Tag Archives: Beyerskloof

Beyerskloof… Hall of Fame winery, good-value lunch for under R200

BEYERSKLOOF. Stellenbosch. Just outside the town on the R304 to the N1. Home to some of South Africa’s most highly rated Pinotages and Cape Blends over the past 10 years, as well as the Red Leaf Bistro. The Pinotage Burger goes for R155, the Pinotage Pizza for R165, perhaps accompanied by the Pinotage Reserve or the Traildust Cape Blend at

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What a debut! ‘Eerste Ry’ Cab triumphs beyond expectation

WHAT WERE the odds! Okay, so the 2019 wasn’t quite the maiden vintage of Beyerskloof’s Eerste Ry Cab – the 2018 and 2019 were released together. Nevertheless, like a front row forward earning his Springbok blazer, the achievement of being the most highly rated Cabernet Sauvignon in the 2024 edition of Platter’s South African Wine Guide ahead of Cabs that

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Top Pinotage and Cape Blends revisited – up close and personal

THE 2023 Absa Top 10 Pinotage and Perold Cape Blend awards have been reported on already, but for many wine lovers it’s not enough to know what the winning wines were. “Comparing favourites is one thing, but tell us where they come from? What do they taste like? Exactly who made them?” Questions answered: BEESLAAR PINOTAGE 2019 WO Stellenbosch. 25-year-old

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Six Cape Blend winners in a category that’s limping along

HOW MUCH longer will it take for the concept of a ‘Cape Blend’ to gain traction, one wonders. Some are really good, yet more than a decade after South Africa’s inaugural Perold competition for Pinotage-led combos there were only 30 entries in the 2023 edition – less than the number entered back in 2011 – and just 17 with track

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A couple of standout Pinotage producers in 2023 Absa Top 10

IT SELDOM happens that a winemaker has a hand in two Absa Top 10 Pinotage Competition laureates in the same year, but what do you know… In 2023 there were two of them: Abrie Beeslaar, cellarmaster behind the winning 2017 vintage from Kanonkop Estate in Stellenbosch and also coming top with the 2019 vintage under his own label, as well

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KWV’s Perold chalks up eighth win in Cape Blend competition

THE PINOTAGE Association’s Perold Absa Cape Blend Competition was named in honour of Professor Abraham Izak Perold, the ‘Father of Pinotage’. The focus is on a category of red blends in which Pinotage is the primary component, and since the inception of the competition, KWV of Paarl has been the most successful entrant by far – eight wins with seven

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Under R100 for a bottle of one of the Top 10 Pinotage!

GO PULPIT ROCK! At just R90pb, the Brink Family Vineyards 2019 from the Pulpit Rock winery in Riebeek West is one of the standouts among the 2022 Absa Top 10 Pinotage Award winners. Windmeul of Paarl is the closest contender in terms of ‘best bang for your buck’ – R150pb for their 2019 Reserve but a track record impressive enough

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Some Stellenbosch wine bars and street cafés quite unlike the others

  IT WAS Brampton that got the ball rolling, and the ball has been picking up speed! First there was a single SA wine producer with a second home away from the vineyards in the centre of Stellenbosch, right in the middle of town, and now there are eight or so. Once a second label of Rustenberg, sold to DGB,

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Decanter critics loving Pinotage, Winemag brains trust not so much

  THE “SECOND EVER” panel-tasting of Pinotage by Decanter in the UK was described by judge Greg Sherwood MW as “a huge success”, with the results published in the Feb 2022 issue of the magazine. It had been over 20 years since the publishers last reviewed this class of red wines in such a focused manner and the jury praised

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2021 Cape Blend Competition winners no strangers to the podium

  WITH THEIR achievements in the 2021 edition of the Perold Absa Cape Blend Competition, the five winners showed once again how consistently good their wines are as combos with Pinotage being the leading component comprising between 30% and 70%. Since the competition was first held by the Pinotage Association in 2011, KWV has now won trophies with seven vintages,

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Top 10 competition showcases consistency of leading Pinotages

