HANtv Episode CHAPTER INDEX:
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0:00 – A suitcase full of contraband vines
2:28 – The diva test: Nebbiolo, and Van Halen’s brown M&Ms
4:52 – The cold end of Constantia
6:03 – Elunda Basson: the woman with the numbers
7:37 – Bordeaux, Magna Carta and the unicorn
9:48 – How it’s made: 86% Sauvignon, 14% Sémillon
10:55 – Tasting notes: the nose
12:58 – Tasting notes: the palate
14:36 – Don’t skip this: how it changes as it warms
15:10 – Texture, and why there’s no malo
16:01 – The ripeness reveal: 14% Alc. and still fresh
17:09 – So how much of the unicorn came along?
17:33 – Watch these next
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In 1992 a group of South African winemakers came home from Piedmont with Nebbiolo cuttings in a suitcase. The first block went into the ground at Steenberg in 1994, at the southern end of the Constantia Valley, and it is still there. Nebbiolo refuses to ripen anywhere warm, so that block works as a thermometer that has been reporting how cold this corner of Constantia is for thirty years.
That cold is the reason the Steenberg Canvas Blanc 2024 exists. It is 86% Sauvignon Blanc and 14% Sémillon, made by Elunda Basson, who came up through Nederburg reds and Cap Classique at JC Le Roux and Pongrácz, and who now chairs Sauvignon Blanc South Africa. It also sits in the shadow of Magna Carta, Steenberg’s R850 Sauvignon-Sémillon flagship. This video asks how much of that unicorn made it into a bottle the rest of us can afford, and how a wine at Alc. 14% can be this ripe and still this fresh.
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: Lemongrass immediately, then roses, lime and marmalade. There is plenty of green leaf and herbal lift, and blackcurrant leaf keeps coming back for another go. Chalk dust, and sour lemon candy (specifically the white Warheads) with a caramelised edge from the barrel. A touch of smoke, part oak and part Sauvignon flint, jasmine with that savoury heart you only get right up close to the flower, and a little white pepper.
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Palate: Broad, immediately. Three citrus registers run at once: sweeter orange, tightly wound lime juice and bitter white grapefruit. The texture is waxy, and none of that comes from malo, because there is none. It is the Sémillon, slow ripening and a faint tannic grip from the barrel. The finish is tart, dry and pithy. Take it out of the fridge before you think you should, because after twenty minutes in the glass the riper citrus arrives and the wine rearranges itself.
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TECHNICAL SPECS
Constantia, from Steenberg’s vineyards at the cold southern end of the valley. The blend is 86% Sauvignon Blanc and 14% Sémillon, and the components spent nine months in barrel, 20% of it new. There is no malolactic fermentation.
Alc. 14% |
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