 |
|
|
|
The Berrio Cabernet Sauvignon
A Restauranteur Remembers Michael Olivier (Double Storey)
Bruce Jack is a busy man, a man without vineyards but with plenty of partners who grow grapes with and for him, a man with an office on the front seat of his car from which he directs his 'beyond-the-edge growers' for whom `daring to go further' is part of everyday life and who grow vines in areas where you need hair on your teeth.
If it's the flat, windblown, scrubby fynbos at Elim, near Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of the African continent; if it's the edge of the Karoo semi-desert, at Prince Albert; if it's shiraz from a traditionally white-grape area like Tulbagh; if it's a vineyard above the snowline in the Swartberg, where ancient clones of shiraz produce ice scraggy bunches with lentil-sized super-concentrated grapes; if it's a vine-yard ¬tucked away in the foothills of the Perdeberg - you'll find Bruce and his partners there.
The Berrio was, we are told, the first ship to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. And it is on the farm of Francis Pratt, in the cool climate of Elim, that the net sauvignon grapes for this wine are grown. There is a sauvignon blanc `sis¬ter' to The Berrio Cabernet Sauvignon, crisp like a fine Granny Smith apple and green like a ripe English gooseberry, a sister with stature and an elegant presence that is felt in the long aftertaste.
But back to The Berrio Cabernet Sauvignon, which is served up with a splash of Cabernet franc. To me it is the equivalent of drinking chocolaty red velvet - well¬-fruited, dark velvet, sprinkled with soft spices taken from a fragrant oak box, touched with minty eucalyptus and roadside wild fennel, flavoured with blackcurrant. It has a full, almost orchestral flourish, of juicy flavour and baby's-cheek-softness, finely balanced like the scales of justice. Well, we like to think the scales of justice are finely balanced. And the flavour just stays and stays and stays.
Bruce also helped me put my first label onto a bottle. Michael Olivier Uerjuice is made in Bruce' s Flagstone Winery from shiraz grapes from Tulbagh. It has a delicate blush pink and is ready to be used to add great flair to food (says he in all modesty!) .
|
