Wine of the week: three South African stunners

published 4 September 2020

2018 Paul Cluver, Chardonnay, Elgin, South Africa

About £20, frontierfinewines.co.uk, caviste.co.uk, dunells.com, nywines.co.uk, handford.net, harrogatefinewinecompany.com, thesavanna.co.uk, houseoftownend.com, winedirect.co.uk, buywineonline.co.uk

I have three beautiful wines this week, all perfectly priced and from one of the most famous estates in the whole of the Cape. I also have masses of stockists, so get stuck in! Paul Cluver Jr, his winemaker Andries Burger and I have spent many hours talking and drinking chardonnay together. These guys are obsessed with the variety and their cool Elgin vineyards are ideally placed to summon up gravitas, freshness and also the effortless class found in their wines. My headline wine is a beauty, drinking now and perfectly treading the fine line between dreaminess and alertness on the palate.

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In addition to this, please seek out 2018 Paul Cluver Riesling (£15, Frontier, Caviste, tanners-wines.co.uk, vinosa.wine, greatgrog.co.uk, Waitrose, Wine Direct and Buy Wine Online). This is one of only a handful of SA rieslings which set my pulse racing with its amazing beauty and tenderness. Lime blossom and green tea abound in this delicate temptress.

Finally, 2017 Paul Cluver Pinot Noir (about £19, Frontier, gerrardseel.co.uk, Vino SA, hedleywright.co.uk, Wine Direct and Buy Wine Online) is the finest value pinot that this winery makes and it is nice to see that the 2017 is still available because it has just hit its mellow sweet spot of maturity, with its fleshy succulence and wistful red fruit perfume.

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

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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.