IS IT JUST a figment of the imagination or does that bottle of Stellenbosch 1679 stand out front and foremost among the 2021 Absa Top 10? Picture (above) courtesy of the Pinotage Association, convener of the competition… Certainly the maiden vintage of the Pinotage flagship from Koelenhof Winery has attracted quite a bit of attention during the year, having also earned

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And then there were 20… The 2021 Top 10 Pinotage Competition Finalists

IN A SOMEWHAT quiet build-up, the names of the finalists in the Pinotage Association’s 2021 Absa Top 10 competition were disclosed via social media without so much as a tweet! Twenty wines from 16 producers – Beeslaar, Beyerskloof, Diemersdal and Rijk’s each making the cut with two of their beauties among the many entries from various parts of the Cape winelands.

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‘Grand Pinotage’ from six leading estates taking variety to new heights

RAISING THE BAR, six members of the Pinotage Association have teamed up to launch a collection of their finest – new ‘Grand Pinotage’ wines that sell by the case only, a bottle from each producer, for R9000 a case! Who would have thought that Kanonkop could offer something more exclusive than their Black Label, that Beyerskloof would come up with

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None of Platter’s 28 ‘Wines of the Year’ from their ‘Winery of the Year’?

IN THE 2021 edition of Platter’s South African Wine Guide, the number of 5 Star laureates runs to 210 – in the 2020 edition there were 125, a year before that there were 90 and 10 years ago there were 56. In part this could be ascribed to rising standards throughout the industry with a growing number of producers delivering

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Changing of the guard? Lovely Pinotage but few top seeds in Absa Top 10

THERE WERE PLENTY of regulars at the top of the SA Wine Classification included among the 20 finalists of the 2020 Absa Top 10 Pinotage Competition, but by the time the trophy winners were announced only a few of the big-name producers were called to the podium. Good news for bargain hunters is that five of the winning wines are

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Beyerskloof, Kaapzicht and Wellington Pinotages excel on two fronts

REGULAR LAUREATES at the Pinotage Association’s annual Top 10 awards, Rijk’s of Tulbagh and Beyerskloof of Stellenbosch have fared particularly well again in 2020, each with more than one wine included among the 20 finalists announced by the Pinotage Association in advance of the trophy presentations. Begun almost a quarter of a century ago, the Absa Top 10 has grown

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How unfortunate to see a South African wine guide get it so wrong

SADLY, the South African Wine Index (SAWi) is losing credibility as an annual guide to the country’s best wines, the grand gold and platinum bottle stickers that signify inclusion in the publisher’s ‘Grand Wines Collection’ (GWC) becoming lumped together with others that shoppers and collectors should be wary of. What might once have been a noble endeavour to rank the

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Barrydale Chardonnay and Traildust Pinotage ‘surprise’ at CWG Auction

  WHO WOULD have thought it possible? The Mullineux couple Chris (viticulturist) and Andrea (winemaker), perhaps! But how amazing it was that the only white wine to fetch over R1000 a bottle on average at South Africa’s 2019 Cape Winemakers Guild Auction in Stellenbosch came from grapes grown in Barrydale, Klein Karoo – more than Ataraxia Chardonnay of Hemel-en-Aarde, more

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Beyerskloof Winemakers Reserve a champion Pinotage ahead of its time

MYSTERY NO MORE! The maiden 2016 vintage was only released in the second-half of 2019, after having already earned accolades at local and international shows a year before. The 2017, which excelled at the 2019 Absa Top 10 awards, is only expected to go on sale in mid-2020. And at the time of writing, there was still no mention of Beyerskloof

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Mysterious and marvellous among Pinotage Association’s Top 10 in 2019

  SOMETIMES what the Pinotage specialists at Beyerskloof do is performed with very little fanfare. Towards the end of 2018, word got out that the Truters had added another label to their portfolio of wines made from Pinotage, either entirely or in part. The newcomer: Beyerskloof Winemakers Reserve – 2016 being the maiden vintage. But no mention of it on

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