Back

#480 Spioenkop Chardonnay 2022

RAAR Carbonic Shiraz
Get wine delivered to your door
VIDEO: Mourvèdre has a new home!

HANtv Episode CHAPTER INDEX:

=====================

00:00 – A wine region born by accident
00:25 – Intro to the wine of the day
00:37 – The Birth of the Elgin Wine Industry
05:02 – Spioenkop Estate: the origin story
07:32 – But why is it called Spioenkop?
08:33 – How was the wine made
09:45 – Tasting notes for the Spioenkop Chardonnay 2022
12:51 – Things you should know about cool climates and natural acid.
15:48 – Four Elgin Chardonnays that you absolutely have to try
17:14 – Links to more videos on South African wine =====================
Elgin is one of the greatest wine regions in South Africa… and it only exists because apples failed.
No, seriously.
In the 1990s, collapsing apple prices forced Elgin farmers to rethink their entire future. Some planted vines as a survival tactic. Then the apple market recovered… and most ripped those vines straight back out again. But a handful of deeply stubborn wine obsessives stayed the course — and that accidental selection process may be exactly why Elgin now produces some of the finest cool-climate wines in the country.
Today’s wine is the Spioenkop “1900” Chardonnay 2022, made by Belgian-born Koen Roose: former engineer, sommelier, importer, Burgundian harvest worker, and now one of the most intensely hands-on vignerons in South Africa.
If you love taut, mineral, cool-climate Chardonnay with terrifyingly good acidity… this one is ridiculous.
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:
—

TASTING NOTES

Aromas: This wine does not greet you with jazz hands.
The first impression is smoked walnut, chalk dust, gravel roads after winter rain, and that stern little “business class only” energy that great cool-climate Chardonnay sometimes carries. Then the fruit arrives — lemon curd, lemon blossom, concentrated Granny Smith apple — all sitting in a green-grey spectrum rather than the tropical sunshine colours many South Africans expect from Chardonnay.

There’s also a subtle leesy hum underneath it all, like the wine quietly muttering: “I’ve read books you haven’t.”
—

Palate: Absolutely laser-guided.
There’s concentration here, but it’s strapped to a steel safety cable of acidity running straight down the middle of the wine. A little ripe orange peeks out briefly, but the architecture is all tension, precision, and cool-climate restraint.
The oak is beautifully integrated — walnut, faint nutmeg, gentle savoury smoke — and the finish just keeps unfolding like an Avengers end-credit sequence directed by a Burgundian monk with anxiety issues.
At pH 3.08, this thing is operating dangerously close to serious German Riesling territory.
Superb.

—

TECHNICAL SPECS

Wine of Origin: Elgin | Winemaker: Koen Roose
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
  • Region: Elgin, Western Cape, South Africa
  • Viticulture: Hand-tended by the winemaker, no supplementary irrigation, no pesticides
  • Fermentation: 100% barrel-fermented (primary ferment in oak, not stainless)
  • Maturation: 10 months in French oak, 30% new
  • Post-maturation: 2 months in stainless steel (reductive step — the source of the matchstick note)
Alc.: 13.8% | pH: 3.08 | Acidity: 6.9 g/L | R/S: 3.9 g/L |
Submit your review
1
2
3
4
5
Submit
     
Cancel

Create your own review

Han Drinks Solo Wine Club
Average rating:  
 0 reviews

More crazy different South African Chardonnays

#414 JH Meyer Palmiet Chardonnay 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#262 Cape of Good Hope Serruria Chardonnay 2020

 

 

 

#257 Sutherland Chardonnay 2020