South Africa: Not Yet Named Wine Company & AA Badenhorst, Barbera 2024, Swartland

Grape variety: 100% Barbera. 12.5% alcohol. Give it a little time to open up in the glass.

Partial whole bunch fermentation, inoculated with fermenting Cinsault, light punchdowns by hand, seven day maceration, matured in old oak barrels.

This is small-scale, hands-on winemaking of the highest order, with only one objective - to achieve the highest quality possible. 

Around 70km north-east of Cape Town, the Swartland was historically a wheat growing area with very few wine producers, while from 2010 it has since been transformed into a leading fine wine region with a reputation for avant-garde, minimal-intervention, terroir-driven winemaking centered around the towns of Malmesbury and Riebeek West.

Thanks to its geological patchwork of shale, granite and sandy soils, some of South Africa's most lauded wines are now made here from a smorgasbord of grape varieties.

One such avant-garde producer is Adi Badenhorst, who is something of a god in these parts and in the wider wine world.

He doesn't follow convention; his winery is small and looks run-down, and he makes some unconventional blends from grape varieties that many will not have heard of. Yet his little winery makes some of South Africa's finest wines, with his reputation having been built by word-of-mouth and intrinsic quality rather than glitzy marketing. 

It is for this reason that Not Yet Named Wine Company's Alex Brogan, a Mancunian with whom I studied winemaking, partnered with Badenhorst to make this Barbera, a variety extremely rare not just in South Africa (with only a few hectares planted) but everywhere outside of Italy!

Barbera is a northern Italian variety, best known for the wine it produces near the city of Asti in Piemonte (Barbera d'Asti). Barbera produces wine that is medium-bodied, juicy, fresh, and vibrant with low to moderate alcohol, and this one from the Swartland is no exception!

It is a variety that retains its natural acidity even in excessively hot growing seasons (whereas with many other varieties the winemaker often has to add acidity i.e. not at all natural).

A joyous, rare, quite rustic (in a good way) small-batch wine - it's so fragrant and boasts great acidity, making it great with food, acidity being the unsung hero of food pairing. 

I just love this! There is something Burgundian about it in terms of shape yet it's unmistakeably Italian in terms of its fruit character - if this WAS Burgundy or indeed from Piemonte, it would doubtless be several times the price. 

It really is a superb wine and for the quality that it delivers, really great value. It's a fine wine, no question. 

Food Pairing: 

Barbera is such a food friendly wine thanks to its acidity, low tannin and bright fruit. Think tomato-based dishes - pizza and pasta, sausages, pork chops, roast chicken, duck, lighter cuts of beef, mushroom risotto, hard salty cheeses. Works so well with Ragu Tagliatelle that I paired this with!