Beaumont Vitruvian Launch.

I was lucky enough to crack a nod to the launch of Beaumont’s new flagship red blend, Vitruvian, on Saturday afternoon. It was pissing down in Cape Town so a welcome relief to head out to Botriver and the ‘partly-cloudy with scattered showers’ countryside. Wine launches can be smug affairs where the estate spends the day trying to brainwash the media into believing they’ve released the next cult wine while guests are more interested in the sushi and sharing industry gossip. The latter mostly revolves around which big-name owner is haemorrhaging the most money through their lavish estate but poor sales. Thankfully it wasn’t that type of launch on Saturday, but pleasantly far from it.

The crowd was a friendly mix of wine hacks, winemakers, trade folk and friends of the Beaumont family. The atmosphere was anything but poncy and the farm certainly one of the most naturally beautiful around. By ‘naturally,’ I mean they didn’t need a famous architect or landscaper to come in and ‘create’ the beauty. Winemaker Sebastian Beaumont welcomed everyone by the old mill, which has been restored to working order and incorporates a milling system devised by the Roman engineer, Vitruvius. The Vetruvian Man is the famous Da Vinci artwork based on Vitruvius’ concept of ideal proportions evident in man. Ideal proportions being something all winemakers have top of mind when creating a blend, hence the name of Beaumont’s new wine. At least that’s how I remember it, having already polished two glasses of Chenin Blanc since arrival.

Our first taste of Vitruvian came on the lawn behind the manor house. With a garden of colourful flowers and views over a dam towards the mountains, I could think of many worse places to taste a wine for the first time. This would not affect my judgement of the wine however. Nor would Sebastian’s charming description of the blend, saying, “Mourvedre is the guts, Pinotage is the backbone, Shiraz the muscles and the Cabernet Franc, well, that’s the wild element.” Nor would the friendly waiters that filed out the house, carrying trays of tasty dishes to win my stomach over. Nor the genuine hospitality and genuine welcome feeling everyone commented on.

Well, that’s not entirely true. This ‘hearts and minds’ approach that Beaumont took to the launch certainly did work. And it actually did make me enjoy the wine a whole lot more. Doesn’t every wine taste better when you’re enjoying it with interesting people in a great setting? But that aside, they didn’t need to. They could have cracked open a case of the stuff under an umbrella on the lawn and served it to us in striped paper cups, we still wouldn’t have missed how good it was. Words like ‘elegant’ and ‘fresh’ were being bandied about, and for good reason. The wine was soft, ripe, stuffed with blackberry and blueberry fruits and had a finish of superfine tannins that left a slight chalky feeling on the palate. This was no overoaked showstopper, this wine had class. It was actually rather dangerously good, and perhaps the best sign of this was how people were knocking back glasses of the stuff at a rate. Or maybe it was just me. Either way, I have a feeling this maiden 2006 vintage is not going to be around for long.

At some point later in the afternoon I bid farewell to the gracious Beaumont’s and popped across the road to The Shunting Shed to meet a friend for some beer. Sebastian and a few others including his wife Nici, sister Ariane, JP Rossouw (married to Ariane) and Jardine sommelier Jaap came across to watch the rugby a short while after. Everyone was in good spirits, except the grumpy old fellow drinking Appletizer at the bar who asked us to tone it down a notch in not so polite a phrase. We all shared some pizzas during the game, knocked back several bottles of Luddite Shiraz and at some point I loudly suggested we drink some more “Vesuvius!” Despite my volcanic error, Sebastian disappeared for a few minutes and returned with two bottles of Vetruvian. I don’t think we deserved those last two bottles, and the concept of ideal proportions were mostly lost on me by then, but from the day overall, I undoubtedly do believe Vetruvian to be one of the finest red wines in South Africa.

www.beaumont.co.za

(The wine is set to retail somewhere around R350.)