A few hail from the excellent 2012 vintage, including the alluring Ernie Els Cape Winemakers Guild Stellenbosch 2012 (94 points, $NA), the loamy, minty de Trafford Perspective Cape Winemakers Guild Stellenbosch 2012 (93, $NA) and the chunky, grip-filled Louis Nel Gonzo Cape Winemakers Guild Stellenbosch 2012 (93, $NA). In this year's lineup, I was particularly enthused by some of the Cabernet Sauvignon and blends. The auction benefits the winemakers themselves, with a portion of the proceeds going to fund the guild protége program, which helps disadvantaged youths get into the wine industry. For the auction, they bottle selected lots-one-offs, new single-vineyard bottlings, experimental blends and the like-that are not commercially released. This year's lot, 47 wines in total, provided some compelling old school-styled Cabernets, a wide range of Rhône varietals and an eclectic mix of deliciously pure whites.įor background on these auction wines and the Cape Winemakers Guild, you can refer to my report on last year's wines here, as well as previous reports, as I've tasted the wines every year since the 2007 auction.Įssentially a club that polices itself, the Cape Winemakers Guild is made up of a hefty chunk of South Africa's best winemakers.
#RUMPUS CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2020 HOW TO#
As such, to prevent me from getting too rusty (yesterday I forgot how to spell ‘seven’), I might use this time and this space to blether on about anything nice (or not) that I’m drinking at home, and the WSET Level 2 seemed like a good place to start.It's always interesting when I sit down to taste through the annual release of Cape Winemakers Guild Auction wines. Secondly, writing about restaurants – which is what I usually do on these pages – is a tad tricksy at the moment given that they’re all closed. (And, people of YWS, if you ever fancy putting on the Level 3 in the Haifax-Bradford vicinity, do let me know.) If, like many, you’ve upped the wine intake over these last few weeks then getting to know more about what you’re pouring down your neck is surely a good thing to do, and Yorkshire Wine School a top-notch bunch to do it with.Įven in lockdown there are plenty of courses on offer, so go here for a gander.
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I mention all this for a couple of reasons. I lost the accompanying badge soon after fate’s way, perhaps, of telling me off for waltzing into an exam without having paid sufficient attention to the grape varieties of the southern Rhone. My certificate landed a couple of weeks later announcing a result of 78% – a Pass with Merit – for which I was relieved more than pleased. During post-exam beers there was much self-flagellation to be witnessed – mostly my own – as notes were consulted and mistakes realised that, by now, were too late to be corrected. The latter part of the third day was taken up by a multiple-choice exam, into which several curve balls had been thrown just to check that we’d really been paying attention over the last few weekends. I’d soon perfected my “he knows what he’s on about” glass swirl, even if I didn’t actually know what I was on about, and for a while afterwards I ran the risk of fostering an expensive Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon habit. There was stuff about mountains and sea-breeze, oak barrels and steel tanks, and how a glass of champagne goes very nicely with fish and chips. We got to know our Barolos from our Barberas, our Chablis from our Chateauneuf, and about how the French really have a thing about soil.
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Led by the ebullient Laura, who got the pace of each day bang on, we learnt how to give wine a proper going over through sight and smell before necking the stuff, and what all the pesky waffle on the label means.
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The WSET Level 2 does require a fair bit of enjoyable graft. Those three days, however, weren’t just a wine-fuelled jolly (although use of the spittoons did dwindle by about 11am on the first day), and nor, despite numerous samples, was this simply a “wine-tasting” course. This, to quote Martine McCutcheon, was My Moment. If I passed, I’d have a certificate to wave in people’s faces and prove to all that the hard yards of drinking under the guise of study had been for a Good Reason. I’d gone back to school, or, to be precise, Yorkshire Wine School – a really good kind of school – to undertake the WSET Level 2. In 2017 I spent three Saturdays on the bounce holed up in a basement meeting room of a Leeds hotel.Įach week, fuelled by a morning sharpener from La Bottega Milanese, I‘d stagger in bleary-eyed from the night before and stagger out again seven hours later, booze-levels replenished and with a strong urge for a kebab and bed, ideally eating the former while laying in the latter.