Bruce Jack Wines Off the Charts Skin Contact Chenin Blanc 2026
£12.25
The wine
Mouthwatering notes of lush tropical fruits gracefully intermingle with floral hints and vibrant citrus undertones, through to a crisp, refreshing finish. Skin contact gives the texture without tipping it into anything heavy.
Off the Charts is the adventurous range, and this is Swartland old-vine Chenin fermented on its skins. Old bush vines crop very little, so the fruit is concentrated to begin with, and skin contact adds phenolic texture and a savoury grip that a conventionally made white would not have. An orange wine, and a serious one.
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.
