Happy Drink Chenin Day and cheers to SA's world recognised cellarmaster

The Herald

14-06-2025

It's international Drink Chenin Day on Saturday, so why not celebrate what is fast becoming a flag bearer for the quality and versatility of SA winemaking with a local winemaker recognised as one of the world's best 100 winemakers?
Spier in Stellenbosch makes numerous variations of chenin blanc from this 'nimble grape', and two of these earned cellarmaster Johan Jordaan a place as one of only three South Africans in the 2025 Master Winemaker 100 list by influential industry magazine The Drinks Business.
Jordaan was also named the Global Chenin Blanc Master Winemaker, having earned Master medals for both Spier 21 Gables Chenin Blanc 2022 and Spier Good Natured Chenin Blanc 2023.
This is the highest accolade in the annual series of global Masters competitions, each focused on a specific varietal or wine style.
The Loire Valley in France is the historic home of chenin blanc, making world-renowned wines, so both Spier and the SA wine industry can be justifiably proud that we claimed four out of the six Master medals awarded, two of them for Spier, while France managed just one despite dominating the overall awards table.
Chenin blanc is the most widely planted grape in SA, with the earliest records of it in local vineyards dating back to 1655.
It was long known as the 'workhorse grape' for its vigorous growth and high yields, making it the backbone of generic 'dry white' blends and the base wine for distilling brandy.
It has come into its own over the last decade or so, its versatility producing sparkling and dessert wines, easy drinking fruity dry wines, and the premium wines that have put SA chenin on the world stage — often wooded, or in innovative blends, and especially those made from sought-after old vines.
SA has become known for its pioneering Old Vine Project, which seeks to preserve heritage vineyards and certifies those 35 years and older, a large proportion of them chenin, heralded for their lower yields, intense flavour concentration and the balance of freshness and complexity in the wines.
Jordaan says 'chenin is a wine built in layers from vineyard to bottle', and it's those layers of complex flavours you'll find in the Spier 21 Gables Chenin Blanc 2022 (±R300 in local retail), made from certified old vines planted in 1983.
Jordaan says he thinks of this as a single varietal wine made like a blend — the grapes picked in five different parcels, for different ripeness levels, and then fermented in different sizes of French oak barrels, for varying levels of oak influence that can be blended for the final wine, then matured for up to 12 months in barrel.
The wine balances youthful freshness with luscious complexity and texture, clean fruit purity in its peaches and pears, layered with deeper dried fruit and citrus rind flavours, woven with light spiciness and fresh acidity.
Beautifully drinkable now, Jordaan says the nuanced flavours will develop further with ageing up to 10 years.
With its luscious body and texture, tempered by fresh acidity, it's a white wine that works well with rich flavours such as pork belly with crispy caramelised crackling, duck breast with honey and spices, or a subtle curry.
Spier's other Master medal went to the Good Natured Chenin Blanc 2023 (±R100), from the estate's organic range — also from older vines up to 15 years old, in vineyards managed to international organic certification standards, with bees, bugs, birds and cover crops acting as nature's pest and weed control and fertiliser.
A super, easy everyday drinking wine, with abundant citrus, apple and stone fruit aromas moving into juicy exotic flavours of lychee and pineapple, fresh and zesty with a bright finish.
Enjoy it solo or with fish and chips, Thai-style noodles or an avo and smoked chicken or smoked salmon salad.
Happy Chenin Day!