Pour us some Pinotage…. Say what?

Please excuse the poor lighting - my camera lost a flash piece. This is a poorly-lit Paul, owner and winemaker of Loma Prieta Winery, drawing a sample of Pinotage for the three of us.

That’s Paul Kemp, owner and winemaker of Loma Prieta Winery, pouring a taste of in-barrel Pinotage. Yep, that’s right, Pinotage, a varietal I hadn’t heard of until Paul mentioned it 10 minutes earlier. He’d been waxing enthusiastic about it for that long, when he had the brilliant of idea of letting the wine speak for itself. We’re front and center for that lecture.

 First, here’s a brief background on Pinotage, which you can find, as I did, on your favorite search engine. Here are the high points. It’s a South African grape, a cross between Pinot and Cinsault. The wine of the resultant grape was at first exalted, then maligned, then rediscovered and now resurgent for twenty years. Turns out, advances in chemistry allow winemakers to process the grapes differently and eliminate distasteful flavors that had plagued the wine in the past. Certainly a gold medal example of “better living through chemistry”.

Dianne and I were the lucky recipients of Paul’s pour. It’s always fun to hang out in the cellar with a winemaker and taste the fruits of his or her labor as they explain what’s special about it. We have found winemakers to be a stalwart, passionate lot, practitioners of agricultural alchemy that appears to be as much art as chemistry. The conversations are never dull.

Amy, Loma Prieta's other half and Paul's wife, gamely snuggles up to the original oil painting commissioned to adorn their label.

 The second bit of good luck is that’s it’s cool to experience a rare varietal wine for the first time.  If I remember Paul correctly, there’s a tiny amount of domestic Pinotage acreage, double digits for sure. So if discerning wine drinkers like the flavor and the aura of exclusivity, Loma Prieta will be in the cat bird’s seat. Actually, the winery already is from it’s vista 2600 feet above sea level.

 So how’s it taste?

I don’t pretend to be someone who can talk expertly about the flavor of wine, which is an art unto itself. So here’s what Peter F. May had to say about the characteristics of Pinotage on the Professional Friends of Wine website:

“Pinotage may be made in several different styles: young, light, and fruity, like Beaujolais, deep and rich like a Cotes du Rhone or Zinfandel, or elegant and restrained like Bordeaux are the most common styles. There are also popular ‘blush’ versions and several fortified into Port-style sweet dessert wines. Pinotage can also be a component in sparkling wine and at least one producer makes Methode Champenoise sparkling red Pinotage.”

So what should you expect in a red Pinotage? Good depth of flavor, a unique individual fruity refreshing wine. Some tasters remark on a banana-like taste. I have noted bramble fruits and a velvet texture. It is a dinner wine, with good levels of alcohol giving depth and structure-keeping ability. But – like Zinfandel – there is no old-world style for winemakers to model on, so opening a bottle from a new winery is very much an adventure.”

From the first sip till the last, it reminded me of a deep, rich, smooth, high-alcohol Zin. I have no experience predicting how a wine will progress from barrel to bottle, but I believe it to be the case that most wines get more complex and interesting as they age in oak. It’s going to be a real treat to taste this wine upon release and then attempt to step back in time to recall and compare it to our impression of it that first time. For both Dianne and I that opportunity will be a life-time first!

Tagged as: amy kemp, Dianne Anderson, loma prieta winery, paul kemp, pinotage, santa cruz mountains, Scott Anderson