Who to give the Kershaw Elgin Chardonnay to

There's a small, honest moment when you hand someone a bottle and they turn it to read the label. You can see them decide, in about a second, whether this is a gift or a gesture. Most wine given as a present gets a warm thank you and a quiet spot in the rack.

The Kershaw Clonal Selection Chardonnay is one of the few that changes the temperature of the room instead. Nobody in the UK stumbles across it in a supermarket aisle, and that is exactly the point: it looks and tastes like something chosen rather than grabbed.

So who is it actually for? Three people, mainly, and one of them might be sitting across from you at supper this month.

The South African who has been away a long time

If you know someone who left the Cape years ago and still says "home" meaning somewhere seven thousand miles away, this is the bottle. Not because it is South African in a flag-waving way, but because it is specific. Elgin is South Africa's coolest serious wine district: high, ocean-cooled, with big swings between day and night temperatures that let the fruit hang slowly and hold its acidity.

That cool, taut, mineral character is a place, not a style. For someone who grew up with Cape wine on the table, tasting it is closer to recognising a voice than trying something new.

And there is a quieter thing going on. Handing over a bottle of South African Chardonnay says you understood the difference between missing wine and missing a country. That tends to land harder than anything you could say out loud.

The friend who likes knowing how things were made

You know the one. Reads the back of the coffee bag, asks the fishmonger where the crab came from, wants the story before the first sip. This wine gives them more to chew on than most.

Kershaw farms eight small Chardonnay parcels with a clonal-selection approach, matching particular clones to particular soils, then vinifies every clone and soil parcel separately. The grapes come in hand-picked in the cool of early morning. They are whole-bunch pressed gently at low pressure for a deliberately low juice recovery, and the unclarified juice runs by gravity straight into French oak barrels from a handful of artisanal Burgundian coopers.

From there it ferments spontaneously on its native yeasts, with malolactic discouraged so the bright acidity stays intact. Four months on lees in barrel, a light sulphuring, then seven more months in oak before it is racked and blended, and only then bottled.

Add that up and it is close to a year of small decisions before the wine ever meets a cork. Your friend gets to taste the results of every one of them, and you get to be the person who brought something worth talking about.

The person who deserves a bottle with some years on it

Giving a wine that already has age is a different sort of generosity. It says you thought about the timing, not just the shelf. The 2012 has had a long, quiet while to settle, which makes it a present someone can open the same evening without feeling they have jumped the gun.

If they would rather wait, it will reward them. This is a Chardonnay that gains complexity over five to seven years in a cool cellar, the citrus mellowing towards honeyed, nutty territory while the mineral spine holds firm underneath.

For a recipient who does not yet know Elgin, the outside opinion helps. Tim Atkin MW scored it 94 in his South Africa Special Report, and it has taken Gold at the International Wine Challenge and Gold at the Berlin Wine Trophy. Not the reason to give it, but a useful nudge for anyone who needs permission to treat a white wine as the serious thing on the table.

What to tell them to open it with

Give the bottle and give the plan; it doubles the gift. Serve it at 11 degrees, which usually means taking it out of the fridge half an hour before you pour, so the texture has room to show itself rather than sitting there cold and mute.

While the late-August evenings are still light, point them towards Cornish crab on sourdough toast, or seared scallops with brown butter, or a whole roasted seabass with lemon and fennel. When the weather turns, roast chicken with tarragon butter is the one to write down. A wedge of aged Comté or mature Gruyère works just as well if the occasion is two people and no cooking.

A 750ml bottle stretches comfortably around a table of four, and if you are giving it to a household that leans red, the Kershaw Syrah comes from the same painstaking approach in the same cool corner of the Cape.

Perfect for the friend who has just moved house, the parent who claims to want nothing, or the South African who still calls the Cape home. The Kershaw Clonal Selection Chardonnay is the sort of bottle that gets opened with a roast chicken and remembered afterwards, which is about as much as any present can hope for.