Bruce Jack Wines Off the Charts Pinotage 2023
£12.75
The wine
Enticing aromas of black cherry and plum entwine with dark chocolate and spice, through to a harmonious palate bursting with black forest fruit and delicious hints of chocolatey, toasty oak.
Pinotage is South Africa's own creation, bred in 1925 by crossing Pinot Noir with Cinsault. Made carelessly it can be harsh and burnt; made with restraint it gives dark bramble fruit, a smoky note and moderate tannin. This is the more ambitious of the two in the range, from older vineyards and given time in oak.
The producer
Bruce Jack Wines
View all Bruce Jack Wines winesBruce Jack Wines is a small team built around head winemakers Bruce Jack and Marlize Beyers, who have worked together since 2002 and between them have experience across a great many of the world's wine regions.
The wines are sourced from across the Western Cape rather than from a single estate, which is deliberate: Swartland for old bush-vine Chenin and Syrah, the cooler Overberg and Cape coast for aromatics and acidity, Breedekloof for Viognier. Working that way lets them choose the site that suits each grape instead of forcing everything from one patch of ground.
Tumbleweed is the everyday range and Off the Charts the more adventurous one, taking in skin-contact whites and old-vine parcels. Skin contact means white grapes fermented on their skins as though they were red, which draws out colour, texture and grip; it is one of the oldest methods in winemaking and one of the most fashionable, and the Cape's old Chenin and Clairette vineyards are unusually well suited to it.
