#WineSquad
Welcome to WineSquad!
The concept is super simple, once a month I’ll get together a bunch of awesome people in Joburg around a wine centered event and I’ll write about it here. Updating you on all the good good we find and drinking copious amounts of wine so that you don’t have to.
Whether it’s going to a wine show or pairing champagne and chicken wings WineSquad will be about sharing the goodness of wine with good people.
Our first WineSquad for the year was a blind tasting of supermarket white wines for less than R50. Everyone brought a bottle, they were labeled in the back and served in an unmarked decanter. The wines were scored out of 5.
Two non-supermarket wines were mixed in, one a reference point and the other as a treat from Canada.
Somewhat surprisingly the top two performing wines were our non-supermarket wines the Backsberg John Martin Reserve 2016 Sauvignon Blanc, our reference wine with an average score of 3.01. This was closely followed by our WineSquad treat wine, a Canadian Ice Wine from the NC Teaching Winery in Ontario with a score of 2.8.
The other wines weren’t all that far behind and the Spier Chardonnay was the top supermarket wine with 2.7, followed by the 2016 Spier Peachy Chenin Blanc at 2.6 narrowly beating out the Graca White Wine at 2.5.
The best-represented winery at the event was Spier with 3 bottles up for tasting. In fact, two people actually brought the same wine so we only opened 2 of the Spier bottles.
The blind tasting removed a lot of the prejudices we would have otherwise had. And I was really surprised by the complexity of nose on the Graca because my standards were very low. The abundance of Spier showed the power of branding and just how well the vineyard has cornered the “wine that’s affordable but that you’re not embarrassed to bring to dinner” market. It was also interesting to see that doubling the price of the wine didn’t really change the enjoyment factor all that much.
Here are rankings and detail about the wine:
#1 Backsberg John Martin Reserve Sauvignon Blanc
Vintage: 2016
Price: R96.00
Appearance: Straw, delicate pine, an opaque yellow, cloudy runoff
Nose: Toasty, lightly wooded, cheese in your pocket that you find two days later, fruity and floral, unimpressive, subtle pithiness, wet cotton, gunpowder, rocky
Taste: A balanced flavour with minerality and high acidity, that holds floral notes and a touch of white and green fruits.
Finish: Creamy, crisp, and dry
Sounds Like : Florence+ the machine at Diwali listening to Stimela
Total Score: 3.01
WS COMMENT : It’s good and fancy, and you can take it to dinner with your boss but if the people drinking aren’t wine people it won’t be all that impressive.
#2 NC Teaching Winery Ice Wine
Vintage: 2012
Price: unknown
Appearance: Rooibos red, tea, rosey substance, burnt orange
Nose: sweet oak, rubbing alcohol, toffee apple, chutney, jamy, cognac, apricot
Taste: Sweet syrupy perfumed alcohol, sickly sweet, maple syrup, cough syrupy
Finish: syrupy, slow fireworks , happy feeling, toffee, overwhelming
Sounds Like: A party , Spice Girls- If you wanna be my lover
Total Score: 2.8
WS COMMENT : Some people really liked it and some people hated it. If you like sweet dessert wines/ ports this will be delicious. If you don’t it won’t convince you. (Two people left blank score sheets and that may have biased the wine’s final ranking towards the people who were all about it).
#3 Spier Chardonnay
Vintage: 2016
Price: R54.00
Appearance: Golden, white as heaven, golden sunset, golden straw
Nose: Asparagus, green pepper, slightly burnt leafy greens, bold and herbaceous,
Taste: Crisp, fruity, spiced wood, sour, soft syrup
Finish: Sparkle, smooth, full-bodied
Sounds Like: Waves crashing, Girl put your records on- Corrine Bailey Rae, old people listening to music late in the afternoon
Total Score:2.7
WS COMMENT : It’s really pleasant it’s easy, a very good starter Chardonnay for people who don’t like that butterscotch beehive vibe, take it with you on a picnic.
#3 Spier Peachy Chenin Blanc
Vintage: 2016
Price: R42.95
Appearance: Gold with a hint of green, weak apple juice, light Canola oil, delicate straw
Nose: Unripe mango, green pepper, gooseberries, grass, petrol, perfume, sharp, woody, acidic, fruity and floral
Taste: Tropical fruit, silky, a bit harsh, fruity, the first year of working, light caramel, bitter
Finish: spicy vinegar, smooth, citrus, alcohol, dry, fresh, bitter
Sounds Like: A blonde in heels, a bar at 2am, chilled listening to some blues, Annie are you ok, pop music, a pop song I don’t like but dance to anyway
Total Score: 2.6
WS COMMENT: The idea that it tastes like the first year of working is pretty accurate. It’s a wine you buy when you’ve graduated from Four Cousins and want nice things but you’re not quite sure what those nice things are yet.
#5 Graca White NV
Vintage: 2015
Price: R39.50
Appearance: Potholder straw, soft yellow, pale gold, pale blonde
Nose: Fruity, sweet tropical, citrus, gooseberries, fresh, grassy , cucumber, slate, lemongrass
Taste: Sour, prickles the tongue with high acidity, guava, monkey fruit, smooth, prickly pear, clerical
Finish: Sour, soft , almost crisp, slightly fruity , tart
Sounds Like: Kirstenbosch Sunset concert, Oliver Mutukuzi ( a bit rough but really good), a lazy war
Total Score: 2.5
WS COMMENT: Some people really really like it. Some really really hate it. If people don’t know it’s Graca the same people will still love it and the rest will still hate it.
*******The END******
***If you scroll a little further down the page you’ll see that I stopped writing about wine a few years ago. The reason I stopped was because the industry just didn’t seem like a nice place. A lot of the people I met weren’t any fun and focused on promoting wine as an exclusionary enjoyment practice. Which is definitely not the reason I drink. So, I had to spend a while figuring out how to share my love of wine with people in a way that makes sense to me. And that’s the WineSquad origin story.
















