TalkClassic Business

JOHN FRASER:  It’s a rotten job but someone’s got to do it and we have several volunteers sitting in the studio waiting to help us with our weekly wine tasting. And of course we are crossing to some wine experts down in the Cape. First of all welcome to our wine guru, Michael Olivier. We’re tasting a couple of wines from Backsberg and who better to tell us about them than the winemaker Guillaume Nell - did I get your pronunciation roughly right? Guillaume, Backsberg of course is one of our older wine producers, am I right?

GUILLAUME NELL:  That’s correct, yes. We actually started producing wine in the early 20^th century and in 1970 we made the first wines under the Backsberg label.

JOHN FRASER:  What are you trying to achieve with your wines? Presumably you want to make them world standard.

GUILLAUME NELL:  Obviously we want to make some of the best wines in the world. Also our vision is to produce wines that everybody can enjoy - it doesn’t matter if you’re a wine guru or just a normal person drinking beer and wine - we just want to bring pleasure to everybody.

JOHN FRASER:  Tell us about the Backsberg Estate, for those of us who are stuck up in what has been rather rainy Gauteng this week. If we come down to the Cape, what’s on offer if we drive up to your doorway to say hi?

GUILLAUME NELL:  To give you an idea of where we are - we are situated very close to Paarl, between Paarl and Stellenbosch on the slopes of the Simonsberg and basically we’re producing 1,000 tons of grapes every year, just less than 30 wines across three different tiers. On the farm here we don’t only have wine tasting - we also have a restaurant and there’s a lot to do, it’s very family-friendly.

JOHN FRASER:  I seem to recall that maybe 10 or 15 years ago you won a prize for your brandy - am I right there?

GUILLAUME NELL:  Yes, that’s correct. We actually won the prize for the best brandy in the world and our brandies are still up to a very good standard.

JOHN FRASER:  What’s the philosophy behind diversifying into brandy - is it something that comes naturally if you’re making wine or is it something that you did for fun to start with?

GUILLAUME NELL:  To be honest, Sydney Back had a passion for brandy and he actually started it, so he imported a pot still from Cognac. Basically the method that we use is actually the same as they do in Cognac - on the pot still it actually says “Cognac” - and then we took it from there. Brandy is a specialist product, it’s very difficult to make and it’s very different from wine actually.

JOHN FRASER:  Before we move into the wine tasting I’d better tell you two gentlemen who are on the line from the Cape - in the studio we’ve got Paul Hansen from Stanlib, Tony Twine from Econometrix, international public affairs consultant John Mare, Colin Jordaan from the Civil Aviation Authority and Raymond Parsons from Busa. We couldn’t get rid of any of them when we said we were tasting wine.

Michael, before we go into these two wines - the Chardonnay 2007 and the Babylons Toren Red 2003 - what’s your perception of Backsberg? When you think of Backsberg what comes to mind?

MICHAEL OLIVIER:  Back in the 1980s when I was working at Boschendal, Sydney Back was an absolute mentor of mine - he’s a wonderful man, so I’m totally biased about anything from Backsberg. The one thing that Backsberg does offer and always has offered, and I believe always will offer, is great value for money - you get a good bang for your buck when you buy Backsberg wine.

JOHN FRASER:  Michael, why don’t you talk us through the first of the wines? I assume we’re starting with the white, the 2007 Chardonnay.

MICHAEL OLIVIER:  Yes, this is a totally classical Chardonnay - if you get it up to your nose you can smell the creamy apricots and almonds and you get that lovely nutty oak. One of the things I like about this wine is when you take a mouthful of it you get peaches and melons, of course the oak is there as well, and there’s a wonderful acidity to it which just makes the whole thing alive. I think they’ve been very clever in that they’ve matured only half of this wine in oak and it just makes it fresh and young and of course it’s got a lovely long and really full aftertaste as well - nice wine.

JOHN FRASER:  For my money it’s thoroughly enjoyable. Chardonnay isn’t something I readily order when I’m in a restaurant - there’s something wrong with me, nothing wrong with Chardonnay. I think maybe we had all those over-oaked Chardonnays 10 or 15 years ago that put me off…

MICHAEL OLIVIER:  But this is a great food wine too.

JOHN FRASER:  Let’s go to our own nutty oak - Tony Twine, what do you make of this?

TONY TWINE:  Glass to the nose and one word comes out - rich. It’s a combination of the grape with its own nutty, woody tones and I assume this has been wooded - am I correct? On the mouth there’s that combination that the nose carries through with yellow fruit and then the long legs. It’s wonderful.

JOHN FRASER:  Raymond Parsons - what do you make of this?

RAYMOND PARSONS:  Like in the field of policy, business is not a coward about wine either, so may I say I really find this very rich - I’m enjoying it. Like you I’m not a great Chardonnay person but I find this very balanced and I find it most enjoyable.

JOHN FRASER:  Paul Hansen - what do you make of the Backsberg Estate Cellars Chardonnay 2007?

PAUL HANSEN:  John, I lived for nine year in the San Francisco Bay are very close to the Napa Valley where Chardonnays are famous, and I must admit this Backsberg Chardonnay is nicer than any of the Californian Chardonnays. It’s just got a wonderful aftertaste.

JOHN FRASER:  John Mare - what do you make of this?

JOHN MARE:  I agree. I think it’s a wonderful richness, as was said before, but with a slight acidic finish which would make it good with rich food - crayfish or something like that.

JOHN FRASER:  Colin Jordaan?

