Steen is the most planted grape in South Africa. It has traditionally been grown as a blending agent for everyday wines, and even "port." Bottled unblended but under-tended it has produced unbalanced and flabby wines.
In France Steen is more normally known as Chenin Blanc, where it is one of the great grapes of the Loire Valley, most particularly in Anjou-Saumur and Touraine. In the latter district the grape is also known locally as Pineau Blanc de la Loire. Probably the best-known Chenin region is Vouvray, which makes wines that will last decades.
But Chenin Blanc stands a little apart from Riesling, and that is because of its extraordinary textural quality. Adam Mason, winemaker at Mulderbosch in Stellenbosch, South Africa's premium wine-growing region, says this component is achieved by picking at slightly lower sugar levels. This practice "enhances the texture of the wine in a mineral, steely way," he says. However, besides texture, he also values freshness very highly.
Mason used to make a Chenin Blanc blended from three vineyards, but such is his enthusiasm for allowing the grape to express itself that he is now bottling three single vineyard wines. They are excellent: concentrated, precise and clean. They are not wines for drinking, but rather to ponder over. Mason explains: "The three vineyards are each of similar age, yet are grown on three very different soil types, the Faure fruit (Block W) on decomposed granite; Bottelary (Block S2) on Malmesbury shales, and the Polkadraai (Block A) on a sandy fraction overlaying ferrous gravel with a clay sub layer."
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