A rare and intriguing cinsault

2017 Arco Laarman This startlingly bright and clear South African wine has the purest of all cinsault flavours.

Matthew Jukes
By
published
in Features

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(Image credit: Bakkes Images)

2017 Arco Laarman, Focal Point Cinsault, Stellenbosch, South Africa£24.95,Vineyards of Sherborne,01935-815544,VineyardsOfSherborne.co.uk

I have known Arco Laarman since he took over the reins at the famous Paarl winery Glen Carlou, and ten years down the line he has set up on his own. I tasted his wines back in May and it has been a long six months waiting for them to turn up on our shores. The 2017 is the maiden vintage for Arco's Focal Point collection and both the chardonnay and cinsault are utterly delicious and unlike anything you will have tasted before.

The ethos behind the Focal Point range is to capture the exact expressions of the vineyards from which he draws his fruit. This fascinating cinsault comes from bush vines in Stellenbosch's Bottelary Hills. Half of the grapes were de-stemmed and the other half were fermented in whole bunches. The fruit character is startlingly bright and clear with earth, stem and spice notes intertwined with strawberry and sour cherry tones. There is no noticeable oak interference as maturation took place in 300 litre neutral barrels for ten months and so this wine has the purest of all cinsault flavours.

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Only 1,424 bottles were released in this vintage and so stock is painfully rare, but if you want to taste a genuinely intriguing cinsault, made by a desperately talented dude, and closed with a hilarious cork stopper, then this is it!

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.

 

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