Nederburg 5600 Cabernet Sauvignon
£13.49
£17.99 per litre · incl. 20% VAT
In Stock — 10 bottles available
Nederburg's 5600 Cabernet is exactly the kind of everyday bottle worth keeping on the rack, generous, fruit-forward, and built for proper food. Blackcurrant and ripe plum lead the way, with a whisper of spice and tannins soft enough to drink tonight. From one of the Cape's most decorated names, delivered across the UK.
Not for sale to persons under 18. Adult signature required on delivery.
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Our Verdict
We listed the 5600 because Nederburg, at this price, is genuinely hard to beat. There's a polish here you don't usually find under £15, the tannins are properly managed, the fruit is ripe without being jammy, and the finish has actual length. It's the bottle we reach for when someone asks for a crowd-pleasing red that won't embarrass itself next to a serious steak. Perfect for the weeknight wine drinker who wants quality without ceremony, or as a safe-bet gift for anyone who likes their Cabernet bold, generous, and unmistakably South African.
Tasting Notes
Deep ruby in the glass, with blackcurrant and ripe plum leading the nose, edged with a whisper of warm spice. The palate follows through with layers of dark fruit, cassis, mulberry, a touch of black cherry, wrapped in soft, approachable tannins. Medium to full-bodied without being heavy, it carries a gentle savoury thread underneath the fruit, finishing smooth and lingering. This is Cabernet in a generous, welcoming mood, ripe, rounded, and ready to drink.
Blackcurrant Core
Classic Cabernet cassis sits at the heart of the wine, ripe, juicy, and unmistakable, giving the palate its dark, fruit-driven backbone.
Ripe Plum Generosity
A roundness of sun-warmed plum softens the structure, lending the wine an easy-going sweetness of fruit without tipping into jamminess.
Subtle Spice Lift
A gentle dusting of warm spice runs through the nose and finish, adding interest and keeping the ripe fruit from feeling one-dimensional.
About This Wine
If you want a South African Cabernet that does the heavy lifting without asking for much in return, this is the bottle. Nederburg has been making wine since 1791, they've had a few centuries to work out what people actually want to drink on a Tuesday night, and the 5600 is the proof.
In the glass it's deep ruby, leaning toward purple at the rim. The nose is classic Cape Cabernet: blackcurrant front and centre, ripe plum behind it, with a curl of pencil shaving and warm baking spice. The palate follows through generously, dark berry fruit, a savoury edge that keeps things interesting, and tannins that have been smoothed out rather than left to scrape. Medium to full-bodied, with enough freshness to stop it feeling heavy.
The grapes come from some of the Cape's best Cabernet country, Stellenbosch, Wellington, the Coastal region and Groenekloof, where granite and shale soils give the fruit natural acidity and real depth of colour. It's classically styled, food-friendly winemaking with no rough edges.
Pour it with a Sunday roast, a charred ribeye, or anything off the barbecue when summer finally turns up. Pinotage-style braai food, boerewors, lamb chops, sticky ribs, is exactly where this wine wants to be. A reliable house red for under £15, delivered to your door anywhere in the UK.
Food Pairing
Built for the grill. The ripe fruit and soft tannins make short work of charred, smoky meats, think a properly seared sirloin or boerewors hot off the coals. It's also happy alongside slow-cooked stews, a midweek shepherd's pie, or a sharing platter of biltong and mature Cheddar. Nothing fussy, nothing precious, this is a wine that wants real food.
- —Grilled sirloin steak with peppercorn sauce
- —Boerewors or spiced sausages from the barbecue
- —Slow-cooked beef and ale stew
- —Shepherd's pie with mature Cheddar crust
- —Biltong and aged Cheddar sharing board
How to Serve
Temperature
Cool room temperature. If it's been sitting somewhere warm, twenty minutes in the fridge before serving sharpens it up nicely.
Decanting
No need to decant, but a thirty-minute breather in the glass or an open bottle lets the blackcurrant aromatics lift and the spice notes settle into focus. A quick pour-and-wait does the trick.
Glass
A standard Bordeaux glass, tall bowl, tapered rim, channels the dark fruit and keeps the spice in play.
Cellaring
Best enjoyed within a year or two of purchase. Store upright or on its side somewhere cool and dark, away from kitchen heat and direct light.
Ageing & Cellaring
This is built for drinking now rather than cellaring. The soft tannins and ripe fruit are at their best in the short term, pull the cork within a year or two of buying and enjoy it for what it is: an approachable, everyday Cabernet that doesn't ask you to wait.
The Land
Granite and shale soils underpin these vineyards, and they shape the wine in subtle but important ways. These older, mineral-rich soils encourage natural acidity in the grapes, which translates into freshness on the palate, better tannin definition and the deep, glossy colour you see in the glass.
The Winemaking
Fruit is drawn from open-canopied vineyards where sunlight reaches deep into the bunches, building colour, ripeness and firm tannin structure in the grapes before they ever reach the cellar. That foundation of well-balanced acidity and concentrated fruit shapes the wine you taste: medium to full-bodied, with the soft-tannin polish and lingering fruit-driven finish that make Cabernet such a pleasure to drink. The aim throughout is integrity, letting the grape speak rather than burying it under technique.
About the Producer
Nederburg
Nederburg sits in the Paarl valley, at the foot of the Drakenstein mountains, and it has been making wine there since 1791. That's not a typo. Few producers anywhere in the world, let alone the Cape, can claim over two centuries of continuous winemaking history, and Nederburg wears that history properly: not as a museum piece, but as the foundation for one of South Africa's largest and most consistently decorated wine estates.
The original farmhouse, a gabled Cape Dutch manor completed in 1800, still stands today and is protected as a national monument. It's the kind of building that tells you everything about the Cape's Dutch colonial past, all whitewashed walls and elegant curves, and it remains the beating heart of the estate.
What interests me most about Nederburg, though, isn't the architecture. It's the winemaking lineage. Through the twentieth century, a succession of talented winemakers built the estate's reputation for quality at scale, most notably the German-born Günter Brözel, whose work in the vineyards and cellar helped set new standards for South African wine and brought Nederburg an extraordinary run of show success. Few Cape estates have collected more trophies and awards over the decades.
That combination, serious scale paired with genuine craft, is why I think Nederburg deserves a place in any UK wine lover's exploration of South Africa. The 5600 range, named for the estate's founding altitude marker, offers Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinotage that show real varietal character without asking you to spend a fortune. The Cuvée Brut, meanwhile, is proof that South Africa's sparkling wine scene deserves far more attention than it gets on UK shelves.
We stock Nederburg because it does something genuinely useful: it makes reliably good, honestly priced South African wine accessible to people who are just starting to explore what the Cape has to offer. This isn't a boutique producer chasing scarcity. It's a historic estate that has spent over two hundred years learning how to make wine people actually want to drink, delivered to your door here in the UK.