Two beauties from the Cape

2017 Thorne & Daughters These compelling yet delicate and savoury South African wines are fashioned from hearty raw materials.

Matthew Jukes
By Matthew Jukes
published

2017 Thorne & Daughters wine

(Image credit: Tasha Seccombe Photography)

2017 Thorne & Daughters, Wanderer's Heart, Western Cape, South Africa£24.99, Handford Wines, 020-7589 6113, handford.net

A rather wonderful thing happened the other day. I visited Handford in order to taste some wines for one of our MoneyWeek Wine Club features and, while perusing the awesome selection of bottles on the shelves of this amazing emporium, James and Gav suggested that we might concentrate on one of their fortes, South Africa. You will read about the Wine Club wines next month, but because the flight of bottles they opened was so stellar I was left with an excess of beauties and so here are two of the stars that I could not fit into my Wine Club sextet.

Wanderer's Heart is rich, bold, delicious and complete. It has extraordinary appeal and succulence in spite of its controlled 13.1% alcohol. A relatively new winery on the scene, John and Tasha Seccombe have an exquisite touch with their fruit, managing to fashion delicate, savoury, compelling wines from hearty raw materials. This grenache, cinsault and mourvdre blend adheres perfectly to their mantra to taste the Western Cape air and sunshine in their wines!

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Another red that amazed me was 2017 Savage, Follow the Line Cinsault (£28.99). I noted a Volnay-like texture in this wine, which is certainly a clash of cultures, but this is another captivating Cape red that brings a degree of magic and poise to proceedings while retaining impressive freshness and bounce on the palate.

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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