I snap up every Pinotage I can get at Vintages since Pinotage is my favourite red wine of all, and in general I'm happy that South African wines continue to get good representation at our fine-wine government liquor monopoly. That said, fewer and fewer of the Pinotages being touted today as desirable, or as "WOW!" wines fit into my definition of a desirable Pinotage (such "WOW" shelf talkers are usually a dead giveaway that the wine is of the high-octane, sweet-motor-oil style).
14.5% alc./vol. Beautiful, saturated dark garnet colour with a deep crimson hue when held up to daylight. A vague and muted nose with subdued Pinotage character and barely a hint of the telltale South African leather-'n-paintbox that used to put such a smile on my face in the late '90s. Immense density; sweet and hot on the entry with some genuinely chewy tannins as a saving grace. Again, very sweet - I don't know what the residual sugar here is, but this is getting into after-dinner sipping territory for me. Nice, albeit too aromatically light; just a slight leathery replay on the mid-palate with some oak spice coming into play. Again - lots of sweetness and alcoholic heat: a shame! If this wine had only 12% alc./vol., the aromatic restraint would have made for a decent light table wine; instead, the sugar and heat are quite prominent. Alcoholic heat shows again on the finish which, flavour-wise, is rather short. I think that you could easily lay this away for a few years, since it is very dense and big.
This is just too ripe and internationalized for my taste; too stripped of the old-style cojones that made earlier Pinotage such a standout in the insipid sameness of the New World's wine offerings. I confess to liking a totally different style of Pinotage; one that's been thoroughly villified in the press and is, at the very least, being imported to Ontario with less and less frequency - and possibly being made with less frequency in South Africa. It's an example of how constant repetition of certain views can influence what ends up being made. But what about those of us who actually enjoyed the cherished old style of Pinotage?