Buy now and drink later: Alheit wines are worth the wait

The premiumisation of the Cape wine industry over the past three decades has been driven by a series of innovations, more or less equally distributed between viticulture and vinification.

There is better winery hardware, ranging from presses delivering gentler pressing cycles to sorting tables for removing under- or overripe or blemished grapes before fermentation.

The barrels are generally less heavily toasted, there is less new oak and the wood is kept for longer. This is not only to save money (top-end barrels cost nearly R20,000) but also to minimise the effect of oak aromas and tannins on the wine. Wineries have also been using concrete eggs and terracotta qvevri (an ancient vessel now very much à la mode). Many are buying extended-use large oak vats.

Then there are the hi-tech solutions readily available to winemakers with deepish pockets: selected yeasts that appear to add complexity to the young wines, tannin additives to enhance mouthfeel and fining agents to smooth out and “polish” the wines.

In the vineyards, there has also been considerable progress, such as computerised irrigation systems that keep water stress from the vines without letting them become complacent; trellising systems that optimise the exposure of the canopy to the sun without the loss of air circulation; even the discovery of the value of well-situated old vines.

Not every 21st-century winemaker uses all, or even a majority, of these strategies. Generally, producers working in high-volume production spaces will depend more on the

innovations that make cellar operations easier, while winemakers dealing with single-site wine tend to gravitate towards what will enhance the quality (rather than the volume) of the crop.

This was particularly evident as I looked at the latest vintage (2021) of the Alheit wines. Chris and Suzaan Alheit have been making some of the Cape’s finest whites for the past 10 years. Cartology, predominantly old vine chenin with a splash of sémillon, acquired legend-like status from its maiden vintage and still manages to garner the highest rankings. Alheit would say that it’s no better than the fruit that went into it. That’s obviously true, but his contribution is to make sure that the grapes lose least of the inherent fruit quality between vine and bottle.

Since Cartology is priced at much less than the single-site wines (R395) it’s easy to be dismissive. Don’t be — it’s one of the Cape’s finest and most sophisticated whites and its quality should not be disregarded simply because it’s less unobtainable than Alheit’s single-site wines.

Consider the cellar’s great sémillon, previously called La Colline and now Monument. (A change imposed a little unreasonably by the owner of an almost unknown sub-brand from Paarl/Wellington. If I were making VW Beetles and RollsRoyce elected to use a component that had a VW brand name — and acknowledged it — I would fall over myself to bathe in the reflected glory.

The 2021 is probably the most youthful and restrained of the range, but it has a limy, chalky concentration, the promise of flesh to come rather than the flesh itself. For now it is the weightless intensity that is most arresting. The same haunting quality is to be found in the Fire by Night, certainly the best of the single-site chenins: linear and zesty, intensely youthful but still demanding and commanding.

None of these, with the possible exception of Cartology, should be drunk this year. All need another three to five years in bottle and will live on that plateau of maturity longer than Eskom or the ANC will be around. You may ask why you should even have to buy them now. For that there is a simple answer: they are sold on allocation at prices ranging from R350 to R700 and will be out of stock in weeks. After that, you’ll only have fear of missing out to keep you company as you regret your vacillation.