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#357 Boplaas Reserve Touriga Nacional 2020

TASTING NOTES

👃🏼 A nose like this is surely a sign that the wine textbook gods are pleased with us… because this is classic Touriga. Lovely open aromas of fennel, savoury tobacco leaf, vanilla and cinnamon from the oak, and even a little floral puff of lavender. And that’s before we even talk about the fruit!

As one might expect from a Touriga, most of the fruit aromas are in the black and blue zone, showing elements of roasted black plum, black cherry, blackcurrant pastilles…and some sweeter blueberries.

👄 In the context of the delightfully communicative nose, there aren’t really too many surprises when it comes to the palate. All those same lovely ripe fruit elements come through faithfully: blackcurrant, black plum, black cherry…But for those of you who were worried about it getting jammy or flabby, everything is kept squarely in the channel by the firm tannins around the outside, and some impressive bblackberry acidity.

As we detected on the nose, the finish shows some lovely spicy savoury-sweet liquorice notes that mingle with the last of those pretty cassis elements.

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Home and Away

Boplaas’s Nel Family are a decidedly patriotic bunch. They are proudly “Calitzdorp” in flavour, and take every opportunity to talk about their unique continental Klein Karoo terroir. So it might come as a surprise to learn that their Family Reserve Touriga Nacional uses grapes that are all grown in Stellenbosch. To make sense of this, one needs a slightly broader understanding of both the climate and the recent history of the region.

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Bet Hedging

The Calitzdorp wine region receives about 200mm of rain per annum. So on an all-inclusive wine region rainfall scale that runs from the sodden 1600mm per annum received by Spain’s Rias Baixas region, right down to the Mad-Max-esque 70mm per annum received by Chile’s Elqui Valley, Calitzdorp’s 200mm per annum earns it a solid silver star of stoic respect from the other more apocalyptic wine regions of the world.

Add to this fact that the Calitzdorp posse were staring down the barrel of a three-year drought (2016 – 2018), and it became obvious that the Nel family would need to “diversify their climate portfolio” if they were going to survive the drought. It was for this reason that they set their sights on developing more hospital vineyard sites around the South African winelands; not least of all for the already low-yielding Touriga Nacional cultivar.

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A room with a view

The vineyards that provide fruit for the Family Reserve Touriga Nacional were planned, planted and developed specifically by Boplaas for their own long-term use, which will go a long way to pacifying the more anxious touriga lovers amongst us. The vineyards are slightly elevated, sitting in Stellenbosch’s Bottelary Hills, and giving it a clear view of the Atlantic west coast.

Winemaker Margaux Nel explains that Stellenbosch Touriga gives a slightly fresher “green apple” element to the wine that isn’t present in the Calitzdorp fruit.

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If you have yet to sign up for your Monthly HanDrinksSolo Wine Subscription then you’ll have to hunt this wine down in your own time. But until then, here are my tasting notes and some technical specs:

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TECHNICAL SPECS

🔬 Wine of Origin Stellenbosch. Winemaker Margaux Nel. Fruit is harvested from a vineyard in Stellenbosch’s Bottelary Hills, before being transported through to Calitzdorp for vinification. 90% of the grapes are destemmed, and crushed, with 0.5 – 1g of tartaric acid being added at crush. The fruit is fermented in open-top Lagares, using LaForte RX60 – a yeast first trialled in Australia on Syrah and Grenache.

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Read Boplaas's notes on Touriga Nacional