An afternoon tasting Cape Chenin Blancs and Rhône-style reds with the charming, bow-tied Ken Forrester
Posted: Feb 1, 2013 2:00pm ET
Ken Forrester
is known for several things: bow ties, Chenin Blanc and a youthful passion for
living hedonistically. Forrester, 55, is as affable as they come, and nothing
gets his hearty laugh going going like a good bottle of wine, a good cigar and
a few good jokes. The former restaurateur still has his hospitality skills from
his early days, but he has added winemaking to his repertoire. His tireless
work in the U.S. has been responsible for him building a 54,000-case
operation, of which half goes to the U.S. market. And he seems to relish being one
of the flag bearers for his country's still-developing wine industry. For more on Forrester, reference my March 2007 blog.
Forrester,
who handles most of the winemaking now at his namesake winery has been joined
by viticulturist Peter Rossouw since the 2008 vintage. Forrester's vineyards
have been farmed organically since 2002, a year that turned wet and cost him
half his crop due to downy mildew.
"But I'd
spent four years converting to organics and, besides, why wouldn't you want to
be organic?" he asked. "It's the healthier, more sensible way to do things. So no, a little
rainy vintage wasn't going to change my mind."
The home
estate, located on the border of Stellenbosch and Somerset West, totals 123 acres, with 72 acres under vine. Forrester and Rossouw also have an
additional 74 acres of vines under long-term contract, controlling the
viticulture, while buying in a little bit of fruit to finish off the
production. Everything is done by hand in the vineyards.
"Pruning,
tipping, weeding. Everything," emphasized Forrester. "We do it by hand to
create jobs. Organics also means growing the community organically. We have a
responsibility to do that."
Though the
home estate is just 3 miles from the coast, the flat vineyard of weathered
sandstone over gravel and clay is a sunny but lightly breezy spot. The old-vine
Chenin Blanc on the property, planted in 1970, is what drew Forrester in when
he bought it in 1993.
"Everyone
said rip out the Chenin and plant Pinotage and Chardonnay. Since everyone told
me to rip it out, I figured I had to keep it," he said, with his wide, engaging
grin.
Over time
he's learned to manage the site for what Forrester calls "cool sunshine," to
produce richly styled wines that still maintain freshness. The vineyard rows
run north-south so they get both morning and afternoon sun. Therefore there is
no aggressive leaf pulling here as I saw at the much windier and cooler
vineyards of de Morgenzon earlier in my trip. Forrester needs to shade his fruit
a bit for protection. Some of the bush vines have since been retrained onto a
trellis, while others have been left as is.
New VLOG size for 2013
For
Forrester's top bottling, called The FMC, Forrester uses the 10-acre bush-vine parcel, first moving through and picking the most sun-exposed bunches
first, and then progressively picking the vineyard in multiple passes, sometimes
up to five, to get lots with differing acidity levels and ripeness.
"The FMC is
a big wine, but for it to work, it needs restraint, natural acidity," explained
Forrester. "The earlier fruit has acidity but not the phenolic ripeness, as it
doesn't get the hang time, and then the later pickings have more of that fruit
profile that we're looking for."
The 2011
Chenin Blanc Stellenbosch The FMC shows a beautiful core of freshly churned butter, heather,
almond and creamed pear notes, but there's still a chalky tension buried on the
finish, with an echo of apple blossom. The 2010 Chenin Blanc Stellenbosch
The FMC is showier
in style, with bolder apricot, orange blossom and clementine notes, giving way
to a flash of marmalade on the finish. Forrester prefers the fresher-styled 2011, while he said he can't keep the 2010 in stock.
"The Dolly
Parton wine, the '10, really wows a lot of people. But that was an unrepentantly
warm year. The '11 is what I would prefer, with that minerality still showing
in the wine. But it goes to show that not all vintages in South Africa are the
same. We really do have vintage variation here," he said.
Because of
the heady profile of the 2010 vintage, Forrester also made a small batch, just two
barrels, of the 2010 Chenin Blanc Stellenbosch The FMCPremière Selection Moelleux, in
hommage to his love of Loire Valley Chenin. The wine carries 3 percent residual
sugar and was made form mostly shriveled grapes which stopped their ferment
short of dry. The wine is creamy and lush, with Jonagold apple, pear and piecrust notes but enough floral notes to keep the finish defined and alluring.
And to show
how the wine ages, Forrester opens a bottle of the 2003 Chenin Blanc
Stellenbosch The FMC,
which is showing white Northern Rhône characteristics of white truffle, white
chocolate and creamed pear fruit, along with an echo of dried apricot on the
finish. It's creamy but very well-defined and very long.
"I want
acidity as a spine, not as a frame," said Forrester of his approach. "You
can't just take underripe fruit and ripe fruit and average it out for balance.
We're always looking for acidity in the fruit to begin with. You have to pick
ripe fruit, not fruit with just acidity combined with fruit for just ripe fruit's sake."
There are
values here in Chenin too, including the 2012 Chenin Blanc Stellenbosch Old
Vines Reserve
which, at $15, is a great buy, delivering tasty peach, heather, honeysuckle and
fig notes with a lightly crunchy texture and good energy. The 2012 Chenin
Blanc Western Cape Petit, at $10, shows light-bodied kafir lime, pear peel and green almond
notes in an unassuming, refreshing style.
In addition
to Chenin, Forrester has a love of Rhône varieties as well, and he continues to
tinker with his red lineup, introducing the 2007 Renegade Western Cape, a 52/48 blend of Grenache and
Syrah that displays a decidedly Rhône profile of pepper, wood smoke, tobacco and
mulled cherry fruit with a dusty edge on the finish. The 2010 The Gypsy
Western Cape blends
Grenache from a vineyard in the Tierkloof, planted in 1959 that might be the
oldest Grenache vines in the country, along with Syrah from around the estate
in Stellenbosch. It delivers dusty plum, bitter cherry and red currant fruit
spiked with white pepper, tobacco and singed wood notes, while keeping nice
tension on the fleshy, full-bodied finish. It's a wine that always seems to put
on weight as it airs in the glass too, showing more pure fruit as it opens up.
And showing
an old dog can learn a few new tricks, Forrester has an experimental lot of
Durif and Mourvèdre in the works. The 50/50 blend from the 2010 vintage is as
yet unnamed, but its dense and chewy feel, with lots of cherry paste,
blackberry confiture and anise flavors, sports ample power, while the smoky
finish belies the fact that there is no new oak at all on the wine. It's a very
intriguing wine in the making.
"That's the future direction for South Africa, I
think," said Forrester. "More Mediterranean varieties to match with the sunny,
windy conditions here."
