Kershaw Wines G.P.S. Series Klein River Syrah 2019
£41.25
The wine
Perfumed aromas of lavender, spice, black plum and prune lead to a captivating palate. A diligent array of flavours surrounds the dark fruit, from garrigue and chocolate to menthol notes, underpinned by fine chalky tannins. Complex, with fabulous length and a lightness of touch.
Klein River sits close to the coast near Stanford, cooled by sea air, and Syrah grown there develops the peppery, floral register of the northern Rhône rather than the sweet fruit of warmer Cape regions. That pepper comes from rotundone, an aromatic compound that forms in cool conditions and is largely lost in heat.
The producer
Kershaw Wines
View all Kershaw Wines winesRichard Kershaw was born in Sheffield and trained as a chef before wine took over. He travelled widely, settled in South Africa in 1999, and by 2009 was Group Winemaker at Mulderbosch and Kanu. He passed the Master of Wine examination in 2011 and founded Kershaw Wines the following year, making him one of very few MWs anywhere who make wine of their own.
The project is unusually methodical. Kershaw works clone by clone and site by site, in tiny quantities, across the cool corners of the Cape. The Clonal Selection wines come from Elgin, an upland apple-growing valley whose altitude and Atlantic influence make it one of the coolest viticultural areas in the country. The G.P.S. Series maps individual sites further afield, and the Deconstructed wines go further still, isolating a single clone on a single soil type.
That last point matters when choosing a bottle: a Deconstructed wine names both the clone and the geology, so SH22 on Bokkeveld shale is a specific thing, not a house style. Production is small and demand consistently exceeds it.
