Lamb chops, rosemary, and one bottle from Stellenbosch

Late August does something strange to British cooking. The light goes at nine now instead of half ten, the barbecue is still standing on the patio in hope, and you want food that belongs to both seasons at once. Lamb chops answer that beautifully. Twenty minutes of actual work, a bit of char at the edges, and something on the plate that tastes like the end of summer without pretending it is still July.

This is that dinner, written out properly: four chops, more rosemary than feels sensible, and a red from the granite slopes of the Simonsberg that I reach for whenever lamb and woodsmoke are involved. Nothing about it is difficult. That is rather the point.

The bottle: warwick's First Lady Pinotage

The wine is the First Lady Pinotage from Warwick Estate, and the reason it sits so easily next to charred lamb is down to restraint in the cellar. The fruit is hand-picked and destemmed straight into tank, then given a short maceration of only four to seven days on the skins, judged by how the tannins are shaping up rather than by the calendar.

Gentle pump-overs three or four times a day draw out colour and flavour without pushing too hard. Malolactic fermentation happens in tank, which softens the acidity and gives the wine that juicy, supple texture, and there is a whisper of oak spice at the end rather than a plank of it. The focus stays on bright, lifted Pinotage fruit, which is exactly what you want against fat and salt and rosemary.

The site helps. Warwick's lower Simonsberg slopes are decomposed granite: well-drained, mineral-rich soils that suit red varieties, and the breezes rolling in off False Bay let Pinotage ripen fully while keeping its freshness and lift.

First Lady Pinotage maturing in the cellar, ageing and cellaring, South Africa

What goes in the pan

Get the chops out of the fridge half an hour before you cook, otherwise the middles stay cold while the outsides overdo it. Salt them well on both sides. Pat the fat dry with kitchen paper, because dry fat browns and wet fat steams.

Heavy pan, properly hot, no oil at first. Stand the chops on their fat edge for two or three minutes and let them render their own cooking medium; that is where the flavour lives. Then lay them flat, three minutes a side for something pink in the middle, and in the last minute add a knob of butter, two crushed garlic cloves and three big sprigs of rosemary. Tilt the pan and spoon that fragrant butter over the chops until the rosemary starts to crackle.

Rest them on a warm plate for five minutes while you deal with the sides. New potatoes crushed under the flat of a knife with olive oil and sea salt. A tray of cherry tomatoes and courgettes from the August glut, roasted hard until the tomatoes collapse. Scrape every bit of rosemary butter from the pan over the lot.

Pour it at sixteen degrees, and mean it

Sixteen degrees is the number, and in an August kitchen with the oven on it matters more than usual. A bottle left on the worktop will be nudging twenty by the time you sit down, and at that temperature the fruit goes soft-edged and the alcohol starts doing the talking.

Twenty-five minutes in the fridge sorts it. Not the coldest shelf, just the door. What you get back is the lift: the cherry fruit stays fresh and defined, the tannins stay supple rather than drying, and the wine cuts cleanly through the lamb fat instead of lying alongside it.

Pour a smaller measure than you think you want and top it up. The glass warms in your hand as you eat, and following that change through the meal is half the pleasure of drinking a red at the right temperature in the first place.

What is left in the glass

There will be some. Two people rarely finish a 750ml bottle over four chops, and the last third of it has a job to do. Bring out a wedge of mature Cheddar and a slab of quince paste, and let the wine's fruit sit against that sharp, crystalline cheese for ten minutes while nobody clears the table.

What is still in the bottle the next day goes into a slow-cooked beef and tomato bolognese, or gets drunk alongside one, which is the better plan. Come the weekend, if the barbecue gets one more outing before the weather turns, smoky chicken thighs with charred, sticky skin are a natural match. Later in the autumn, duck breast with a cherry reduction is where this wine really shows off.

It is drinking beautifully now, fruit fresh and tannins already settled, so there is no reason to wait. But it has the structure to spend another three to five years in the cellar, gaining savoury, earthy complexity as the primary cherry fruit calms down. Worth putting a bottle or two aside if you have somewhere cool to keep them, and worth thinking about alongside the First Lady Cabernet Sauvignon if you like the idea of tasting the two side by side. There is a case to be made for buying six rather than one, and this is the sort of wine that makes it.

If that sounds like your kind of Thursday, the First Lady Pinotage is a bottle for cooks rather than collectors: lamb chops one night, bolognese the next, a wedge of Cheddar in between. Chill it briefly, pour it generously, and let the rosemary butter do the rest.