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Jancis Robinson,
WINES OF THE WEEK , 11/03/03
www.jancisrobinson.com

Noon Gun 2002 Flagstone, Western Cape

This inexpensive white from one of South Africa's bright new producers reminded me just how good a blend of different white grape varieties can be.

Flagstone's animating spirit Bruce Jack is rather dismissive of Noon Gun (named after a Cape Town institution), describing it as 'our bread and butter wine that creates the cash flow for us to do the other exciting stuff, like our single vineyard obsession'. I am one thousand per cent behind any wine producer devoted to expressing the characteristics of individual vineyards and it's great that, like every man and his dog, he's trying to make superior Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Pinotage (all of them, incredibly, in the Flagstone portfolio). However, where else in the world can you find a wine made up as follows?

* 30 per cent Riesling
* 30 per cent Chenin Blanc
* 19 per cent Sauvignon Blanc
* 9 per cent Pinot Blanc
* 9 per cent barrel-fermented Chardonnay
* 3 per cent Semillon

Much less one that tastes really interesting and retails for less than £4.50/$6.75. It's effectively dry yet intensely fruity without any obvious oak character, just an attractive depth of flavour. A particularly accessible, New World take on Riesling dominates the nose while the last three varieties add depth. This is just the sort of wine to keep in stock as a house white - or to drink in the sunny outdoors as I have just done, miraculously for London in mid-March, with a lunch of gravadlaks and chicken mayonnaise.

As it happened I initially tasted it at more or less the same time as a range of new offerings from Jean-Louis Denois who in 2001 sold part of his controversial Domaine de l'Aigle near Limoux (which made exceptional fizz and Languedoc Pinot Noir but earned the ire of the authorities for its unauthorised Riesling) to Antonin Rodet of Burgundy. His two most interesting wines are Languedoc-wide blends, both red and white called Grande Cuvée 2001 Vin de Pays d'Oc, Jean-Louis Denois (from cavistes in France and £8.75 from H&H Bancroft soon). The red (40 per cent Merlot, 30 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, 30 per cent Syrah) is more open at the moment than the white (40 per cent Roussanne from Gard, 26 per cent Marsanne from Hérault, 20 per cent Chardonnay from Limoux, 14 per cent Grenache Blanc from Roussillon), being particularly refreshing and interesting. But the green-scented, smoky, honeyed white Grande Cuvée is also intriguing even if rather tightly wound at present. I mention it here merely to point out that at present, (though I'm sure not in a year or two's time when the Denois wine will really come into its own) Noon Gun held its own alongside the more expensive white blend. By coincidence, this Languedoc maverick has long worked in South Africa where imaginative white blends are commonplace. If you're interested in what happened next to Jean-Louis Denois, he's on jl.denois@wanadoo.fr and is still based in Roquetaillade, 11300 France.

Flagstone is a relatively young outfit based right on the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town's tourist area where red wines were matured, the whites being made at Simon Barlow of Rustenberg's farm Nooitgedagt in Stellenbosch up to the 2002 vintage and now at Flagstone's new False Bay winery. Florid and ultra-clever names for their wines are a speciality, as in Writer's Block Pinotage and The Glass Carriage Chenin Blanc. I wondered for a while why a 30,000-case winery was making life so complicated but now I see that Bruce Jack is an Eng Lit major, which makes it all fall into place.

As does this screed which he chose as his written sales pitch in the catalogue of the annual South African generic tasting in London last October. While everyone else had 'The winery dates back to... the present owners are...', this was Mr Jack's offering, verbatim: 'Punchdowns, Gravity Flow, Jazz, Caffeine, Family, Whole Berry, Trust Your Palate, Barrel Ferments, Massaging Yeast, Long-lived reds, Surfing, Fear No Tannin, Ice Cold Beer, Pinot Noir Anthocyanidins, Long Lunches, Waterfront, Nightshift, City Buzz-Country Rythm(sic), Slow Press, Wild Ferments, Table Mountain, Purple Hands, Sunrise, Cool Blends, Single Vineyards, True Ripeness, Barrel Tunnel, Lees Stirring, Poetry.'

Noon Gun 2002 is currently available only at Oddbins in the UK for £4.49 and in South Africa itself at just half this price (145 Rand for six bottles) from the South African wine online specialists www.shop.wine.co.za and www.wineseller.co.za.

For more information and masses more of Bruce Jack's typos, see www.flagstonewines.com.

The following also import wines from Flagstone:

* Flagstone Winery USA Inc
* Porto-Franco AB, Sweden
* Nedervecht Wijnkopers, Netherlands
* Importations Cepages, Canada