I’ve just experienced three days of crushing it at wine farms thanks to South African 
wine passionista extraordinaire and all-around awesome chick Kara Miller of Cape Classics. A Hoboken transplant who worked harvest at Kanonkop in 2009 and decided she wanted to live here, Kara is my hero and a perfect tour guide with a backstage pass to South Africa’s top wine farms.
She kidnapped me from the sorting table on Thursday to bring me to Kanonkop and Rustenberg in the Simonsberg region. They’re two of the most highly acclaimed producers in Stellenbosch and they both have an excellent U.S. presence (we carry two Rustenberg wines at the store!). I had the pleasure of visiting Rustenberg last year but had never been to Kanonkop.
The Kanonkop name is irrevocably linked to pinotage, and they’re just fine with 
that. Producing arguably the highest-quality pinotage in the country (Beyerskloof and Warwick are the only competition that come to my mind), Kanonkop proudly champions the polarizing cultivar with words — note the cheeky quip above the door, at right — and with undeniably serious wines. Pinotage features in their delightfully full-bodied dry rosé; their amazing-value Cape blend, Kanonkop Kadette; and a single-cultivar bottling, the 2008 vintage of which was a personal favorite of mine even before it became a U.S. critics’ darling.
A fascinating tour of Kanonkop’s cellar and barrel room exhibited the farm’s proud 
history; my favorite feature was the “Wall of Fame,” with a bottle from each vintage since the farm’s modern wine production began and a brief note about the vintage. They were harvesting cabernet that day so I was lucky enough to see some action. Kanonkop is known for huge cement open-top fermenters and an amazing twelve punchdowns a day, every two hours around the clock. This regimen produces amazing extraction in their reds with firm but not harsh tannins and a gorgeous deep color.
We were treated to samples of 2010 cabernet and pinotage from their French oak barrels; they showed intense, focused fruit and great structure. I went home with a bottle of 2010 pinotage rose, which shows sesame/umami notes and a delicious menthol characteristic and lasted about twenty minutes with my host family as we enjoyed it with chicken cooked on the braai over the weekend.
Our next stop was Rustenberg, a farm very close to my heart for both its physical beauty and its stunning wines. We were treated to an outdoor tasting with some extremely hard-to-find gems including the opulent, lush Five Soldiers chardonnay, the earthy, gunpowder-graphitey Peter Barlow cabernet, and their delightful “straw wine” dessert. The wines are so polished and elegant, effortlessly world class but at
a fraction of the prices you’d see in France or California. 
We finished the tasting portion of the day at Thelema, where Kara is practically a 
member of the family. I got to meet winemaker Rudi Schultz as we tasted through a fantastic lineup from their Simonsberg and Elgin ranges. Highlights were a viognier-roussanne from the Elgin-based Sutherland range, the 2006 Thelema chardonnay which had a full, savory sesame-soy characteristic; “The Mint” cabernet, so named for its menthol character thanks to proximity to eukalyuptus trees; and the velvety, floral Rudi Schultz syrah. Thelema’s gorgeous, rustic, high-altitude location is obviously ideal for wines with tremendous depth of flavor and minerality, and I was thoroughly impressed with both the honest, restrained nature of the wines and the down-to-earth, open personalities of Rudi and owner Giles Webb. Rudi even let us take the chard and syrah out to dinner with us! This farm is now firmly on my radar and I may be returning this evening for a picnic on the mountain.
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