By Tim James 7 August 2023
Too often pinotage is offered (by journalists and critics and the wine-snifferati more generally) as more controversial than it really is. Malu Lambert’s informative report on an interesting recent discussion about different winemaking approaches to the grape asked if pinotage was “finally” set to “shrug off its image problem”. I reckon that if you asked the average local buyer of bottled wine that question nowadays, the answer would generally be: huh, what image problem? And I reckon it’s likely the same answer you would obtain overseas in countries where the likes of Kanonkop Pinotage, Kanonkop Kadette (blend and straight) and Beyerskloof are available in good numbers.
We continue to love quoting those damn Brit MWs, typically full of arrogance and opinion, who half a century ago invoked the supposed flavour of “rusty nails”. Really – let’s get over that; it’s been a bit boring and irrelevant for a few decades now.
Malu quoted wine distributor David Clark, who organised the discussion and is a friend of at least the “potential” of the grape, as limiting his comment to a smarter level of wine than what my average buyer drinks. “Pinotage has a horrific reputation in the fine wine world”, David said, and merely repeated the statement when challenged in a comment to the article from Mike Froud, who pointed out that “many wine writers / critics, e.g. in the UK, are impressed with Pinotage these days” and asked in vain for justification of the remark.
I’m not denying a level of controversy about pinotage, but I doubt if “horrific reputation” is anywhere near a correct analysis any more. I’d guess that (where there’s sufficient experience to warrant any useful opinion at all) a blanket condemnation of the variety is these days mostly an internal, South African thing. Many local wine-people are eager to distance themselves from the wine industry’s murky social past, and pinotage suffers from its association with oranje-blanje-blou nationalism and, thus, apartheid. Further, I would hazard that David, for example, mixes substantially with the sort of winemaker and sommelier who, mistakenly in my opinion, think that their beloved cinsault, so well suited to fashionably light wines, is a superior grape to this its offspring (and probably to cabernet sauvignon too, for that matter!).
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