Winshaw The Runaway Pinot Gris 2025 (No.488)

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

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#488 Winshaw The Runaway Pinot Gris 2025

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.

Winshaw The Runaway Pinot Gris 2025 bottle
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The chapter index appears here the moment the episode is published.
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Aromatic whites is a phrase the wine trade says constantly and almost nobody can defend. Push on it and it collapses. By the actual chemistry — free terpenes, the molecules that make Muscat smell like Muscat — Riesling and Gewurztraminer are only semi-aromatic, and Sauvignon Blanc is not in the club at all. It gatecrashed on a completely different set of compounds.

And then there is the grape stuck in the middle of the argument. Pinot Gris is filed as neutral by the numbers and semi-aromatic by half the trade. Same grape, two contradictory labels, and the only thing that changes is who is holding the pen.

Winshaw’s The Runaway is the South African bottle that drags the whole mess into daylight. It is named for Dr William Charles Winshaw, who bolted from home at twelve, hitched a ride down a river with a hobo, and went on to be a professional gambler, a Texas Ranger, a qualified medical doctor and, in 1925, the founder of Stellenbosch Farmers Winery. The wines are the man’s biography. This one used to carry a component of older oak. It does not any more — tank and concrete only — and it has never been better.

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: First thing up: hay and fynbos, a dry and almost herby lift before any fruit shows up at all. Then it sweetens into lemon candy, and behind that, a flash of fresh nectarine.

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Palate: This is where it earns its keep. There is a pleasant weight to it — properly weighty and chewy, with real texture — plus a little hit of spice. It is citrus-driven, but not the obvious squeeze-of-lemon kind: think Seville orange and naartjie, that bittersweet marmalade end of the family. And it finishes pithy and faintly salty, which keeps the whole thing fresh and moreish rather than soft. Winsome is the word in my notes. Not a fridge-cold-and-forget white either: a touch of warmth lets the texture and that bittersweet citrus open right up.

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TECHNICAL SPECS

Hand-picked off the Klein Welmoed block on the Eerste River side of Stellenbosch, in three separate passes. Raised in tank and concrete with no oak at all — just fruit, lees and time. Earlier vintages carried a portion of older barrel; that is gone, and the wine is the better for it.
Full technical specs to follow from the cellar.
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