Nabygelegen Scaramanga Red Blend 2024 (No.489)

by | Aug 3, 2026 | One minute waffles | 0 comments

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#489 Nabygelegen Scaramanga Red Blend 2024

Video coming soon. The film for this bottle is still in production. Everything else is already here — the story, the notes and the numbers — and the video drops into this spot the moment it goes live.

Nabygelegen Scaramanga Red Blend 2024 bottle
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Cabernet Sauvignon and Tempranillo should not work. One is Bordeaux’s long-limbed enforcer, all tannin, acid, dark fruit and colour that refuses to fade. The other browns and goes rusty at the first opportunity, rather like Pinot Noir or Grenache with a grudge. Put them together and the sensible prediction is a tannic monster.

Except the idea has form. In the late 1700s Manuel Quintano of Labastida, in Rioja Alavesa, looked north to Bordeaux and asked whether Spanish wine could be made to age, travel and compete. Not with Bordeaux grapes — with Bordeaux technique. Cleaner fruit, stems removed, gentler handling, better cellar hygiene, small oak barrels. At the time that was a genuinely radical question.

Nabygelegen’s Scaramanga is that argument replayed in the Cape, with the grapes swapped in as well. The Tempranillo is estate fruit off hot, continental Wellington; the Cabernet and Merlot come in from Voor-Paardeberg, the southern flank of the granite outcrop whose northern slopes host some of South Africa’s most cult-famous winemakers. Two big forwards doing very different jobs in the same scrum. And when it works, the wine does not just have power. It has shape.

But of course, 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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TASTING NOTES

Aromas: Deep, rich and brooding: black plum and prune, a twist of white pepper, and ripe red cherry sitting underneath. The darker, riper fruit really pitches up here, with leather and blackcurrant behind it.

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Palate: Concentrated plum fruit carried on a beautifully soft, velvety mouthfeel — you can feel the Wellington warmth softening a grape that can otherwise throw very firm tannins. Clean, fresh red plum and cherry run right through the middle, which is the Merlot doing its quiet work, and the colour is an intense, youthful crimson, which is the Cabernet doing one of its quieter jobs. What fascinates me is that there is no shortage of oak here — at least eighteen months in barrel — and the headline is still clean, fresh fruit rather than a wall of vanilla and spice. The tannins seal it: chalky and present, sitting right in the middle between splintery and silky, which is arguably the hardest tannin texture of all to pull off.

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TECHNICAL SPECS

Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec with roughly 20% Tempranillo. The Tempranillo is estate-grown in hot, continental Wellington; the Cabernet and Merlot come from Voor-Paardeberg. At least eighteen months in barrel, and still fruit-led.
Full technical specs to follow from the cellar.
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