P is for … puny, precarious, patriotic, problematic, proud — and pinotage. And all of those words can be applied to South Africa’s home-grown grape. But there’s another P-word too: persistent.
In 1935, there were just four little seedlings left. That was the puny total of South African viticulturist and chemist Prof Izak Perold’s 1925 experiment in crossing pinot noir and hermitage, or cinsaut. (Get it? “Pinot” from pinot noir — plus the “tage” from hermitage.)
Pinotage is set to have a moment this year, since 2025 marks the centenary of the establishment of this grape variety and wine style. It speaks volumes about its persistence as well as the patriotism and pride that its fans and producers exude.
Back in the mid-1990s, when South Africa was no longer a pariah, instead revelling in its newfound rainbow nation status and the glow of Madiba magic, there was a strong lobby to take pinotage to the wine fraternity “and show them what wonderful wine it made”. Sadly, the global cognoscenti weren’t as enthusiastic.
Much as the Pinotage Association would like to banish this period from the grape’s history, it was almost uniformly dubbed awful. The criticism was stinging and prompted wounded producers to reflect on how to improve.
With its future looking precarious, it was back to the drawing board. Research was conducted into fermentation temperatures, yeasts, growing conditions and the like. Wine writer Tim James, reporting on a tasting in 2023, quoted winemaker Bernhard Bredell as saying that critics should not blame the variety, but rather the viticulture, winemaking or where the grape was planted.
There is little doubt today that pinotage has shed that negative tag and is winning new fans.
Durbanville producer Meerendal was one of the first 14 properties to be accorded estate status in 1973. Its history goes back even further, but it still has a decent chunk of some of the earliest commercial plantings of pinotage. And it’s just released a pinnacle offering — the ne plus ultra for Meerendal — of its pinotage heritage.
It didn’t seem right that this 5.8ha block of pinotage, planted in 1955 and still going strong, wasn’t given the special treatment it deserved
— Wade Roger-Lund
“This is our VIP block,” says Meerendal cellar chief Wade Roger-Lund. “It didn’t seem right that this 5.8ha block of pinotage, planted in 1955 and still going strong, wasn’t given the special treatment it deserved.”
Crowned the Diners Club Young Winemaker of the Year in 2017 for a blanc de blanc Cap Classique he made while still working for Jordan in Stellenbosch, Roger-Lund says his first vintage at Meerendal in 2023 was done by gut feel. “I felt the pressure of wanting to do these old vines justice.”
Being cautious played in his favour, as did the block’s relatively healthy production of about 3t of fruit per hectare and Durbanville’s cool climate. “Meerendal is never going to be confused with Kanonkop or Beyerskloof: it doesn’t have the power or alcohol levels because of our terroir,” he says.
Setting it apart is its elegance, restraint and refinement. It’s structured, but it is not built like a prop forward. It’s muscular, certainly, but is sheathed in a bespoke suit and doesn’t need to shout or grunt its charms.
His third vintage has just been completed, one Roger-Lund describes guardedly as “near perfect”. That block of pinotage has now weathered 70 summers, and as if he didn’t have enough on his stained hands, he built a special cellar-within-a-cellar just for this parcel.
He knows this special vineyard a little better two years on from his first harvest and has refined his processes.
The block is separated into four tracts, all hand-harvested early in the morning before the sun becomes too warm. True to pinotage’s nature, it’s fermented in open vessels with gentle, rather than vigorous, submersions of the cap of grape skins into the liquid to extract colour. Then the wine heads to oak barrels, less than half of which are new, for a 16-month maturational slumber. The idea is not for the oak — split between 300l and 500l formats — to dominate, but for it to support the fruit.
When it came to the packaging of this special wine, Meerendal owner Herman Coertze supported the team’s decision to take its lead from the original, a 1969 bottling of pinotage. In a move that celebrates the Old Vine Project-certified heritage vineyard and speaks of a confidence in the quality, there are just 850 bottles and 235 magnums (1.5l) of this new wine — and it will sell for R1,250 per 750ml bottle, either from the estate or at specialist retailers.
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