Blazing a trail up South Africa’s west coast, viticulturist Jaco Engelbrecht is on his way to Skerpioen, the sprawling old bush-vine vineyard rooted on white sand-limestone soils that produces the namesake Chenin Blanc-Palomino blend made by Eben Sadie for his Sadie Family Wines label. And right next to Skerpioen, in this arid coastal desert, Engelbrecht says he’s recently planted five rows of bush-vine Cinsault for Sadie.
This isn’t surprising, given that Sadie’s old-vine, single-vineyard Pofadder red (opposite) was the catalyst for Cinsault’s fine wine reemergence in the Cape when it was released in 2009. Since then, more premium bottlings have joined it to form a tiny but impactful string of serious South African Cinsaults.
‘The challenge is, what do you do with it when the vines are young?’ Engelbrecht asks rhetorically. He says Cinsault only produces premium fruit as an older vine, and not many growers are willing to make the long-term economic commitment. ‘Cinsault is also difficult to manage. It’s not an upright grower, it can be sloppy; it quickly over-crops. Bush vines naturally limit the grape’s high productivity, but even then you need to crop it by almost 50%.’ And he admits: ‘Even though I’m a big advocate for Grenache in the Cape, the potential of old-vine Cinsault
