Wild Garden Chenin Blanc
£9.79
£13.05 per litre · incl. 20% VAT
Only 4 bottles left
Bright, easy-drinking Chenin Blanc from the sun-baked Swartland, cooled by Atlantic breezes rolling in off the West Coast. Green apple and tangy citrus lead into rounded pineapple and mango, all held together by crisp, mouth-watering acidity. Unwooded, refreshing and endlessly quaffable, this is your midweek white sorted, delivered straight to your UK door.
Not for sale to persons under 18. Adult signature required on delivery.
UK wide delivery
Expert curated
Our Verdict
We tasted through a lot of entry-level Cape Chenins before settling on this one for our own-label Wild Garden range, and it kept winning us over on sheer drinkability. There's no cleverness here, just honest, sunny fruit balanced by proper Swartland acidity, and at under a tenner it's genuinely hard to beat. This is the bottle we reach for when friends drop round unannounced or when a weeknight supper needs a lift. If you want a reliable everyday white with a bit of Cape character, buy it by the case: it never hangs around the fridge for long.
Tasting Notes
Pour it cold and the first thing you notice is a lift of tangy green apple, bright and just a little tart. That opens onto something riper on the palate: pineapple, a touch of ripe mango, orchard fruit with real juiciness. Crisp acidity keeps everything focused, cutting through the tropical fruit rather than letting it sit heavily. The finish is clean and fruity, dry but not austere, leaving you wanting the next sip.
About This Wine
If you've been looking for a house white that punches well above its price tag, stop scrolling. Wild Garden Chenin Blanc is the sort of bottle you open on a Tuesday without ceremony and finish faster than you meant to. Fresh, aromatic, and unapologetically fruity, it does exactly what a good Cape Chenin should: keeps things bright, keeps things interesting, and never gets in the way of dinner. Expect a nose of tangy green apple giving way to riper pineapple and mango on the palate, with a zesty seam of citrus running through the middle. Crisp acidity keeps it lively right to the finish. It's fermented cool in stainless steel with the malolactic deliberately blocked, which is why it tastes so vivid and clean, none of the buttery softness that would dull those aromatics. The grapes come from selected sites in the Swartland and around the Piketberg, one of South Africa's most exciting corners. Hot, dry, and wind-swept, tempered by cool Atlantic air pushing inland from twenty miles west, and rooted in ancient soils of shale, schist, granite and iron-stone. That's what gives the wine its layered fruit and gentle mineral lift. Brilliant with grilled prawns, a Thai green curry, or a roast chicken and green salad on a warm evening. Just as happy on its own in the garden. Serve it properly chilled, pour generously, and it's the kind of everyday white that quietly earns a permanent spot in the fridge. We deliver across the UK, so restocking is easy.
Food Pairing
This is a properly versatile weeknight white. The crisp acidity handles chilli heat well, so it's brilliant with a Thai green curry or a prawn pad thai. It also loves lighter things: grilled prawns with lemon, a summer salad topped with goat's cheese, or a simple roast chicken on a Sunday. Serve it with fish and chips and you won't be disappointed either.
- —Thai green curry or prawn pad thai
- —Grilled prawns with lemon and garlic
- —Roast chicken with herby stuffing
- —Goat's cheese and beetroot salad
- —Battered cod and chips
How to Serve
Decanting
No decanting needed. This is a fresh, aromatic style that wants to hit the glass straight from a cold bottle. Opening it early only lets the bright aromatics fade.
Ageing & Cellaring
Drink it young. This is an unwooded, crisp Chenin made to showcase fresh fruit and vibrant acidity, and both are at their best within a couple of years of the vintage. There's no benefit to cellaring it. Buy it, chill it, enjoy it.
The Land
The vineyards sit around 140 metres up, high enough to catch the ocean breeze, planted across a patchwork of ancient soils: shale, schist, granite and iron-stone. Each brings something slightly different in clay content, minerality and organic matter, and blending fruit across them layers the wine with more fruit depth and a subtle savoury lift than any single site would give on its own.
The Winemaking
Fermentation happens cool and clean in temperature-controlled stainless steel, with selected yeasts guiding the juice through to full dryness. The whole point is to protect what makes Chenin Blanc sing: those bright green-apple aromatics and lifted tropical fruit. Malolactic conversion is deliberately blocked, which keeps the natural acidity crisp and zesty rather than softening it into something rounder. No oak, no fuss, just fresh fruit preserved in the glass.
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
Wild Garden
Wild Garden is a small, own-label range put together specifically for us: two wines, one white, one red, both showcasing the classic South African grape varieties in an honest, everyday style. The name is a nod to the wild, wind-swept stretch of fynbos and vineyard that runs up the Cape's west coast, where the fruit is grown. There's a Pinotage in the range too, but this Chenin Blanc is the one that gets poured most often. Carefully selected, blended and bottled with a clear brief: keep it fresh, keep it fruity, keep it drinkable. It's the kind of bottle you open on a Tuesday without a second thought, and reach for again on Wednesday.