COLIN JORDAAN:  I’m a very heavy-wooded Chardonnay fan - the more wood and the heavier it is, the more I like it. This is not in that vein and I think they didn’t try to make it that way, so I think the objective has been achieved. The South African palate, by and large, is not into heavy wood so I think this is going to be a very popular wine and certainly I’m enjoying it very much.

JOHN FRASER:  Excellent. Guillaume - what’s your response to the views of our panel?

GUILLAUME NELL:  I actually think the guys are spot on. The idea was to produce a wine which is not over-wooded. I wanted something crispy, creamy, something that’s got roundness without being flabby and also for me when I taste this wine, on the aftertaste I get some lovely caramel flavours but it’s not overwhelming and the wine just lingers on.

JOHN FRASER:  What’s your view on the perception, the popularity or lack of it, of Chardonnay these days?

GUILLAUME NELL:  I do think the popularity of Chardonnay is still there - I just think its style is changing. People are moving away from very over-wooded Chardonnays and I think people are starting to realise what wine is all about.

JOHN FRASER:  Michael, why don’t you talk us through our next wine which is a red - it’s the Babylons Toren Red 2003.

MICHAEL OLIVIER:  Babylons Toren is a little hill which is almost in the middle of Backsberg Estate on the slopes of the Simonsberg, and that’s where the name comes from. If you look at this wine it’s almost black. It’s got a lovely rich red to it, but it’s very dark which, even before you get your nose into the glass, tells you you’re in for an absolute blockbuster of a wine here. Once you get your nose in you’ve got violets, you’ve got blackcurrants - that lovely cassis smell - and then I find herbal fynbos in there too. When you taste it, it has this massive fruit intensity - lots of blackberries, there’s some black cherries, cassis, then it’s got a little raspberry kind of list which I think just keeps it nice and fresh on the palate. Of course there’s cedar and vanilla from the oak - I think this is a huge wine and really I reckon if you could delay pleasure by a couple of years, the longer you delay the greater the pleasure is going to be. This is a red meat, roast lamb, roast beef kind of wine.

JOHN FRASER:  Certainly for my money this is a gorgeously elegant, rich, umptuous wine that one would like to sit back and admire, but then you wouldn’t be drinking it which is of course the point.

MICHAEL OLIVIER:  It’s also got a nice earthy, plummy component.

JOHN FRASER:  Tony Twine?

TONY TWINE:  Michael’s last words which were almost an afterthought - earthy and plummy are really what came through to me on the nose and it’s obviously the fault of the massive cultivars that go into the wine. And then everything that you suspected from a sniff comes through on the palate. Yes, a nice hefty steak wine.

JOHN FRASER:  Raymond Parsons - what’s your impression of this?

RAYMOND PARSONS:  Let me say immediately - I like this. It’s what I call a “fundamental” wine - it has all the fundamentals in it. I do suspect however that as much of it as I would drink now, I think I’m going to enjoy it even better in a year or two’s time. I think absolutely - it’s like some parts of our economic policy - we got to get some fundamentals in place now so we can enjoy the benefits later.

JOHN FRASER:  Paul Hansen - what do you make of this?

PAUL HANSEN:  There are only two words that come to mind after tasting this lovely wine - smooth and deep.

JOHN FRASER:  Talking of smooth and deep - let’s go on to John Mare - John, what did you make of it?

JOHN MARE:  Absolutely rich I would say - plummy, berry - I can imagine it with meat, with perhaps a lovely lamb shank stuffed with pesto and fried garlic potatoes. It’s really a wonderful wine, particularly for a winter’s evening.

JOHN FRASER:  Colin Jordaan?

COLIN JORDAAN:  We’ve had this horrible weather in Johannesburg for the last few days - this would have been marvellous to have over the last cold evenings that we’ve had. I’m enjoying it immensely - it is not heavy on the palate, I think that’s the important thing, and very drinkable - it certainly goes well with even light red meats and I think that’s great.

JOHN FRASER:  Guillaume, you’ve had a fairly uncritical reception for this wine but it’s nice and it’s also - although it could wait a few more years in the bottle - it’s still quite old, 2003. You don’t find many 2003s on the bottle store shelves, do you?

GUILLAUME NELL:  No you don’t. But I think this wine is a massive wine, within the next five to 10 years I think it will still be really nice. I also agree with the guys that in the next two or three years this wine will still be developing a lot and actually show its full potential. It’s just got such an enormous intensity and concentration. The wine has been in the barrel for 36 months which is a very long time and there aren’t many wines that have been matured for that long period of time.

JOHN FRASER:  Who are you customers Guillaume - are they mainly locals, do you export a lot of wine?

GUILLAUME NELL:  We’ve got a very big local following, especially in the Gauteng area, and then we do between 20% and 25% exporting.

JOHN FRASER:  And any projects on the horizon, any new launches that you’re planning?

GUILLAUME NELL:  We’ve actually been working on a few ideas - there will definitely be a few surprises, but at the end of the day we don’t want to confuse customers, we actually want to give them what they want. But there are definitely two or three things the customer should look out for in the future.

JOHN FRASER:  And a final word to Michael Olivier - Backsberg - where does it stand in the ranking of South African wine producers?

MICHAEL OLIVIER:  High - it’s a very respected winery - Sydney Back’s father started the winery in the early 1900s and Sydney was a huge personality in the wine industry. Their wines have been consistently good over a number of years - 30 or 40 years since the Backsberg label appeared on the wine scene.