This grape arrives in the spring from South Africa. Pinotage is dark in color and bold in flavor, wine has notes of plum, tobacco, and blackberry. This wine pairs well with red meat or can be enjoyed by itself.
Owner and winemaker Darren Horn gives a brief introduction to the Pinotage style:
To me Pinotage is a very special grape we actually imported from South Africa it has very strong hints of blackberry and very strong hints of tobacco. It is a unique and distinctive wine. It is slowly becoming one of our our better sellers.”
More About Pinotage
Pinotage is a grape crossing of Cinsaut and Pinot Noir. It was first crossed in South Africa in 1925 in the gardens of scientist Abraham Perold. Perold observed how Pinot Noir struggled in South Africa’s climate, so he crossed them with a very productive species: Cinsaut (called Hermitage). Perold’s goal was to create a wine that was as delicious as Pinot Noir but grew as well as Cinsaut.
The result of the crossing between Cinsaut and Pinot Noir was unexpected. The Pinotage grapes were extremely dark in color and the wine they created was bold and high in tannin and anthocyanin — nothing its the progenitors. Despite the difference in flavor, Pinotage would eventually become the 2nd most planted grape in South Africa.
Since Pinotage is such a productive wine grape, producers often made very low-quality commercial wine with it. It didn’t help that Pinotage was such an inky grape, making it possible for wineries to stretch their wine as thin as possible. What the winemakers didn’t realize back in the 1980s and 1990s was that Pinotage is a tricky wine to make well. Fortunately, in the last 15 years, several producers have banded together and focused on reducing crop yields and used careful winemaking techniques to manage this unique grape.
Pinotage association member and winemaker Danie Steytler Jr. says it’s common to find purple fruits and black fruits in Pinotage, but occasionally you’ll taste amazing red fruit flavors of raspberry, red licorice, and even red bell pepper (on optimal vintages).
On great bottles of Pinotage, you’ll be delighted by the flavors other than fruit. A wide array of other flavors include rooibos, dried leaves, bacon, sweet and sour sauce, hoisin, and sweet pipe tobacco.
Source: https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/give-pinotage-wine-taste/
