LIQUID INVESTMENTS
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Drought reduces quantity but improves quality
"Smaller berries mean more intense fruit notes, greater concentration and less dilution of flavour"
Spring is close enough for me to be extolling the virtues of white wines, especially the more recent sauvignon blanc releases — a few already from the sumptuous 2017 vintage. Notwithstanding the shortage of water in the Western Cape, the 2017 harvest seems to have turned out remarkably well. The crop in the more premium areas is obviously smaller than average, but this is no bad thing from a quality point of view. Smaller berries mean more intense fruit notes, greater concentration and less dilution of flavour. For wine makers who thought that the quality of the 2015s was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, 2017 has arrived to undermine their confidence in the laws of probability. With two great vintages in a three-year period, it’s natural that the reputation of the third year in the trio — 2016 — would suffer. This is a little unfair: diffident though some of the producers were at the time of the harvest, many are happily surprised by how the wines have turned out. This isn’t only th...
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