Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James

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      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

      BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon

      University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 2013 by Tim James

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      James, Tim (Timothy James), 1954 –.

      Wines of the new South Africa: tradition and revolution / Tim James.

      p. cm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978–0–520–26023–8 (cloth : alk. paper)

      eISBN 9780520954830

      1. Wine and wine making—South Africa. I. Title.

      TP559.S6J362013

      663′.20968—dc232012048632

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 2002) (Permanence of Paper).

      To Louise and Eben

      CONTENTS

      List of Maps

      Preface and Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      1.Wine and the New South Africa

      2.A Brief History of South African Wine to 1994

      3.Grape Varieties and Wine Styles

      4.Wine of Origin: Legislation, Labels, and Terroir

      5.Constantia and the Cape Peninsula

      6.Stellenbosch

      7.Paarl and Wellington

      8.Franschhoek

      9.Durbanville to Darling

      10.The Swartland

      11.Breede River Valley

      12.Walker Bay and Cape Agulhas

      13.Elgin and Overberg

      14.Tulbagh and Ceres

      15.Olifants River, West Coast, and Cederberg

      16.Klein Karoo and Adjacent Wards

      Appendix

      Bibliographic Notes

      Index of Wineries

      General Index

      MAPS

       1.Winegrowing Areas of the Western Cape

       2.Constantia and the Cape Peninsula

       3.Stellenbosch

       4.Paarl and Wellington

       5.Franschhoek

       6.Durbanville to Darling

       7.The Swartland

       8.Breede River Valley

       9.Walker Bay and Cape Agulhas

       10.Elgin and Overberg

       11.Tulbagh and Ceres

       12.Olifants River, West Coast, and Cederberg

       13.Klein Karoo and Adjacent Wards

      PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      It will quickly become clear to any reader of this book that my approach is often colored by a consciousness of the history of South African wine. The title, of course, suggests that the focus is on one particular slice of history—the most recent—but that is so only insofar as I am always aware of the past informing the present of the new South African wine industry. This is, after all, one of the oldest wine industries of the so-called New World, and the only one that, with the wines of Constantia, made a notable contribution to the greatness of wine before the twentieth century. The notorious politics and social structures of the past still have less-attractive echoes today, but I have effectively defined the “newness” that is my focus with a date that most immediately has a sociohistorical significance: 1994, the year of the country’s first nonracial parliamentary election. That was, of course, the event that allowed the reentry of Cape wine into the world markets, after many years of boycott and isolation, and precipitated the vinous revolution that rolls on yet. The wine lands are redolent of the recent and the older past, which are inevitably embedded in the change and growth of the past few decades. I look forward to there being one day a comprehensive and readily available history of South African wine; meanwhile, in a thoroughly unspecialist way and in a general book, I offer here what little I can of it, as part of an attempt to characterize and account for the present.

      I do not venture the wineries profiled as a definitive list of the best producers of South African wine; to do so would make me even more vulnerable to criticism than I will be in claiming these as among the best. (Other interesting wineries are also mentioned in the introductions to the various regions.) Many are an ineluctable choice, of course, but there were sometimes competing claims to be weighed, in the context of space limitations. Perhaps the category of producers that is most egregiously missing is that of garagistes (some of them the personal labels of winemakers at larger properties), and that is because many of them СКАЧАТЬ