Neal Martin scores 10 year old whites in Blind UK Tasting

This month we received two great scores from UK wine critic Neal Martin at the "Steenwold Returns! South Africa's 2016s" tasting in London. He tasted two 10-year-old wines from us – Orbitofrontal Cortex 2016 received 93 points, and Moment of Silence 2016 received 94 points - yes, 2 white wines.

Now here is the significant part... (besides that he'd apparently happily include them in a lineup of top Burgundy!) He's of the opinion that the wines have the potential to age for another 16 years. According to him, they will still be perfectly drinkable up to 2040!

THE ULTIMATE INDICATOR TO GAUGE WINE QUALITY IS AGE

From here on, I am going to pull a bit of a tech approach on you.

If a wine is still so good after 10 years in bottle, it is the ultimate indicator of quality. This quality starts with the grape. A quality grape is produced by a determined vine. The right cultivar grafted onto a well-adapted rootstock, planted in the desired soil type on the exact slope, sun-kissed at the optimum angle in the favourable ward within the defined origin, at the desired elevation.

If such a vine is manicured the right way, the grape will be packed with flavour and intensity.

Nature then does its thing in the cellar, guided by man into the bottle in a way that allows the wine to best represent the site where that grape grows. A wine made with such precision will have a multi-layered foundation, tightly packed with flavour and texture, supported by a solid structural backbone.

Now, clever winemaking can hide flaws in the short term, but in time they will show.

You see, oxygen enters the bottle through the cork over time. Each type of cork has what we call an oxygen transmission rate, measured in mg/year. Different corks have different transmission rates, but for this exercise, let's say that, on average, 1.5 mg of oxygen enters through the cork every year.

Without getting too technical, wine generally has the capacity to hide quality and winemaking issues for up to five years. After that, the wine starts to reveal every possible flaw. So a 10-year-old wine no longer has the ability to hide anything.

Bearing it all!

And that is why I am stoked about Neal Martin's ratings.

So, with Moment of Silence 2025 and Orbitofrontal Cortex 2025, I can say with relative certainty that these wines can still be enjoyed in 2052!

Let's hope we all get there!