Leeuwenkuil Family Vineyards Reserve White 2025
£15.75
The wine
Delicate aromas of white blossom, ginger flower and yellow stone fruit are layered with juicy melon. Beautifully textured with a mineral core, culminating in a grippy finish with hints of beeswax.
The Reserve White blends Chenin Blanc with Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc and gives it barrel work. Chenin's naturally high acidity is what allows it to take oak without losing shape, and the Viognier adds stone-fruit aromatics the Swartland's warmth develops readily.
The producer
Leeuwenkuil Family Vineyards
View all Leeuwenkuil Family Vineyards winesLeeuwenkuil Family Vineyards is the largest single vineyard holding in the Swartland, farmed by the Dreyer family who have worked this land for generations. The name means lion's den.
The Swartland is the most interesting wine region in South Africa and one of the least glamorous: a hot, dry expanse of wheat country north of Cape Town, historically a source of bulk wine, whose old dry-farmed bush vines turned out to be its fortune. Those vines are unirrigated and untrellised, crop very little, and root deep into granite and shale in search of water. A generation of winemakers rediscovered them in the 2000s and the region has been transformed.
The estate works Chenin Blanc, Shiraz, Cinsault and Mourvedre, which is the modern Swartland palette: Rhone varieties and old Chenin rather than Bordeaux. Scale has not come at the cost of care, and the wines are consistently among the better value the Cape produces.
