Monkeyshed Wines

Kanonkop is one of the Cape’s oldest and most celebrated wine estates and is situated on the slopes of the Simonsberg near Stellenbosch. With an ideal climate and soil for red wine production, this family owned winery produces wines of world renown.
The Kadette is Pinotage based with a healthy dose of Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc and Merlot to add style and complexity to the blend.
Cherry and berry fruit knit seamlessly into a mineral core.

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The pair to a range made by one of my favourite Australian producers, Plantagenet.

Neil Ellis Wines has a huge reputation and this shows you why. The Elgin Chardonnay is made from grapes which come from the slopes of the mountains behind Somerset West. The cooler climate of these higher slopes makes for a slower, longer ripening period and more subtle, elegant wines – this has real class.
What I really like about cooler climate new world wines is the restraint and elegance they get. Always there will be signature new world fullness and ripeness but with a cooler region this often over exploited promise is tempered and some old world elegance creeps in – voila might not be out of place!

The PR blurb sums it up really “André Ostertag is anything but a run-of-the-mill Alsace winemaker. To some traditionalists he is an eccentric, constantly tinkering and experimenting with new styles that break the mould, but in reality he simply seeks to coax the ultimate expression from the varieties and his various vineyard terroirs. Open-minded and innovative, he does not restrict himself to conventional techniques or the AOC rule books.” It may sound gilded but it really is right on the money.

The new generation moves in again. Nicolas Girard has recently started working with his father, Alain Girard, on the family’s 12 hectare estate. Fresh, aromatic, modern and unapologetically accessibility this is a wine that will appeal to traditionalist and reformist alike, no mean feat from no mean winemaker.

A product of the boom that is the New Zealand wine industry. Originally setting up as growers in 1975 the Scott family went the whole hog in 1990 opening a winery and releasing their own label. Since then they have added a bottling hall, warehouse facilities and a modern, well equipped laboratory. Oh, and the key to any successful wine venture, a small brewery to produce high quality bottle conditioned beer! As the saying goes “it takes a lot of water to make good wine but even more beer.” (Anonymous Antipodean)
Allan and Cathy Scott now have son Josh as winemaker and daughter Sara responsible for their sustainable viticulture and organic practices concentrating on their Carbon ZERO programme.
And the wine? As you’d expect from such experience in the new southern heartland of Marlborough – great. Not too big and heavy as some can be but refreshing, fresh, vibrant southern sauvignon.