operative. The garden became overgrown but as gardeners were tidying it up, as luck should have it for Pinotage lovers, one Charlie Niehaus was passing by and rescued the seedlings from the garden. The young seedlings took up residence at Elsenberg Agricultural College and were tended to by Perold’s successor, CJ Theron, who grafted them on to Richter 99 and Richter 57 rootstock in 1935. The first Pinotage wine was made in 1941 at Elsenberg, with the first commercial plantings being at Myrtle Grove. It was at the 1959 Cape Wine Show when the champion wine Bellevue wine, which was made from Pinotage, brought Pintoage its first recognition, whilst in 1961 Pinotage got its first mention on the bottle label of this wine when Stellenbosch Farmer’s Winery marketed it under the Lanzerac brand. Its popularity resulted in a wave of planting in the 1960s.
Growing Locations
Besides South Africa, the main location for Pintoage, it is also thrives well in a variety of far flung lands including Israel, New Zealand, America (with plantings in California and Virginia), Brazil, Zimbabwe and Canada, where in 1999 Lake Breeze Vineyards in British Columbia released the first Canadian commercial Pinotage.
Key Flavours
This medium bodied wine offers earthly, woody, smoky flavours, as in Churchaven Groenkloof Pinotage and Nederburg Pinotage as well as red fruit flavours with hints of blackcurrent and mulberry as in the Cape Quarter Shiraz Pinotage. Some varieties of this wine have sweeter notes resembling tropical fruits, especially bananas, raspberry, strawberry and cherry, a fine example being the mildly acidic Viljoensdrift Pinotage. If it’s wine with a hint of spices that you favour then Bellinhman Pintoage with its wonderful flavour of nutmeg, cinnamon and clove will go down a treat, whilst older versions of Pinotage offer delicate hints of chocolate and tobacco.
Popularity
Today, one of the most popular varieties of Pinotage is the one sold by Beyerskloof, a business which began in 1989 when winemaker Beyers Truter, otherwise known as the ‘King of Pinotage’ bought a small farm in the Stellenbosch region of South Africa. Despite not enjoying instant popularity, at the 1991 International Wine and Spirits Competition in London, Kanonkop Pinotage won Best Red Wine with Beters Truter being nominated as Winemaker of the Year. Towards the end of the 20th century, it commanded higher prices than other South African grape varieties, but still did not enjoy great popularity, a fact that may stem from Pinotage being defined as a New World wine rather than reflecting more European flavours, the usual flavours of South African wines. In the early 21st century, notable South African wine producers began using Pintoage as a blending component instead of as a wine in its own right.
Main Uses
Pinotage makes up between 30-70% of what is known as Cape blends and is used as an easy drinking wine to rosé and barrel-aged wine, and also as fortified wine, as in port or as a light, red sparkling wine.
Other Names
Known by several different names, either the name of an individual farm or estate such as the Avontuur Estate and the Deetlefs Estate, brand names, notably UK supermarkets like Sainsburys, or importers who buy to sell under their own label such as Magnotta, Writers Block which is sold under the label of Flagstone and Paarl, the label of KWV which is only available in Canada.
