Pleasant Surprise from South Africa at $5.99: MAN Vintners Pinotage 2005

MAN, out of Stellenbosch, produces my quick intelligent value weekender vino. I’ve always fallen easily for a wine with an underlying story. You can read all about the guys here, since I won’t pull off the usual wine blogger thing and claim that I’m writing original content that was subsequently re-hashed from producer’s websites. Oh and yes, I publish boring tasting notes which are only meant as a rough guide/tool for people to assess how much they’d probably like the wine—so deal with it and try the wines for yourself.

At any rate, the MAN 2005 Pinotage, sourced from Perdeberg Hills (Coastal), is a very pleasant surprise. I remember being in London last year, trying many of the paltry £4,99 South African wines available in major supermarkets. Small clarification—I’ve had very nice supermarket selections there, though I wasn’t lucky enough to stumble upon wines like these—unexpectedly balanced and satisfying for the price-point ($5.99). If you must buy a wine this inexpensive, you’d always hope for a comparable standard. Unlike some of the other cheaper reds which gratuitously used terms such as “barrel-aged” on the back-labels, MAN openly discloses their use of oak staves for maturing part of the wine, in addition to fining and filtering. As I mentioned before, you can read the technical sheets on their website. Now, for the sake of consistency, if I can just get my hands on the other wines in their line…wouldn’t it be something if the other varieties were quaffable at $5.99?

Visual/Aromatic Profile: Medium ruby with translucent edges in the glass. The nose is clean, with pronounced intensity of the predominant red fruit (red cherry & plum), soft earth, spice and minerality.

Texture and Finish: Dry, with medium acidity, medium tannin and high body. Bold plum and red cherry sweetness are accompanied by pepper, spice and stony minerality. The spices, minerality and soft earth lead into the interesting medium finish.