Four Cousins Natural Sweet White
£11.49
£15.32 per litre · incl. 20% VAT
In Stock — 7 bottles available
Sunshine in a glass, a fragrant, easy-going South African sweet white that drinks like a holiday. Honeysuckle and ripe apricot lead into a soft, juicy finish that's gentle enough for an aperitif and bold enough to handle a fiery Thai curry. Friendly, affordable, and ready for whatever the week throws at you.
Not for sale to persons under 18. Adult signature required on delivery.
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Our Verdict
We stock plenty of serious, structured whites, but Four Cousins earns its place because it does something genuinely useful, it makes people who don't normally enjoy wine fall in love with it. We've watched this bottle disarm sceptics at countless tastings: the perfumed honeysuckle nose pulls them in, and the soft, juicy finish wins them over. It's also one of the very few South African wines we'd confidently pair with a proper hot curry. Buy it for a summer barbecue, slip it into a hamper for a homesick Capetonian, or just keep one chilled for Friday nights. Honest, generous, and impossible to dislike.
Tasting Notes
Pour it and you get a flash of bright sunshine in the glass, with honeysuckle and orange blossom lifting straight out. The palate is unashamedly sweet but never cloying, ripe apricot, nougat, and a tropical fruit-salad lushness of mango and pineapple carry through to a soft, gentle finish. There's just enough freshness underneath to keep it dancing rather than dragging, which is exactly what a good natural sweet white should do.
Honeysuckle Perfume
A lifted, garden-in-summer nose of honeysuckle and orange blossom that signals what's coming on the palate.
Ripe Apricot
Sun-warmed apricot leads the palate, soft, juicy, and generous, giving the wine its golden, fruit-driven heart.
Nougat Sweetness
A creamy nougat note adds gentle richness and weight, softening the sweetness into something rounded rather than sharp.
About This Wine
If you've ever wondered why South Africa's sweet whites have such a loyal following, start here. Four Cousins Natural Sweet White is the bottle that converted thousands of casual drinkers into fans, a low-alcohol, fruit-forward white that wears its charm on its sleeve and never takes itself too seriously.
Pour a chilled glass and you'll find honeysuckle and ripe apricot on the nose, with nougat and tropical fruit salad following through on the palate. The finish is soft, gentle, and lingers just long enough to make you reach for another sip. There's no oak, no austere acidity, no need to decode anything, just sun-soaked Western Cape fruit, beautifully balanced.
The wine comes from the Retief family at Van Loveren in the Robertson Valley, an inland pocket of the Cape where limestone-rich soils and warm days produce some of South Africa's most generous, fruit-driven whites. Four Cousins itself is the brainchild of two sets of Retief brothers, all cousins, who set out to make wine for everyday tables, and built one of the country's most-loved labels in the process.
It's brilliant as an aperitif on a warm evening, but really comes alive alongside spicy food: think Thai green curry, sweet-and-sour pork, or a fragrant Moroccan tagine. Equally good with fresh fruit and creamy desserts. Delivered chilled-ready to your door anywhere in the UK, it's the kind of bottle you'll keep on hand for unexpected guests, balmy weekends, and that South African friend who's been missing home.
Food Pairing
This is a wine that earns its keep at the table when heat or sweetness is involved. Pour it well-chilled alongside a Thai green curry, a fragrant Massaman, or sticky chilli prawns, the sweetness tames the spice beautifully. It's also brilliant with fresh fruit on a summer afternoon, a sharp blue cheese after dinner, or a simple lemon tart.
- —Thai green curry with jasmine rice
- —Sticky chilli prawns or sweet-and-sour pork
- —Fresh fruit salad with mint
- —Lemon tart or apricot frangipane
- —Stilton or Roquefort with honeycomb
How to Serve
Temperature
Serve well-chilled. An hour or two in the fridge before pouring, or twenty minutes in an ice bucket.
Decanting
No decanting needed. This is a wine built for pouring and enjoying, straight from a chilled bottle into the glass, ideally on a warm afternoon or alongside something spicy.
Glass
A standard white wine glass works perfectly, narrow enough to hold the floral aromatics and the chill.
The Land
Limestone in the soil is Robertson's signature. It retains moisture through the hot, dry summers and gives the white grapes grown here a lifted, almost mineral edge, the kind of freshness that stops a sweet wine from feeling cloying and keeps the fruit tasting bright.
The Winemaking
This is a blend of white grapes with a touch of unfermented grape juice held back to keep things sweet and fragrant. Fermentation is stopped while natural sugars remain, which preserves that fresh, just-picked perfume of honeysuckle and apricot rather than letting it ferment out to dry. No oak, no fuss, the focus is squarely on bright fruit, low alcohol and an easy, soft finish. It's a style designed for immediate drinking, not contemplation.
The Western Cape Region
Le Domaine draws its fruit from vineyards scattered across the Western Cape, from coastal sites cooled by Atlantic breezes to warmer inland slopes, all planted between 50 and 300 metres above sea level. This broad sourcing is deliberate. By blending components from different microclimates, the cellar builds a consistent house style that balances the crisp acidity of cooler sites with the ripe generosity of warmer ones. It's the Western Cape's extraordinary diversity captured in a single glass.
About the Producer
Van Loveren
Van Loveren is a name that turns up on a lot of UK wine shelves, and it's worth knowing the story behind it. This is a family business in the truest sense: the Retief family has farmed this corner of the Robertson Valley since 1937, and today it's the third and fourth generations tending the same vines their grandparents planted.
Robertson sits inland from Cape Town, in a valley shaped by ancient limestone deposits and fed by irrigation from the Breede River. It's not a region built on prestige or scarcity. It's built on consistency, on reliable sunshine and mineral-rich soils that produce generous harvests year after year, and Van Loveren is its clearest expression: wines made to be opened without ceremony, not saved for a special occasion.
What sets Van Loveren apart isn't complexity, it's approachability done properly and at real scale. This is one of South Africa's largest family-owned wineries, yet it hasn't lost the personal touch. Blends and decisions are still made around a family table rather than a boardroom one, and that shows in the wines: warm, fruity, unpretentious, exactly what you want when you fancy something easy and dependable.
We stock Van Loveren because it fills a genuinely useful role. For UK drinkers who assume South African wine always means serious, structured reds built for the cellar, Van Loveren is the friendly counterpoint, proof that the Cape also makes wine purely for enjoyment. The Four Cousins range has become something of a phenomenon in this respect, a soft, sociable wine that has introduced more people to South African wine than almost anything else we sell.
Don't come to Van Loveren looking for austere minerality or heavy oak. Come for wines that are generous and easy-drinking, the kind that suit a Friday evening more than a formal dinner. They're a good reminder that South African wine isn't one single style, it's a whole spectrum, and Van Loveren sits happily at the warm, welcoming end of it.