Lismore Estate Vineyards Chenin Blanc 2022
£28.25
The wine
An understated and classy Chenin Blanc showing beautiful balance. Delicate aromas of orange blossom and jasmine prelude a taut and linear palate through to a racy finish.
Chenin Blanc is South Africa's most planted variety and its greatest asset, brought from the Loire in the seventeenth century and long known locally as Steen. Old bush-vine parcels give a depth the Loire itself struggles to match. Walker Bay is among the coolest corners of the Cape, and the maritime influence keeps the acidity taut.
The producer
Lismore Estate Vineyards
View all Lismore Estate Vineyards winesSamantha O'Keefe left California in 2003, bought land in the foothills near Greyton in the Overberg, and planted vines where nobody had planted them before. Lismore Estate Vineyards grew up alongside her two young sons, and much of the early work she did herself.
The site is the point. The vineyards sit at around 300 metres in a cool corner of the Cape South Coast, chilled by winter snow on the mountains above and ventilated through summer, which gives a much longer, slower ripening season than the classic Cape regions further north. The wines that result are cool-climate in character, built on acidity and detail rather than power, and made almost entirely by hand.
In December 2019 a wildfire swept through the property and destroyed the cellar, the equipment and her home. She rebuilt from nothing, borrowed space, and kept making wine. The bottlings that have followed are widely held to be the best of her career, which says a good deal about both the site and the winemaker.
