Chenin Blanc and the myth of the easy glass

Ask around in the UK and Chenin Blanc still gets a shrug. The safe white. The one that's a bit sweet, fine chilled hard at a party, nobody's first choice for a proper dinner. It's a fair impression to have formed, and plenty of bottles have earned it.

Then you open something like the Camino Africana, which is 100 per cent Chenin Blanc from old bushvines in Stellenbosch, and the shrug stops making sense. It's dry, taut, salty at the edges, and it takes a good half hour in the glass to finish telling you what it is. The grape didn't change. Our expectations of it did.

Where the shrug came from

For a long stretch, Chenin was South Africa's workhorse. It was planted widely because it gave generously, and much of what reached shelves abroad was made to be uncomplicated: soft, gently sweetened, sold on being easy to like. There is nothing shameful in that. Most of us started somewhere friendly.

The problem is that a workhorse reputation sticks to the whole grape, including the vines that were never treated like workhorses at all. Chenin is unusually good at carrying acidity through warm ripening, which is precisely the quality you want when you're trying to make a serious, savoury white in a sunny place. It just took a while for that to be the point rather than a technicality.

So the belief isn't wrong about what many Chenins are. It's wrong about what Chenin can be.

What old bushvines on granite actually do

The fruit here comes from low-density bushvines in the Bottelary Hills, planted between the nineteen-sixties and the nineteen-eighties. Sandy, loamy topsoil sits over granitic gravel and decomposed granite shale: lean, free-draining ground that gives a vine no easy water and no shortcut.

Vines that old, in soil that stingy, crop very little and root very deep. That's not romance, it's arithmetic. Fewer bunches and a deeper root system concentrate the wine and pull in flavours that have nothing to do with ripe fruit: the saline grip, the mineral pull, the savoury undertow that makes you reach for the glass again rather than declare it lovely and move on.

Stellenbosch does the rest. Warm, sun-filled days ripen the grapes fully while cool air off the Atlantic slows the whole thing down, so the acidity survives the heat. That balance is the reason a dry Chenin from here can be both generous and tense at once, which is exactly the combination the sweetish-and-simple reputation says shouldn't exist. David Finlayson farms it with deliberate restraint: old bushvines, low yields, minimal interference.

Camino Africana Cabernet Franc in the vineyards of South Africa, the story behind the

A cellar that mostly gets out of the way

Whole bunches are pressed gently, then the juice is largely left to its own devices. Around ninety per cent ferments with wild, natural yeasts in seasoned French oak; the remainder goes into concrete eggs. Older barrels matter here, because they give texture and a slow exchange of air without layering vanilla and toast over the top.

A touch of sulphur after primary fermentation holds malolactic conversion back, which keeps the brightness intact rather than rounding it into something softer and creamier than intended. Then twelve months on the lees builds the weight: a subtle creaminess through the middle of the palate that broadens the wine without blunting its focus, and a finish that carries on being savoury long after you've swallowed.

That's the whole argument, really. Nothing added to make it likeable. Everything done to let a stressed old vineyard speak clearly. Christian Eedes at Winemag.co.za gave it 95, which is a useful bit of corroboration if you like your opinions checked, though the salt on the finish makes the case on its own.

It drinks beautifully now. It will also reward being forgotten at the back of the rack for a good while, as the tension gradually turns honeyed and waxy while the mineral spine stays put.

How to drink it this autumn

September is the right moment for this style in Britain: too cool for something you'd drink straight from the fridge door, too early for the heavy reds. Serve it at around 11°C, which means out of the fridge a little before you want it, and give it air. A cold, rushed glass hides everything interesting.

Food makes the point faster than any tasting note. Seared scallops with brown butter, grilled Dover sole with lemon, or a bowl of smoked haddock chowder on a damp evening all meet the saline side head on. The lees texture gives it enough body for roast chicken with lemon and thyme, and a wedge of mature farmhouse Cheddar at the end of a meal is close to a party trick.

It's also a strong candidate when you're handed the job of bringing something to someone else's table, particularly for the friend who thinks they've got Chenin filed and labelled. If you want other ideas along those lines, we've written about what to turn up with when you're the one at the door.

One 750ml bottle, the 2023, and a grape most people think they already understand. That last part is the fun bit.

If you're curious about what old bushvines and a hands-off cellar do to a grape you thought you had pinned down, the Camino Africana is the bottle for it. It suits a slow autumn dinner with scallops or roast chicken, and it suits the drinker who likes a wine that keeps changing in the glass.