Patatsfontein Wit Versnit (No.490)

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

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#490 Patatsfontein Wit Versnit

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.

Patatsfontein Wit Versnit bottle
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Some wines get hunted. The Patatsfontein Wit Versnit is one of South Africa’s genuine unicorns — allocated, whispered about, traded, hoarded, and opened with slightly trembling hands.

Which is its own kind of problem, because wines like this end up diagnosed for what they are not instead of appreciated for what they are. Under Saga Vineyards, Reenen Borman, Henk Kotze and Fritz Schoon have built a small stable — Patatsfontein and Sons of Sugarland — out of old, dry-farmed vineyards in country that has no obvious business making wine this precise.

Wit Versnit is Chenin Blanc with a Colombard component, picked four separate times so the blend arrives as a small choir rather than a single voice. Earlier picks bring the lean, bright, acid-driven lines; later ones bring flesh and generosity. The diurnal swing does the rest — slows the whole thing down, keeps the acid in play, and stops the fruit collapsing into a hot little puddle of alcoholic peach jam. Twelve and a half percent, and not a gram of it wasted.

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: A bright, vibrant, tropical soul trapped inside the outer coating of a sage-like philosopher. You get little whispers of pineapple, sunshine and peach — and then, almost immediately, that fruit gets shrouded in more savoury, serious notes of herbal fynbos, gravel and yellow citrus pith. Like a perfectly respectable daytime chat that leaves you quite certain you would meet the freak behind the facade after dark. Compact, fresh, stony, savoury and quietly intense. Not broad, not heavy, not oily.

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Palate: Supremely fresh, and the acid is no slouch. Even warmed to a coolish room temperature you still get this vibrant but well-formed orange acidity — not lean lemon, not sweet ripe mandarin, but the middle zone. Bitter orange. Bright orange. Properly formed orange. Like someone turned the saturation up on citrus without turning it into Fanta. People talk about acidity making your mouth water around the sides of the jaw; this one feels more like a live electrical cable stretched straight down the middle of the tongue. The juiciness runs all the way to the back and then morphs into a touch of clean, pithy grapefruit bitterness that stops the wine becoming too pretty. And there is real texture here.

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TECHNICAL SPECS

Chenin Blanc with a Colombard component, off old dry-farmed vineyards and picked across four separate passes so every component speaks a slightly different language. Made under Saga Vineyards by Reenen Borman, Henk Kotze and Fritz Schoon, the same stable behind Sons of Sugarland.
Alc. 12.5% | Remaining technical specs to follow from the cellar.
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