Description
“A great way to test drive the HanDrinksSolo Wine Club” — Han, while drinking solo. Three whites, three grapes that South Africa is not famous for, and three producers who went ahead anyway. The club exists to send you wines you would not have found on your own, which is a lovely idea right up until you have to sign a monthly debit order for it. So this box runs the deal in reverse. You see the three wines first, you drink them, and then you decide whether we can be trusted with the rest. If we can’t, you have still had three very good bottles of wine, and there are worse ways to lose an argument.
Diemersdal Grüner Veltliner 2024
Grüner Veltliner is Austria’s most planted grape and, until Diemersdal, essentially nobody’s South African one. Thys Louw’s interest in Austrian whites is the reason this country has a Grüner at all, and Diemersdal made the first. It took Best Niche White at the 2026 Investec Trophy Wine Show, scoring 97 out of 100, which is a startling result for a grape most of the country still cannot place. The grape’s signature is a twist of white pepper, which is one of the few wine aromas with a tidy chemical answer behind it: a compound called rotundone, the same one responsible for the pepper in Shiraz. There is also a green, savoury note that nobody has pinned to a single molecule yet, which is a pleasant reminder that the subject is not finished. What makes the bottle worth your evening is the contrast between the estate’s reputation for polish and the fact that it quietly planted an Austrian grape before anyone asked for one.
Winshaw ‘The Runaway’ Pinot Gris 2025
The name belongs to Dr William Charles Winshaw, who ran away from home at twelve, hitched down a river with a hobo, worked as a professional gambler and a Texas Ranger, qualified as a medical doctor, sailed to South Africa, and founded Stellenbosch Farmers Winery in 1925. Four generations later his descendants JP and Pierre farm Klein Welmoed by the Eerste River, and the wines are effectively his biography on a shelf. The fruit comes off a single trellised block, hand-picked in three passes: an early one for freshness, a middle one for structure, a small late one for body, with this bottling leaning on the first two. It used to see some older oak and no longer sees any, which is the best thing that has happened to it. Tank and concrete, lees, time, and nothing standing between you and the fruit.
Lismore The Age of Grace Viognier 2024
Viognier comes from Condrieu in the Northern Rhône, it smells of peach and apricot and orange blossom, and it is naturally low in acid, which means it will go broad and sleepy on you the moment the winemaker stops paying attention. Samantha O’Keefe arrived in South Africa in 2000, started Lismore in 2003, and pioneered Wine of Origin Greyton, which was designated in 2009. In 2019 a fire took the farm and she rebuilt it. Age of Grace sits apart from the Estate Reserve Viognier, and the 2024 draws on fruit from Bot River, Elgin and Vyeboom. The reason it is in this box is that it carries the perfume the grape is famous for without any of the weight it is notorious for, which is harder than the finished wine makes it sound.
Drink them lightest to heaviest
The Grüner first, then the Pinot Gris, then the Viognier, ideally across one evening and preferably with food by the time you reach the third. That gives you three grapes, three completely different ideas of what a white wine is for, and a fair idea of what a month in the club looks like. If you have been circling the wine club without committing, this is the low-risk way to find out what we do, and it makes a considerably better gift than whatever you were going to buy instead.
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