Pinotage

  • Aromas and Flavors: banana-like taste, bramble fruits and a velvet texture, coffee and chocolate flavors, arising when toasted barrels are used
  • Good levels of alcohol
  • Easy to grow and high sugar levels are easily achieved
  • The result of a cross between the Pinot Noir and Cinsault
  • Pinotage was created in South Africa in 1925, by Stellenbosch University Professor A.I. Perold (Pinot Noir was his favorite variety and Cinsaut was the dominant red variety in South Africa at the time)
  • Largely ignored until 1961, when a 1959 vintage Pinotage won the Grand Championship at the Cape Young Wine Show
  • As a result,many farmers overproduced and the wines didn’t show early potential and was used to bulk out popular-priced blends
  • Early Pinotage had a tendency to show a sweet paint or nail-varnish-like bitterness and suffered descriptions such as “rusty nails”
  • Pinotage acreage sunk to around 2% of total area by 1993, with prices and demand for Pinotage grapes dropping, much was distilled for brandy
  • In 1991, Kanonkop Estate’s winemaker Beyers Truter entered his Pinotages at England’s International Wine and Spirit Competition and so impressed the judges that he was presented with the “Winemaker of the Year” award – becoming the first South African to win this honor
  • Winemakers started taking the wine seriously and research found that fermentation at too low a temperature was the cause of the nail-varnish problem
  • The ending of apartheid removed trading sanctions, thus opening up new markets and vineyards could finally import vine stocks and plant more fashionable world varieties
  • The acreage now forms almost 6% of the South African total for wine grapes
  • 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
  • There are also popular ‘blush’ versions and several fortified into Port-style sweet dessert wines
  • Pinotage can also be a component in sparkling wine (sparkling red Pinotage)
  • The words “bush-vine” on a South African label indicates that the vines are old
  • Labeling wine as a “Cape Blend” usually means Pinotage with Bordeaux varieties (but this is not legally defined)
  • Also found in New Zealand, Israel, Canada, Brazil, Zimbabwe and now starting in Australia
  • In the United States, Virginia and California have plantings