 |
| Danie de Wet |
|
|
|
 |
+27 23 615-1853 |
 |
+27 23 615-1915 |
 |
frontdesk@dewetshof.com |
 |
www.dewetshof.com |
| |
De Wetshof Estate in the Robertson Region - 160 km from Cape Town - is one of South Africa's premier chardonnay houses, creating a wide range of wine styles from this versatile varietal. The Estate, however, offers a balanced portfolio of impressive, award winning wines from vineyards and a cellar where cutting-edge technology and common sense farming and winemaking go hand-in-hand.
Nearly all South Africa's wine is grown in the same area as the Cape Floral Kingdom and we think that is why it is so special.
|
| |
|
|
| Route of the Golden Vine - a Chardonnay journey of discovery |
| 24 July 2008 by Arnold Kirkby |
|
| Love it or hate - this wine has been the subject of intrigue - soap
opera characters have been named after it - theses have been written
about it and for many ardent wine lovers, you are either a member of
the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) or the LDC (Let's Drink Chardonnay)
fan clubs.
|
|
One of the intrigues for many centuries lay in determining where a grape variety such as Chardonnay originated and how it came into being. Through the ages there have been a number of theories and hypotheses about its origin and based mainly on old documents and here-say!!
It is a fascinating study and one which has been made easier, if not exact, by DNA fingerprinting, a branch of science studied in depth by Dr Carole Meredith, a professor from the University of California Davis campus.
Now retired, Dr Carole Meredith, is among other things, a world-renowned geneticist, who pioneered DNA fingerprinting of a large number of grape varieties - to establish their origins, including whether they were cross-pollinated from other cultivars.
Chardonnay is a grape which is now firmly entrenched in South Africa's wine culture and because of its versatility, winemakers are able to create wines which stimulate the intellect, according to Danie de Wet, proprietor of the De Wetshof Estate in Robertson. Alternatively they can make a simple, enjoyable social statement.
While it has only been grown in South Africa since the mid-1980s, the variety is believed to be at least 700 years old, but could be even older.
Unearthing the history of this wine and understanding why it continues to be so popular has intrigued winemakers and wine lovers for centuries.
Dr Meredith and her team from Davis researched both DNA and historical documents in trying to ascertain Chardonnay's linage. They determined one of the parents was from the Pinot family, which hales from northern eastern France or south western areas of that country and the other is Gouais Blanc, a grape from what is today Croatia.
It is thought that the Gouais Blanc vines were presented as a gift to the Gaul's in France by the Roman Emperor Probus around 3 AD. Being from the region around Croatia originally, there are records of him taking vines from his homeland to the Gaul"s, which is where this theory originated.
Meredith determined that the finicky and pedantic Pinot grapes (Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris) all have the same DNA. It is thought that the cross-pollination of the two varieties resulted in the first Chardonnay vine in Burgundy, which has been determined as the birthplace of this variety.
From there its fame has spread to all winemaking regions of the world, including the Cape, where today it makes up eight percent of all grapes grown there. A total of 8,181 hectares of Chardonnay are planted in South Africa, with 27 percent of that in the Robertson Region and another 23 percent in Worcester, according to SAWIS statistics for 2006.
When it comes to Chardonnay, however, it is not how much of it there is, but what can be done with it.
Some of the world's most expensive white wines are from Burgundy in France, while many Champagnes - in South Africa Cap Classique - are made from it. It can also be rationalised that it blends so well with Pinot Noir because of the family link.
It could be argued that because of the cross-pollination, Gouais Blanc, did for Chardonnay what Hermitage (now known as Cinsaut) did for Pinot Noir in the creating of Pinotage - making it a much more versatile variety which is able to adapt more readily to different terroir.
*Some of the information for this article was provided by an interview done with Professor Meredith with David Graves - one of the co-founders of the Saintsbury Vineyards in California.
|
| |
|
| This article has been read 541 times. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The article above is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License
You may copy, re-use or re-print any of this information as long as wine.co.za is quoted as source.
Any statements made or opinions expressed are the legal responsibility of the AUTHOR,
and do not necessarily reflect the views of WineNet (PTY) Ltd. or its sponsors.
12187
|
|
send to a friend
print to pdf
subscribe 
rss feeds
looking for something else?
wine.co.za site statistics