Diemersdal of Durbanville THE Sauvignon Blanc specialist in South Africa
NEDERBURG of Paarl consistently puts together really good Sauvignon Blanc for their exclusive wine auction once a year, and Graham Beck of Robertson had a really good track record with their Pheasants’ Run before they decided to focus solely on Cap Classique bubblies made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Apart from these, however, there are just four producers whose Sauvignon Blancs qualified for the Top Wine SA Hall of Fame in 2016: the Cederberg Private Cellar of David Nieuwoudt, Thys Louw’s Diemersdal Estate in Durbanville, Kobus Basson’s Kleine Zalze in Stellenbosch and Steenberg of Tokai on the Constantia wine route. Of these, Diemersdal stands out with no fewer than FIVE Sauvignons in the SA Wine Classification, three of them – Eight Rows, MM Louw and the Reserve – in the Top 20. And then along came another! Born in 2015, launched in 2016 at R225 a bottle from the cellar door.
Diemersdal Wild Horseshoe Skin Fermented Sauvignon Blanc is unique in this regard – the first South African Sauvignon to be fermented on the grape skins, which are usually removed prior to fermentation. The fruit comes from one of the best, oldest Sauvignon Blanc vineyards at the Louws’ place. The skin-fermentation lasted four days, after which the wine was matured in 500-litre French oak barrels, remaining on the lees (spent yeast cells) for 11 months.
According to the cellarmaster’s tasting notes: granadilla and guava, spice and honeysuckle lime. According to a bunch of wine lovers at an informal Top Wine SA tasting: very nice wine, different, intriguing, though very atypical – so unlike Sauvignon that some couldn’t identify the variety after their first sip, before the bottle was unveiled. “This wine has a classic, Old World character, and is one of the most complex white wines I’ve ever made,” Louw elaborates. “Its fullness and mineral character raises Sauvignon Blanc to another level entirely,” he says, having been surprised at how popular skin-fermented Sauvignons are in New Zealand, the most renowned producer of wines from this cultivar after France.
The name Wild Horseshoe derives from the many rusty old horseshoes that labourers have found in the soil over the years. Grapes have been grown at Diemersdal since 1702 and the work was done manually with the help of horses until the 1930s. The word ‘wild’ refers to the wild, spontaneous fermentation – as opposed to kick-starting the ferment with cultivated yeast.
