Lismore Estate Vineyards The Age of Grace Viognier 2023
£25.25
The wine
This expressive, barrel-fermented Viognier seduces with the beautiful perfume of honeysuckle and orange blossom, and a textured palate of apricot, kiwi and pineapple. A lifted, poised and elegant Viognier.
Viognier is a difficult grape: picked early it tastes of nothing, picked late the alcohol runs away and the apricot perfume turns oily. The long, cool ripening season at Greyton is precisely what it needs, allowing the aromatics to develop while acidity holds. The Age of Grace is named for O'Keefe's own story on the mountain.
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.
