THE 30 BEST CAPE WINES UNDER £20
If you haven’t been drinking South African wines over the past five years, you’ve been missing out big time. Where have you been? South Africa, in my opinion, is making the most exciting wines of any New World country at the moment, with several wineries producing reds and whites that are more dynamic than many equivalent offerings from the masters in France, Italy and Spain. Yes, call me biased, but read – and taste – on. South Africa’s time is most definitely now.
With such high quality and growing fame comes increased demand and, inevitably, increased prices. The weak rand has helped to mitigate the pace of this somewhat, but many of South Africa’s best wines are now sitting comfortably between £25 and £50 a bottle. So when Decanter asked me to seek out 30 South African wines under £20 that I would be happy to recommend, it was an exciting challenge that I couldn’t refuse.
Over 20 years of buying fine wine, I’ve increasingly noticed the South African category develop the ‘doughnut effect’: plenty of mass-market, branded offerings at entry-level prices under £10, and then noticeably slim pickings until you pass the £20 price point. However, this is by no means a unique phenomenon. It was also a challenge for Californian producers in the mid- to late-2000s; with no middle ground of wines in which to trade up to, wine lovers were unable to expand their interest in the state’s wines.
South African producers are now
